On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 22:45:04 -0800, Fly-by-Night CC
wrote:

In article ,
otforme (Charlie Self) wrote:

Possibly. I do wonder if anyone, anywhere in the English speaking world,

OK, I've had a question rattling around in my noggin' (note proper use
of an apostrophe to indicate a missing letter) for quite some time now...

At what point did we U.S.-ians and Canady-ites lose the Brit accent?
Australia still has theirs, some folks in India still have theirs.
What/who influenced the changeover to American English and accent versus
the Brittish (Proper?) English and accent? Did the New World-born and
raised colonists of, say 1776, sound American or Brittish? When did the
transition take place and over how long a period of time?

Please, please, will someone answer my queries - the rattling is tooo
damn loud and is driving me crazy! Crazy I tell ya, CRAZY!

A couple of points:

I recall reading somewhere that the change actually occurred in
Britain around the 18th Century. There was supposedly a fashion
adopted of stylized speech, which became permanent and the genesis of
today's Brit accent, all of which, of course happened subsequent to
the major migration to "the colonies." Consequently, the accent heard
in New England is allegedly closer to the British way of speaking that
existed in the 17th Century than is heard there now.

Oz was settled in the late 18th Century and therefore took with them
the later version of the British accent.

If the preceding is true, it's probably more accurate to say that the
Brits *gained* an accent, rather than we lost one.

I also seem to remember that the accents found deep in the Appalachins
are supposedly very similar to the Scots/Irish English (which
presumably was unaffected by the "fashion change") due to the
proponderence of Scots/Irish that settled the area.

The problem with all of that is how did we get such regionalized
accents in the States and how did so much of Canada get nearly the
same accent as that of our upper midwest (MN, WI, MI)? And how is it
that nearly all of Canada has roughly the same accent and we in the
States have at least four very distinct ones? (New England, Southern,
Upper Midwest, General American)

And of course, North Carolina Southern is very different from Georgia
Southern which is quite different from Coonass Louisiana Southern.

Ah, what a subject!

LRod

Master Woodbutcher and seasoned termite

Shamelessly whoring my website since 1999

http://www.woodbutcher.net