Hi, have you ever heard Amanda Martin-Brock speak? I think she is a former ENRON executive and earlier today I heard a BBC interview with her on the ENRON scandal. What struck me was her accent. She obviously is American but when you hear her talk she sounds quite British, at least to me. Does she have an East coast upper-class accent (if such a thing exists)?
I havenât been able to find any audio of her, but itâs very possible she has an accent from Boston, eastern Pennsylvania or somewhere in eastern New York. It doesnât have to be upper class, but just local.
Sometime after the British settled the North American continent, the habit of âdropping Râsâ after vowels and at the ends of words started to spread through England and eventually became part of the majority pronunciation. The East Coast of the United States still had a lot of contact with England at the time, and so they picked up this so-called R-dropping. Further inland, Americans did not lose those Râs, and so our pronunciation is older and still similar to that of the English at the time the continent was first settled, before RP emerged.
Before World War II, this East Coast R-less accent was standard in broadcasting, and elite private schools taught kids an RP-based pronunciation. Youâll notice that when Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke on the radio, his speech was more or less RP. American actresses in his day also used some variation on RP, but not quite RP.
After the war, for some reason the standard broadcasting accent became a Midwestern accent, more or less a Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago accent. Since that time, according to sociolinguistic studies, these âR-droppingâ accents have gradually been disappearing in the more educated, affluent classes, but they are retained more in blue-collar or lower socio-economic classes. Now if we hear an American say car, far, here, where, etc. without an [r], we may assume â but not be certain â that the person came from humble beginnings.
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Jamie, many thanks for sharing all this information about English accents â I have always wondered what factors influence the development of accents. Itâs interesting to examine how the standard pronunciation of English constantly changes. The Michigan State University operates the Vincent Voice Library which contains voice samples from people like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and Iâll listen to them as soon as I have a litte more time.
Jamie, have you ever heard Dr. Maxwell Maltz speak? I doesnât have to seem a modern Midwestern accent. As a matter of fact, when I first heard his recordings of Psycho-Cybernetics I thought he might have been born and raised outside of the US. What do you think?
Regards
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, talks: Promoting the services of a passenger traffic company[YSaerTTEW443543]
This is a very interesting study, and itâs easy to get information on dialectology and how dialects spread.
One of the most important things to remember about American speech is that the elements of most of the accents pre-date RP. So, for example, the Americans didnât start pronouncing R in words like âfarâ and âhorseâ; people in England stopped. Americans didnât create the participle âgottenâ on their own; the British lost it. This is the general pattern.
Many people think it was the opposite, that everybody from England arrived on American shores speaking exactly like Queen Elizabeth II does today, and that we Americans changed it. This is actually not true, and the speech in England changed substantially after North America was settled. Anyway, this misconception leads to some stupid phenomena: Tonight there will be a documentary on and reenactment of the life of George Washington on TV, and all of the characters â even the foot soldiers â speak with more or less the accents of todayâs British nobility. Of course, Americans didnât talk like this at that time, but the people producing the show have a problem: If they donât have the characters speaking RP, the average American will think the show is not âhistoricalâ.
I have succeeded in finding an online video of him talking. His accent is definitely American. Heâs obviously from somewhere in the Northeast, but Iâm not sure if his accent is from New York City, Philadelphia or maybe Boston. I think I hear Philadelphia, but I could be wrong. The only biographical information I found said that he was âborn and educated in Europeâ, but he definitely has a native-sounding American accent.
Hi Jamie, listening to Dr. Maltz again Iâve noticed he pronounces the word either the British way (so it rhymes with fighter). How do you pronounce either?[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, talks: Traffic report[YSaerTTEW443543]
Americans pronounce it [i:thr] or [ajthr]. There seems to be no regional or dialect difference. Some people say one, some people say the other, and some people say whichever one they feel like saying at the moment. I always say [i:thr], but some people who grew up in the same town and went to the same schools say [ajthr], and some say both. There is no âAmericanâ or âBritishâ way to pronounce either.
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Hi Jamie
I find it curious that you mention a Philadelphia accent and a Boston accent in the same breath.
Having spent the better part of my childhood living 20 miles away from Philly, I canât imagine anyone confusing a Philadelphia accent with a Boston accent⌠Or are you referring possibly to a particular upper crust element of Philadelphia society?
Amy
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I donât live in the east, and I havenât traveled in the northeast farther than Gettysburg. I only know peopleâs accents as I hear them on TV or meet them in real life when people come here. I also know something from the study of dialectology. Given that, my ability to make distinctions between dialects in the east are better than those of the typical Midwesterner, who would probably not be able to tell Philadelphia from Brooklyn from Boston and would call all of those accents âNew Yorkâ.
Iâm talking about the kind of Philadelphian who would say, âWith moy t^yste f^ ch^ysec^yke in fed^cc^yn^y, Oy decoyded t^ gao oan a doyeht.â (The [^] is a schwa.) When these people say âfetucciniâ, it has six syllables. Coming from the Philadelphia area, you can decide who it is who talks like that. I am very good at imitating that accent (my younger sister is even better at it), and when I do it, people from Pennsylvania immediately say, âThatâs Phili!â
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:lol:
This sounds very British, too, except for âoanâ, maybe! It took me ages to decipher âcheesecakeâ!!
The English rendition of the word can even have eight syllables, if you ask me 
!
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Hi Jamie
I canât decide from your âcipherâ whether or not weâre talking about exactly the same accent. Some of it seems to be more NYC/North Jersey than Philly. But the words âcakeâ and âgoâ do look like Philly to me. :lol:
Hi Conchita
I promise you, a Brit would not find the âPhiladelphia accentâ the least bit British. :lol:
Amy
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When Midwesterners say it it has four syllables.
The accent doesnât even sound remotely British.
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Hi Jamie,
Thanks, that was really interesting about r-dropping.
I like American accent much better, but I always get stuff like: those Americans donât speak the REAL English, they donât know grammar, this and that.
Please tell me more things like this, let me teach them ONCE AND FOR ALL :lol:
Spencer
People who think Americans talk worse than the British should just visit England. This will cure them of this notion.
Those people have been there.
I donât think Americans speak better, or English, or Irish, or Australians, but I like the idea that the American is closer to the original English than British in this matter (r-dropping)
Everybody says the opposite.
Tomorrow my firs thing will be calling my co-worker, sheâs an English teacher, and British-fan.
Sheâs gonna be so sad! 
HAHAHAHAHA
Spencer
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Everybody thinks the opposite because the United States is a younger country. They think that the British speak the âoriginalâ English, but in fact no one alive on earth speaks the original English.
A good book to refer to is American English: Dialects and Variation by Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes. Itâs published by Blackwell, which is a British publisher. :twisted:
A further piece of information for you and your friend, Spencer.
It is known that dialect changes spread in concentric waves, similar to the waves caused by throwing a stone into water. The waves are stronger closer in, and as they move farther away they get weaker.
For the most part, this is how the pronunciation changes occurred in England as most people lost the post-vocalic Râs. This change started somewhere in the interior of England and spread outward. If you look at a dialect map of England that shows the rhotic (âR-fullâ) and non-rhotic dialects, youâll find that the places where people supposedly still pronounce all the Râs are generally around the edges. The circle weakened before it reached them.
And donât forget: If Americans started pronouncing Râs where they didnât exist before, then why do the English still write those Râs to this day?
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Talking about dropping the râs, some people stick them in words that donât have any. For example, âChinar isâ (native English speakers often say that) instead of âChina isâ. Then there is âwabbitâ instead of ârabbitâ, but maybe this only happens in the Bugs Bunny cartoons? I donât think I have otherwise heard people replace râs by wâs. And how about replacing lâs by wâs (Iâve heard that often enough), like âfiwmâ instead of âfilmâ.
I thought some of you might want to have a look at the hundred most often mispronounced words and phrases in English:
[url]http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/mispron.html[/url]
Donât miss âOld-timerâs diseaseâ, âtake for graniteâ, âLaura Norderâ (must be a cousin of âChinar isâ!), âa blessing in the skiesâ, âdoggy dog worldâ or our much debated âcloseâ!
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Stone me Concheeta wear you git all this 'ere stuff! I couldnât 'ardly believe me eyes when I seen it. Wot woz u finking?
Al
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:lol:
Is that supposed to be language rebellion? Or is it your way of letting off steam after too much grammar and âgoodâ English?
Anyway, to me itâs more like âlaughotherapyâ!
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Hi Conchita,
Yes, youâre right. I feel much better now.
Alan
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