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British accents that sound American? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Tezza Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5678 days ago 41 posts - 64 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 17 of 27 26 July 2011 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think I'm the first British person to comment on this and I have to say that I can think of no accent in the UK that sounds even remotely American. At all.
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| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5228 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 18 of 27 26 July 2011 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Interesting. John McWhorter, the creole expert, says black English is a "hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects..." 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| etracher Triglot Groupie Italy Joined 5334 days ago 92 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: Modern Hebrew, Russian, Latvian | Message 19 of 27 26 July 2011 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you Tezza. In fact, I had hoped that British members might have posted in response to this, because that is actually what I originally asked for. In the end, I wrote an email to Dr. Roach to ask him exactly which British accents he had in mind when he wrote the sentence quoted in the original post. He replied a few days ago, saying: "My remark about some British accents sounding American was not meant to be original, nor scientifically based. Anecdotally, however, there are British accents that English people think sound American. Some Northern Irish accents would come top of the list, but some of the rhotic accents of the West of England where the /r/ is strongly retroflexed are also said to sound American - Somerset would be the most likely, I think. It would be good to hear the opinions of experts who know these accents better than I do." All this about accents "sounding" British or American is all terribly subjective. I have looked up some videos of the Somerset accent and can understand where the idea comes from. But I am wondering what some of the British users here think of this opinion. As others have already said here, there are some American accents that, to American ears, sound somewhat "British", due to rhoticity and vowel quality, mostly. So, my dear Brits, what do you think of this? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5418 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 20 of 27 26 July 2011 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Like Tezza, I think that if you are from the UK you would probably never confuse a UK
or Irish accent as a North American accent if you were to hear a few sentences or so. There are perhaps some vowel aspects in some Northern Irish accents which are similar to some found in North America but you'd never actually confuse those Northern Irish accents for North American accents if you listen to more than just a sentence or two. Ultimately it might be down to familiarity. The more you listen to different accents the easier it becomes to truly distinguish an accent from the idiosyncracies of a person's voice and to not confuse some accents which resemble each other on a very very superficial level. For example those not used to Irish accents will be hard placed to tell which city a random Irish person is from, thinking they largely sound the same while another Irish person would likely have little problem telling you the approximate area said Irish person is from by listening to them. People from the UK are generally very familiar with a wide variety of regional accents from around the UK while those in the US for example wouldn't have had such wide exposure to the many different regional accents over here and may just be able to tell that an accent is perhaps English, Scottish or Irish and perhaps still get it wrong. I've had some Americans I've met when outside of Scotland think that I am Irish despite having what to people in the UK is a blatantly obvious Scottish accent. Considering the nature of some accents on the North East coast of North America, I can suppose that some people in North America outside of that region may perhaps confuse certain Northern Irish accents as perhaps sounding vaguely American at first glance, though of the variety found around Newfoundland. To those who are used to different accents though, the differences are very noticeable. This is just my theory on the situation though. Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 26 July 2011 at 11:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5565 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 21 of 27 27 July 2011 at 12:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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From an English perspective (i.e. mine), Niles and Frazer Crane sound like the whiny 'upper class' Americans on scholarships I met as a student at Cambridge University - these were people who wanted to be thought of as cultured (which, compared to the rest of us, they probably were, at least, they were richer than we) and so I assume it is an affectation.
Mr Burns sounds pretty American to me (which given that Harry Shearer, his voice, comes from LA is not surprising). As to accents from Britain or Ireland, the only ones that I hear that sometimes have an Americanish indication are from Northern Ireland (on second listen that soon goes away) and I know that Italian friends of think Ulstermen sound like Americans. Given that many from Ulster settled in the USA there may be some truth in it. I would be interested to know, aside from the limited number of 17th century immigrants, was native English (as in not Irish, Scottish or Welsh) settlement in America ever that high? I say this because most Americans I meet claim Irish, Scottish or Welsh descent but never English origins. Edited by Elexi on 27 July 2011 at 12:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5228 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 22 of 27 27 July 2011 at 5:06am | IP Logged | |||||
That's an interesting observation. I don't know the reason, but I suspect a contributing factor is that the English wave of immigration was farther in the past, and so, merely because of the distance of time, more people have become detached from that aspect of their heritage. I have English blood, but those ancestors have been in America since before the Revolutionary War. Since then, the family has sort of lost the sense of its Englishness, which is to be expected as time goes on in a new place. Now, the German side of my family are immigrants from about a century ago. We know much more about them. So my family feels more German than English.* * But barely at all, I should say. The last name is about the only German reminder we have. Nobody in four generations has spoken the language, there are no German recipes, no desire to visit the homeland. We're American as one can get. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5083 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 23 of 27 27 July 2011 at 11:28am | IP Logged | |||||
You're absolutely right. Still, it was the 3rd largest European ancestry group on the census (beaten by the Irish and Germans). Apparently this has gone down since 1980 by 20 million - so yes, the lack of a feeling of Englishness among Americans has more to do with changes in identity than to a lack of English settlement. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 24 of 27 10 August 2011 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The accent Harry Shearer gives Mr Burns is a good example of upper-class Mid-Atlantic English. Burns also speaks in an old-fashioned way, sometimes using expressions common around 1900 or so, although I can't think of any to hand that he uses.
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