Did Americans have British Accents in 1776?

It is obvious to assume that Americans used to have accents similar to today’s British accents, and that American accents diverged after the Revolutionary War, while British accents remained more or less the same.

Amos Doolittle’s 1775 engraving depicting the British entering Concord

Americans in 1776 did have British accents in that American accents and British accents hadn’t yet diverged – an answer which is not too surprising.

What is surprising, though, is that those accents were much closer to today’s American accents than to today’s British accents. While both have changed over time, it’s actually British accents that have changed much more drastically since then.

First, let’s be clear: the terms British accent and American accent are oversimplifications; there were, and still are, innumerable constantly-evolving regional British and American accents. What most Americans think of as the British accent is the standardized Received Pronunciation, also known as ‘BBC English’.

While there are many differences between today’s British accents and today’s American accents, perhaps the most noticeable difference is rhotacism. While most American accents are rhotic, the standard British accent is non-rhotic. (Rhotic speakers pronounce the ‘R’ sound in the word ‘hard’. Non-rhotic speakers do not.)

In 1776, both American accents and British accents were largely rhotic. It was around this time that non-rhotic speech took off in southern England, especially among the upper class. This prestige non-rhotic speech was standardized, and has been spreading in Britain ever since. Most American accents, however, remained rhotic. However, there are a few fascinating exceptions: like Irish and Scottish accents, New York and Boston accents became non-rhotic.

World Languages: kut

Turkish: [Noun] luck.

Serbo-Croatian: [Noun] kȗt m (Cyrillic spelling: ку̑т) corner, angle.

English: [Noun] a traditional Korean shamanic ritual.

Finnish: [Adjective] (Finglish) good.

Dutch: [Interjection] (vulgar, slang, hollandic) damn. (vulgar, slang, hollandic) not entertaining. [Noun] (vulgar, slang) vulva, especially the vagina; cunt, pussy. (Dialect, invective) derogatory for intensely disliked female person; cunt.

Swedish: [Noun] a puppy; a young seal, chiefly of grey seal.

Geordie Accent

Geordie is a regional nickname for a person from Tyneside, a region of the north east of England, or the name of the English-language dialect spoken by its inhabitants. Depending on who is using it, the catchment area for the term ‘Geordie’ can be as large as the whole of north east England, or as small as the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.

In most aspects Geordie speech is a direct continuation and development of the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxon settlers of this region. Initially mercenaries employed by the ancient Brythons to fight the Pictish invaders after the end of Roman rule in Britannia in the 5th century, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who thus arrived became, over time, ascendant politically and – through population transfer from tribal homelands in northern Europe – culturally over the native British. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that emerged during the Dark Ages spoke largely mutually-intelligible varieties of what we now call Old English, each varying somewhat in phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon. This Anglo-Saxon influence on Geordie can be seen today, to the extent that poems by the Anglo-Saxon scholar the Venerable Bede translates more successfully into Geordie than into modern day English. Thus, in northern England, dominated by the kingdom of Northumbria, was found a distinct Northumbrian Old English dialect.

Phonetically, Geordie consonants generally follow those of Received Pronunciation. Some phonological characteristics specific to Geordie are listed as follows:

- Geordie is non-rhotic, like most Anglo-English dialects. This means speakers do not pronounce /r/ unless it is followed by a vowel sound in that same phrase or prosodic unit. The rhotic sound (/r/) in Geordie is pronounced as [ɹ].

- Unusual for language, there is some differentiation in pronunciation in the Geordie dialect based upon the speaker’s sex. For example, English sound /aʊ/, pronounced generically in Geordie as [əʊ], may also have other, more specific pronunciations depending upon whether one is male or female. Males alone often pronounce the sound /aʊ/ as [uː], for example, the word house (/haʊs/) pronounced as [huːs]. Females, on the other hand, will often pronounce this sound as [eʉ], thus: [heʉs].

- /ɪŋ/ appearing in an unstressed final syllable of a word (such as in reading) is pronounced as [ən] (thus, reading is [ˈɹiːdən]).

- /ər/ appearing at the end of a word (such as in sugar) is pronounced as [a] (thus, sugar is [ˈʃʊga]).

- Yod-coalescence in both stressed and unstressed syllables (so that dew becomes [dʒuː]).

- T-glottalization, in which /t/ is replaced by [ʔ] before a syllabic nasal (e.g. button as [ˈbʊʔən]), in absolute final position (get as [gɛʔ]), and whenever the /t/ is intervocalic so long as the latter vowel is not stressed (pity as [ˈpɪʔi]).

- /æ/ specifically in the words had, have, has and having is pronounced as [ɛ].

- /ɛ/ specifically in words with the spelling “ea” (such as bread and deaf) may be pronounced as [iː].

- /əʊ/ specifically at the ends of words, with the spelling “ow” (such as in throw and follow) is pronounced as [a] in monosyllabic words and [ə] in polysyllabic words (thus, window as [ˈwɪndə]).

To Judge

“You like the general American accent!? Samson liked Delilah!”

- Willem Etsenmaker