"Mike Spencer" wrote in message
...

"Jim Wilkins" writes:

"Mike Spencer" wrote in message

[I didn't write that; you did. :-]

Why do you think US and Canadian speech sounds almost identical yet
so
different from British?

To the extent that's true, I'd assume the influence of the media.
Lots of US TV here in Canada, not so much from the UK. I haven't
had
a TV for 40 years but I see it periodically over my dentist's chair.
Last time to the tooth wrangler, I realized US TV can be
characterized
as "fat people yelling at each other". Unfair, I know, to programs
such as yoga classes but a fair first approximation?

But then...

Many up-scale folks in Toronto & Ottawa have inflections that sound
to
people from other provinces as "kinda British". Rural people in
Nova
Scotia didn't sound either Brit or Merkin 50 years ago, unique
Lunenburg (German influence) and Cape Breton (Scots and Gaelic)
pronounciation and usage. After moving here 50 years ago, I had to
learn that "C'mintha hice" was an invitation to enter. That's all
fading gradually away.


The PBS network presents BBC dramas like Masterpiece Theatre, Dr Who
and Downton Abbey, and David Attenborough narrates Nature, so we can
hear plenty of proper British if we choose to. The only Canadian show
I watched regularly was Forever Knight, set in Toronto. Geraint Wyn
Davies and Catherine Disher could be mistaken for Americans, Nigel
Bennet delivered his midnight radio host monologs as though he was
doing Shakespeare.
https://www.gryffonslair.com/fk/lccerks3.html

Others assumed various accents including Cockney. You might know Wyn
Davies from the Nova Scotia series Black Harbour.

-jsw