American, Canadian, British, and Shakespearean English
From this language site.
I had read elsewhere that certain features of American English retain Elizabethan characteristics. According to the following excerpt, Shakespeare would have sounded rather American.
"The final 'r' that we associate with American English is quite distinct as a kind of growl produced near the back of the mouth. This sound is standard in the west of England (Shakespeare would have growled his final 'r' sounds), in the north (Wordsworth and the Brontes) and in Ireland."
"All emigrant languages tend to be linguistically nostalgic, preserving archaic forms of pronunciation: the `hillbillies' really did preserve forms of English which date back to Shakespeare, although what they do with those forms is another question."
An interesting note about Canadian English and why it sounds American:
"A large group of American Loyalists went to Canada after the Revolution and settled en masse in southern Quebec and southern Ontario, bringing the already-evolved U.S. linguistic model. This model continued to be powerful because of the constant contacts between Canada and the U.S., as opposed to either country's contacts with Britain. Upper-class speech in Canada sounded vaguely British (to U.S. ears, not to British ones) until around the 1950's, when it aligned itself with the American model, keeping only certain particularities in pronunciation (individual words, not phonemes), structure (lack of articles, as in "she's at university") and vocabulary."
I also found a dialect map of regional accents. Here's one that was amusing:
Minnewegian (Minnesota / Norwegian), a subdialect spoken in the northernmost part of this region was spoofed in the movies Fargo and Drop Dead Gorgeous.
Finally, a joke:
The Englishman commented to the American about the "curious" way in which he pronounced so many words, such as schedule (pronounced shedule by the British). The American thought about it for a few moments, then replied, "Perhaps it's because we went to different shools!"
I had read elsewhere that certain features of American English retain Elizabethan characteristics. According to the following excerpt, Shakespeare would have sounded rather American.
"The final 'r' that we associate with American English is quite distinct as a kind of growl produced near the back of the mouth. This sound is standard in the west of England (Shakespeare would have growled his final 'r' sounds), in the north (Wordsworth and the Brontes) and in Ireland."
"All emigrant languages tend to be linguistically nostalgic, preserving archaic forms of pronunciation: the `hillbillies' really did preserve forms of English which date back to Shakespeare, although what they do with those forms is another question."
An interesting note about Canadian English and why it sounds American:
"A large group of American Loyalists went to Canada after the Revolution and settled en masse in southern Quebec and southern Ontario, bringing the already-evolved U.S. linguistic model. This model continued to be powerful because of the constant contacts between Canada and the U.S., as opposed to either country's contacts with Britain. Upper-class speech in Canada sounded vaguely British (to U.S. ears, not to British ones) until around the 1950's, when it aligned itself with the American model, keeping only certain particularities in pronunciation (individual words, not phonemes), structure (lack of articles, as in "she's at university") and vocabulary."
I also found a dialect map of regional accents. Here's one that was amusing:
Minnewegian (Minnesota / Norwegian), a subdialect spoken in the northernmost part of this region was spoofed in the movies Fargo and Drop Dead Gorgeous.
Finally, a joke:
The Englishman commented to the American about the "curious" way in which he pronounced so many words, such as schedule (pronounced shedule by the British). The American thought about it for a few moments, then replied, "Perhaps it's because we went to different shools!"