Which English accent is the most popular today?

ZHubin   Fri Jan 26, 2007 4:54 pm GMT
What's trollery?, the fact that I've been living in this rathole for 7 years and don't know what trollery is, is proof-enough that American is simpler.
The subjectivity thing you said is true, my first language is Farsi which is flat so American is easier for a Farsi speaker to immitate.
ZHubin   Fri Jan 26, 2007 4:56 pm GMT
To Pete from Peru:

SO YOU CLAIM!
ZHubin   Fri Jan 26, 2007 4:58 pm GMT
To 26AO:

There's a lot of truth to what I say! init? Not just an element.
ZHubin   Fri Jan 26, 2007 5:10 pm GMT
To Pete:

I checked trollery online, No I'm no troll, but it's just as subjective as my opinion on the American being simpler.
ZHubin   Fri Jan 26, 2007 5:31 pm GMT
To 26AO:

There's a lot of truth to what I say! init? Not just an element.

To Pete:

I checked trollery online, I'm no troll dude but that's just as subjective as my opinion on the American being simpler, It's all how you look at it. Now I wanna know how the American English came about? I've heard and know all about things comming from the same source that take a life of their own when they seperate, I know all that, but when you look at the Australians who've been away from the UK for more than a century or something, I don't know the exact time-length though, they still sound more like the English than the Americans do, How come the American language is so radically different from all the rest? I need to know, I googled and still couldn't find anything substantive, Is it because of all the immigrants who came, Is it the Irish-influence? cos Irish sounds kind of like American. So please if anyone has an answer to my question, please post it. Adios.
Uriel   Sat Jan 27, 2007 1:20 am GMT
American English is not substantially different from British English. I can read post after post from people of ALL English-speaking countries and not find any real differences in vocabulary. Often there's no way to tell where a poster is from until they tell you. The dialectical differences that exist are often very small -- using this word instead of that, or small differences in spelling.

And "geezer" is not a recent British import, I hate to tell you -- that's been slang for an old man forever in America.
zzz   Sat Jan 27, 2007 2:58 am GMT
>> I know all that, but when you look at the Australians who've been away from the UK for more than a century or something, I don't know the exact time-length though, they still sound more like the English than the Americans do, How come the American language is so radically different from all the rest? <<

The US, (and Canada--remember they have practically the same accent), were settled a lot longer time ago than Australia was. There was also a lot of blending and homogenizing of the accent. There was more than enough time for the pronunciations to diverge. Actually in many cases (other than vowel mergers before "r"), English in the US and Canada is closer to the English spoken there and in England a few hundred years ago. It's modern day British English that has changed a lot--and Australian English inherited the changes. For example, the loss of many r's. North American English still has all the r's that were pronounced in, for example Shakespear's day. Shakespear's English actually sounds closer to North American English than it does to RP.
Uriel   Sat Jan 27, 2007 8:27 am GMT
Or more like Irish, which has a lot of features similar to American/Canadian.
ZHubin   Sat Jan 27, 2007 9:33 am GMT
To ZZZ:

Thanks, your post was interesting. How did the spelling change?, like you'de see the word "PlOUGH" spelled like "PLOW" in America!, or American omits "U" in Neighbor. You would hear teens say " I would have took." or " Have you ate?", Is it an American street phenomenon or do they do that in UK's ghettos too?, If this goes on, then the next generation will speak a new form of English free of the past perfect of certain verbs if not all!, It's amazing how languages evolve. Didn't Boston get settled early on too? How come the Boston or Brooklyn accent pronounces some words like British English?, If their accent stayed the same since the arrival of the first English settlers, Then 16th century English wouldn't have sounded like American?, Unless this current Boston accent came from the most recent English settlers who brought Modern British English to Boston.
ZHubin   Sat Jan 27, 2007 10:03 am GMT
By the way, 16th century English's vocabulary must have been different from today's English too, not just the accent. The present-day American is almost the same in vocabulary as the British English, So American should be similar in Vocabulary to 16th century English if it came from 16th century English, but it's not. Something's fishy here. The American accent is still mystery.
Uriel   Sat Jan 27, 2007 10:35 am GMT
"Have you ate?" is hardly a common saying in the US.



<<Didn't Boston get settled early on too? How come the Boston or Brooklyn accent pronounces some words like British English?, If their accent stayed the same since the arrival of the first English settlers, Then 16th century English wouldn't have sounded like American?, Unless this current Boston accent came from the most recent English settlers who brought Modern British English to Boston.>>

The non-rhotic New England and southern accents evolved later, after the British began to lose their R's, due to maritime trading contact. The original accents were rhotic, like the rest of the US.



<<The present-day American is almost the same in vocabulary as the British English, So American should be similar in Vocabulary to 16th century English if it came from 16th century English, but it's not. >>

By that logic, the present-day British, whose language also descends from 16th century English, should also be using an archaic vocabulary.

The US and Britain maintained plenty of ties -- mainly written -- that allowed them to keep pace with each other. It's not like the US was on the moon. And variations in pronunciation can occur even in close proximity -- look at all the accents and dialects that coexist in the British Isles, despite centuries of closeness. For Americans and Canadians to retain many older pronunciations is not much of a stretch.
ZHubin   Sat Jan 27, 2007 10:01 pm GMT
Afrikaans is a Dutch language spoken in South Africa, the first Dutch settlers arrived there in 17th century, and Afrikaans is very different from the Dutch language people speak in Netherlands both in accentuation and vocabulary, how come that didn't happen to American English?
The Government officials and merchants in 18th, 19th century America probably had a lot of contact with the Brits but the ordinary people didn't.
Kelly   Sun Jan 28, 2007 2:28 am GMT
''If suppose you live in California - how on earth would you adopt, let's say, a Bostonian accent?''

easily, both accents are Cot Caught merged ;)
Travis   Sun Jan 28, 2007 3:19 am GMT
>>To ZZZ:

Thanks, your post was interesting. How did the spelling change?, like you'de see the word "PlOUGH" spelled like "PLOW" in America!, or American omits "U" in Neighbor. You would hear teens say " I would have took." or " Have you ate?", Is it an American street phenomenon or do they do that in UK's ghettos too?, If this goes on, then the next generation will speak a new form of English free of the past perfect of certain verbs if not all!, It's amazing how languages evolve.<<

Just so you know, in actual speech there is significant variation in preterite and past participle forms in English in general, due to levelling strong preterite and past participles in different manners (the manner you mention above is but one way of levelling strong preterites and past participle in English dialects), retention of -en forms as past participles in dialects which are used only as independent adjectives in the standard language (such as saying "I've already drunken the beer" rather than "I've already drunk the beer"), simple conversion of strong verbs to weak verbs (which is commonly sporadic in nature), sporadic vowel variation in some strong preterites and past participles in dialects (such as the use of "drinken" instead of the aforementioned "drunken"), analogy of formerly weak verbs with strong verbs (for instance, "dug" is actually a recent analogical innovation, with the historical preterite of "to dig" being "digged"), elision in irregular weak forms (such as saying [so:5] for "sold" rather than [so:5d]), reanalysis of weak preterites as present forms and consequent formation of "doubled" preterites in their place (such as in "drowned" being used as a present and "drowneded" being used as a past), and in some cases more marked innovations (such as the innovation of the adjective form "boughten" in various NAE dialects, which has spread to all the entire class of -ought or -aught weak past participles IMD). What you mention is in no fashion some significant new innovation, but rather is just one of the many cases of such variation that are present throughout spoken English in general today.
Uriel   Sun Jan 28, 2007 6:15 am GMT
<<Afrikaans is very different from the Dutch language people speak in Netherlands both in accentuation and vocabulary, how come that didn't happen to American English?
The Government officials and merchants in 18th, 19th century America probably had a lot of contact with the Brits but the ordinary people didn't.>>

We've actually had a lot of discussion on how the American accent evolved, and there's lots of documented information on it both in books and on the web. It would probably be difficult to rehash all of that here. You might want to look back through the archives.