[78-L] Accent you hate [FWD]

Malcolm Rockwell malcolm at 78data.com
Fri Jun 12 09:31:09 PDT 2009


Hmmm... I wonder just how much influence the languages of the various 
"indian" tribes white settlers came into contact with had in shaping 
British English as spoken in that time into American English? If so, 
accent and pronunciation would change according to where the settlements 
were located, geographically. Could explain a lot.
Mal

*******

Mike Harkin wrote:
>  Bud Black wrote:
>   
>>> It always amuses me to watch an old movie where the actors are portraying
>>> the great statesmen of early American history, and hearing George Washington
>>>  Benjamin Franklyn, or Thomas Jefferson speaking in good old Americanese,
>>> when in all probability they all spoke with a pronounced English accent, not
>>> being that far removed from the mother country.
>>>       
>
> Many years ago Masterpiece Theatre ran an adaption of Last of the Mohicans;
> at first I thought it funny that alll the Indians had British accents, till I realised that probably we all had British accents....  Or at least the remnants of one, as I understand that by Irving's time Brits were deriding Americans' strange accents.  It sure would have been nice to have had the phonograph/gramophone back then!
>
> Then there's Jean Marsh, who Alastair Cooke told us during the first run of Upstairs, Downstairs was a true Cockney.  Which means she probably spent millions of pounds on elocution lessons to get rid of her Cockney
> accent....  So which was her most famous part?  Rose, the Cockney 'ousemide'!  Go know!
>
> Mike in Plovdiv  
>
>   




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