@@TheAaronChand Modern Irish English accents are derived from a wave of conquest around 1660, so this feller's accent is closer to that in time, certainly. (Ireland originally had some English dialects spoken natively there from the 1200s that diverged significantly from the direction English went in most of England, but they died out when Ireland Anglicised).
@@therat1117 although officially Ireland was not part of the British Empire during the American Revolution it joined with the passing of the act of Union law in 1801. So the frist year of the 19th century.
@@TheAaronChand Mate, Ireland was conquered violently, it didn't 'join' anything willingly, and the act of Union only declared the English monarch also sovereign monarch of Ireland, formally. The English had been conquering Ireland in waves since around 1100. The modern accent set was introduced by the last wave, where Ireland was permanently subjugated (from around 1650-1700).
@@therat1117 well my ancestors in India during British colonial rule from 1757 untill 1947 didn't notice since white Soliders in red coats were The same to us. I was born premature 27 weeks in Canada not in India. By the way. So I'm not from India
I love how twangy the accent is. Really shows you how strong the British/ Irish accents and inflections influenced and changed the "American" accent over time
You have no idea how much it drives me insane to hear Romans with British accents. Especially considering Romans thought the inhabitants of the British Isles all sounded like they could only shout "Bar bar bar!"
You would Probably like the German show “barbarians” then. Set around the battle of teuteborg Forrest, depicting Romans speaking authentic sounding Latin.
@Slow Decay unfortunately the actual events in the show were heavily dramatized (even though the original events were already quite dramatic). But the Latin dialogue is great, definitely helps with immersion.
@Henning that drove me crazy too. In high school my friends and I joked that they should sound like west virginia coal miners cuz at least a lot of em were italian 😆 eY tU bRuTaY????
They accomplish quite a bit over the years... the complete erosion of the independent spirit and freedom that made our society great by creating a new type of slavery with them as the masta.
Hey Eric, I'm British and can tell you that the accent sounds VERY English. Visit places like the south-east of England and you'll hear it, also Shropshire.
Yvonne Williams It's funny that regional/rural accents like the ones you've mentioned have maintained their nature while the "correct" or "standard" accent has changed drastically from the 18th century.
Liberty Warrior Definitely some West County tones in there. And what's funny is that our Appalachian accent has some aspects of that accent as well, like saying "dawg" instead of "dog," "yer" instead of "your," and that strong "hard R" sound. Just goes to show that rural accents change least.
The following was written by a semi-literate Revolutionary War veteran: “We the subscribers officers and solgers what marched with me Joseph Dykman to Westpoynt in June the 26 day 1780 on a sartane towr of duty Do acknolledge that we have received our full pay for said tower of duty by Joseph Dyckman our captain by a sartificat we Say Received in full as witness our hands.” Note the way he spelled "towr," "sartane," "sartificat," etc. I can certainly see this as being written by someone with this accent. It really shows how the modern American accent developed: from something resembling modern West Country.
Dead right, very similar to West Country. And also, the modern West Country accent has stuck very close to the Elizabethan southern English accent. So the 'American' accent heard here hadn't changed much in the ~100 years since the first New England colonies, when most colonists would've been speaking with the southern accent. Not sure on this one, but I'm guessing that a lot of the early settlers in the New England colonies came over via Plymouth, so most would've had that distinctive accent, and so it dominated the other regional accents and stuck in the colonies. Would be great to hear that either called out as bullshit/supported; I'm genuinely interested.
+Elcore Traces of the accent still exist in some islands off the east coast of the US, what is called “high tide talk”, pronounced “hooye tooide tahlk”
It gets even more infuriating when you look at the system and realise that either the Founders were the most incompetent people to ever live at setting up a government (which they very well could have been considering they believed in Democracy and could not get the concept of minimal taxes to repay their share of war debts through their skulls) or they intentionally made Congress worse than useless at quick decision making.
@@codieomeallain6635 "quick" and "Congress" are antonyms. The synonym for Congress is "useless". I can't think of one thing aside from freaking just making daylight savings time permanent in the US that was actually good that came out of Congress since I've been alive.
@@lylecosmopolite Being from Philadelphia and having watched more than two movies in my life... yes, I do. But considering that they are "New York" and "Boston" accents, I wouldn't consider them standard for Americans. They're more irregular than standard. Obviously accents and colloquialisms are not one in the same but take for instance here in Pennsylvania where "ya'll" "yous" and "yins" all mean the same thing but which one you use is based on where in the state you are from.
@@51stparedoctober4 Note that I defined "standard American" as "the way DJs are trained to talk." Where I lived in my teens, people without college degrees said "youse". That is not standard American, but I never said it was.
Yes, I watch a video about the accents in that area. Although the commentator said the present accents were the result of English and Irish ancestry, I would say that I couldn't hear the Irish accent, but I did hear accents reminiscent of 16th century English (which many Americans mistake for Irish accents).
This is how English used to sound, even during Shakespeares time. The modern British English accent comes from lowclass people trying their damndest to sound posh. Working class, non cosmopolitan people retained original pronunciation like the hard r. For example Westlanders, Americans/Canadians, and the Irish. Other places in the anglosphere Australia/New Zealand/South Africa don't use the hard r because most emigration occurred after the "poshificaton"
My many-greats grand father came to America in 1635. Reading his and his sons' and relatives' writings, documents, and wills, it amazes me how English was so different from what we know today.
I find the early American accent really interesting. It sounds like the British accent, but with sprinkles of a modern American accent here and there. It’s like a mix between the two.
It's more modern American than modern British. The old British accent (shown in the video) kind of froze when it came to America and became known as the American accent because British speak changed so much in the following years.
Like Centermass is saying, this is closer to how the English spoke when Shakespeare was around. Only afterwards did the more modern English accents come about, and then they only influenced the U.S. on the east coast as the rich tried to imitate them a bit, hence Boston.
The last example of this accent found in the United States is the Ocracoke Brogue, spoken by the inhabitants of Ocracoke Island, NC. The island's isolation and inaccessibility allowed the accent to stay relatively intact, although with the introduction of a ferry system from the mainland in the 60s, it is slowly dying out.
To curious Americans, this accent is essentially a West Country English accent, which is what would have been spoken by most of the colonists who came over in the first 200 years.
honestly i thought it was a nice touch, just enforcing the idea that even though these are powerful people these were still primitive times and even with buildings, there was no air conditioning or any rules on installation. I especially like how nobody in the scene is pointing it out, it’s just normal to them.
Up to that point there had been maybe 3 or 4 generations of Americans living in the colonies so it'd make sense that their accents would be difficult to distinguish from British or American accents. Really cool.
As a historian it’s insane how spot on this is. They really did their homework on this. The one error is they haven’t gotten down how big regional accents in America were. Someone from Pennsylvania would talk completely different from New England or Virginia
@No Name No these are definitely southern Irish accents I think they're all Southern Irish actors too or doing southern Irish accents, I know the guy who did the reconstruction based them off that. From what iv'e researched on the topic it would seem the American colonies were based on the Munster planation's, beyond that another reason might be because the style of English brought to Ireland was the same style brought to America later, so the Irish accents retained the old features and American accents lost them over time. Northern Irish is the origin of the hillbilly accent. Ulster planation's happened after America was colonized and during. www.carrigdhoun.com/post/from-carrigaline-to-virginia-usa Kortmann, Bernd; Schneider, Edgar W., eds. (2004). A Handbook of Varieties of English: CD-ROM. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3110175320.
@@RottingEarth I have I live in "Southern" Ireland and it sounds very similar. I can't speak for south west england but some of these accents are clearly just west country actors. I recommend you check out this article here www.acelinguist.com/2018/09/dialect-dissection-founding-fathers.html you clearly know nothing about this topic so that might help you.
I love it when shows and films pay attention to historical accuracy. Rather than just making them speak with a modern American accent or an English RP accent which would've been easier. Bravo.
Interesting. The crux of the thing is that US English is actually generally more traditional and closer to older forms and manners of English than the current nondescript UK English is. The closest speech to original colonial era English is the Appalachian dialect, as it retains very strongly some Germanic features that later, intentionally latinized iterations of the language, attempted to get rid of. These include: 1. "Prepositions" being used for ending sentences. When they're used this way, they're called pospositions. This is completely nonsensical and against all the rules in Latin, but in Germanic language, it's totally fine and it's something we can put up with. 2. Phrasal splitting. Phrasal verbs are when you put two words, often a preposition and a verb, to describe one thing. German also does this. But in English, to describe a train leaving, you can say "The train is outgoing", "the train is going out", "Out is where the train is going", "going out, the train is", and they all make full sense and are grammaticall correct. Latinate languages like to keep all their verbs in singular compound words. 3. Retention of the R. In the early 19'th century, much of Britain got the idea to stop saying R when it didn't need to. They did their best to put this accent into the populace through schools, the military, civil announcements, and so on. The reason why the NZ and Australia accents don't say many R's compared to most American accents is because they were colonized after this change. 4. Americans prefer to say "gotten" over "got". This is the older form and dates back to medieval English, which we call Middle English. The British mostly prefer "got" as their past passive participle. 5. Neutral copulas. In Southern US dialects, "That is good" and "that would be good" and "that good" can all be understood to mean the same thing, that something is good. This is also found in more archaic texts and writings up throught the early 19'th century. In British, the first would be an indicative statement, the second is subjunctive, and the final is a demonstrative. This list is not exhaustive, but I hope it was enlightening.
+ Motablunt Large parts of Britain still have accents very similar to the one in the vid in the 21st century. The problem is that many Americans are influenced by Hollywood movies, but the whole of the southwest of England from Gloucester to Lands End roll their "R's" as indeed they do in East Anglia and some parts of Lancashire, so we are talking about a large parts of England. My ex wife was from Norwich in East Anglia, she would say "gotten" on a frequent basis and pronounce words like "turtle" "hard" and "sword" the way Americans do. In fact many Americans must have sounded English until after the Civil War, listen to the recording of Confederate General Julius Howell on UA-cam at the age of 101 in 1947. Even then take into account that his accent will have changed considerably and it's not difficult to theorise that Americans from English decent, did sound very English until not that long ago. Listen to the YT vid of Julius Howell (a lovely sounding old man) for the RP/posh southern English influence along with some rhotic undertones of south western English and guttural northern English.
Well said, Dick Turpin. I don't know what Mortablunt's description means re: "current nondescript UK English" accent. The regional variations are still present ...and long may they be so.
Sort of. The non rhoticity of English had been on a slow burn for a little over a hundred years, mostly located in the South. What happened is that in the decades before the turn of the 19th Century, London became non Rhotic and suddenly most of England followed. That said, non rhoticity was very present in the US at the time. The spelling of prominent New Englanders and Bostonians especially indicates that final -r’s were dropped quite regularly. And Virginia and the rest of the South would become Non Rhotic soon after this. Which is why I get mad whenever folks complain about Giamatti’s accent in John Adams. It IS accurate, just different
What mate? You sound really damn pretentious. All of these are still present in British accents, you're bitching about 'RP features' and these aren't universally present in all American accents. 1. All English accents use postpositions. Any English speaker has encountered 'where's it (at/to/in)?' because nobody actually says 'where to is it?' except when that's an dialectal feature, or they're failing to sound posh. 2. Honestly British English does this to at least the same extent as American English. 'Outbound', 'pre-packaged', 'upscaling', and 'rewrapping', for example, are all general-use words in British English. 3. Loss of rhoticity is only in certain environments, like at the end of words (RP still has r, ffs), and there are rhotic and non-rhotic American and British accents. These all developed naturally, and independently of each other, with no stupid big brother scheme. American Southern accents, East Cost accents, and Afro-American accents are generally non-rhotic, for example. I would counter that there are still rolled-r accents in British English, and none elsewhere in English, which is an Old to Middle English feature just not present in American English. 4. This is again a moot point as it's extremely accentally variable. Some regions of the US use get-got-got, some regions of the UK use get-got-gotten. This is honestly more of a 'linguists made it up' point, as it varies by speaker, even in Southern English accents where get-got-got is at its highest frequency, and 'gotten' is still fully treated as functional. 'Gotten' is also a Modern English word, the Middle English equivalent is 'geten'. 5. I have no idea how many Southerners you've talked to, but most of them would also treat those as three different things, and all of those could mean that something is good if the something is hypothetical in any English dialect. The third phrase also has no copula, so, what?
This is essentially exactly how the people of the west country, particularly Cornwall speak. This comes as no surprise because all of England spoke this way until very recently, actually. There has been a considerable decline of the hard 'r' in England for the last century. Today modern Americans each speak in their own accents. The deep south, and the Appalachians still speak remarkably similar to how early Americans did. The midwest and great lake states have a strange Scandinavian ring to them, especially in Minnesota, which is only natural when you realise that many Swedes, Norwegians, and to a lesser degree Germans, settled here. In the north east there appears to be the greatest diversity; as it has huge Irish and Italian heritage.
@it_blows_my_mind Wrong. Read my comment. The entirety of England spoke like this for the longest time. Since the 1950s there has been a huge decline in this accent, and it only survives in the west country (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset).
@@it_blows_my_mind how would you know ? Were you alive 100 years ago? 😂 complete and utter idiot, the entirety of England spoke rhotic English until thick morons like you started speaking slow and drousy and skipped over letters altogether
I detected a smattering of England East Anglian(notably Cambridgeshire,Suffolk and Norfolk) _ the accent that would've been used by the Pilgrim Fathers. Some present day East Anglian pronunciations are still used today in the US, a good example is the pronunciation of "news" - "Nooze". Another one is "pootin" for 'Putin'.
@@moccus3466You’re wrong about all English people speaking in the same dialect and accent as the Cornish south west English accent, there are about 22 different distinctive accents in England. Stop being ignorant.
Dear god, I forgot how enamoured with handheld everyone was when this came out. They really thought they were gonna make a costume drama 'feel raw and real'? It just looks like the cameraman is drunk.
Around that time, the accents of England and America were beginning to diverge. The standard British accent, received pronunciation, was in its embryonic stage. British English changed more than American English as North America stayed an isolated backwater, with the exception of Atlantic coast cities that continued being influenced somewhat by Britain even after the Revolutionary War. Thus the accents of New England, NYC and large parts of the coastal south adopted a few British features like non-rhoticity and especially for east New England, the 'traps bath' split in which the A in words like "can't", " ask" and "bath" are pronounced the same as the A in words like "palm" and the North American version of "ball" or unrounded "lot".
When king James I & VI took the english throne in the early 1600s he released his new english bible, and he tried making all his subjects speak one language by edict, attempting to erradicate the fringe celtic languages endemic to the UK (Welsh, Cornish, Gallic and Gaelic). Weirdly the english accent of the 17th has been preserved by multiple people. The westcountry dialect is just standard 17th century english frozen in time and the emerging American colonies took that dialect and language and persevered it also. Hence the similarity. Currenlt in the globe theatre, the Royal shakespeare company reproduces plays in vernacular and authentic accents that pretty much boil down to shakespeare in a west-country accent as londoners would have sounded like back then. Some artifacts of 17th century english are preserved in American-english, like the word fall for what brits would now call autumn. This is also not long before the brits and americans began standardising spellings in dictionaries (which was a freeforall before) hence our differences over colour/color and realise/realize and defence/defense ect Most prominently Americans like our common ancestors kept the rhotic r, (pronouncing the r at the end of words like war, star) whereas the brits lost theirs in the 1800s. (Weirdly Massachusetts and other new england accents also lost the R, likely with proximity to transatlantic trade) not coincidentally the only english accents that retain the R are both westcountry accents: cornish and bristollian (Scots retained rhoticity through the prominence of their own new dialect: scots which retained features from their own languages)
If you listen closely, you can hear the buzzing of the flies. Flies were famously a nuisance that the Congress had to contend with during the Philadelphia Summers.
John Adams senior came from Braintree in Essex, 20 miles from where I live. Adams junior may have picked up a bit of the old Essex dialect, but they may of sounded a bit like modern Bristolian
Don’t mind admitting it,most everyone in the comments agreed it sounds English West Country,it’s fascinating.I wish the English had been able to keep this ‘softer’ country English,outside of the West Countries!
It’s shocking to me that this sounds a lot like a regular Massachusetts accent to me but with Rs/rhoticism and some occasional words that sound Irish- but in the comments there are Brits saying it sounds English. Maybe we’re not as far off from each other as I thought.
So here's what's actually going on: This is very similar to what Shakespeare performers call Original Pronunciation. They largely reconstructed it from how Shakespeare's writing rhymes and a few firsthand descriptions of how words were pronounced. By the time most English immigration to the U.S. happened people in England still pretty much sounded like that. But not long after what we now think of as a "posh accent" came about in the rich southern bits of England, and _that_ then influenced people on the East Coast as the wealthy elite still sort of licked England's boots.
Really interesting part of history. As far as I know, at the time pretty much all of England spoke with a similar accent to this, what we would term a 'country' accent, or West Country. It then became the fashion to speak in a received pronunciation in the upper classes to distinguish themselves, which is essentially a made up accent. You could say that the American accent is actually closer to what an English accent should be!
Pretty much everything said here is true, but I do have one issue - British accents were incredibly regional up until the mid-late 1800s. Before then, you could travel for 2 hours (with today's vehicles) and see 3 accents each quite similar but clearly distinct. As you moved around the country, there would have been a huge range that could occasionally make it seem like a completely different language. This would have been more extreme further back in the past, but it was still apparent in the late 1700s.
@@Centermass762It's the west country accent mate. Not all of England sounded the same at that time. Northern England has accents closest to the original english if you wanna go there.
Benjamin Franklin who spent much time in England said there was no difference between the accent of London and Philadelphia in the late 18th century. That is certainly not the case now.
That first guy speaking has a somerset/ Gloucester maybe Devon accent which is in the UK. Interesting time to be an English speaker in the Colonies at the time hahah! I love the amount of thought that has gone into this series.
It's one of those things where you don't really know what people sounded like in those days. It's kind of like being able to interpret what Old English language and accents sounded like. When you consider the multiple combinations of different languages and cultures being in America at the time I like to compare it to modern day Switzerland. When I was in Switzerland it was absolutely amazing to me how many people not only spoken English but they sounded so much like Americans because of the combination of so many different languages that they speak in that country. Of course whichever area of Switzerland you were in and its proximity to another country would ultimately determine whether they sounded more German French or Italian. But in the middle it was everything at once. So we know that America was a very strong refuge for Irish and Scottish immigrants trying to flee from Total British dominance. It was also a place where German Protestants could practice their multiple sects of protestant religion. And also the former Dutch and French colonies that the British took over still had a strong Dutch and French population.
A lack of standardised spelling and / or education at the time did mean people tended to write words the way they sounded, which is actually a bit useful for "reconstructing" accents. As for the Romans, Ancient Egytptians and the like, though, who knows? (There's a sizeable group of people who fiercely debate what ancient egyptians even looked like, let alone sounded like!)
One of thr big hints here is how Shakespeare's work rhymes. By the time most English immigration to the U.S. had happened, English accents were still O.P. ish so it's safe to assume that people in the U.S. spoke the same way, and then as accents across the pond shifted there was only second-hand influence on the U.S.
The closest accent I've heard to this, today...and this is probably not surprising given the historical connections...is that of an old school friend of mine who was a White Bermudan. Bermudans of African heritage obviously are a different story. His accent was what I can only describe as a cross between American Southern and Australian.
As this was the 1st continental congress shouldn’t the opening shot have been outside of carpenters hall not independence hall? Seems like a simple oversight.
How fascinating; watching this after watching the video about Shakespeare's accent is very revealing. There are many similar features between them. I wish there was some way to know what cadence they spoke with; the differences in cadence between the 1920s and modern day implies it was probably quite different 200 years ago, but of course there is no way of reconstructing it, so I guess we will never really know.
StarlitSeafoam no, there isn't anything similar between Shakespeare's English (actually called Early Modern English) and this. They're 200 years apart, what are you even on?
The English of the 18th-Century was far close to Shakespeare's English than 21st-Century dialects. I've even read a book from the 18th-Century that described such English as 'modern.'
Literally went from an original British accent and his voice inflection turned into that of a CNN reporter in a matter of seconds.. What a transformation.
You can tell who the Americans are in these comments because they're the ones who are saying they hear an Irish accent whereas the British (et al) people are the ones who are saying they hear a West Country accent. The latter are much more right than the former. I don't hear Irish at all, while the "West Country" accent people are hearing is just how people in rural areas of the South of England (not just the South West) spoke until comparatively recently. Listen to this collection of accents from places like Surrey, Sussex and Kent (you literally cannot get more South East than Kent!) ua-cam.com/video/sPJxS43ByYE/v-deo.html That's notwithstanding the fact that there was no great immigration to the United States from Ireland - apart from those Scottish and English who had previously settled in Ireland - till the 19th century.
I love the choices they made for accents in this miniseries. But I think going out of the way to show the characters being bored with each other's speakers in so many different scenes made for bad drama.
But if in fact the real historical persons were bored, I would rather have a more historically accurate, but less dramatic TV show, rather than a more dramatic, but less historically accurate one.
The producers actually brought in an historical linguist, who instructed the actors how to speak authentic late 18th century American English.
They sound kind of Irish
@@TheAaronChand Modern Irish English accents are derived from a wave of conquest around 1660, so this feller's accent is closer to that in time, certainly. (Ireland originally had some English dialects spoken natively there from the 1200s that diverged significantly from the direction English went in most of England, but they died out when Ireland Anglicised).
@@therat1117 although officially Ireland was not part of the British Empire during the American Revolution it joined with the passing of the act of Union law in 1801. So the frist year of the 19th century.
@@TheAaronChand Mate, Ireland was conquered violently, it didn't 'join' anything willingly, and the act of Union only declared the English monarch also sovereign monarch of Ireland, formally. The English had been conquering Ireland in waves since around 1100. The modern accent set was introduced by the last wave, where Ireland was permanently subjugated (from around 1650-1700).
@@therat1117 well my ancestors in India during British colonial rule from 1757 untill 1947 didn't notice since white Soliders in red coats were The same to us. I was born premature 27 weeks in Canada not in India. By the way. So I'm not from India
I like that none of the members checked their phones during the meeting, a true sign of respect.
Not an iPhone in sight, just people living in the moment 😊
Ok boomer
❤
That's only because it's impossible to get good service in Independence Hall.
It was easier back then because they only had flip-phones.
Really cool to see how they actually spoke instead of lazily slapping in a modern English (RP) accent
Or just have them speak with southern or New York accents like in the patriot
@@LuisMartinez-rw2lj A horrid film too compared to John Adams.
If that is how they spoke English in the American Colonies,it is no wonder why the colonists came to view the British as 'foreign'.
that is a modern english accent, a modified devonian accent
Only Cosner did that in Robin Hood, never figured out if it was his vanity or laziness to not attempt British.
I love how twangy the accent is. Really shows you how strong the British/ Irish accents and inflections influenced and changed the "American" accent over time
@GrS London made it sound too posh
@GrS from northern germany and southern denmark
@@grs4469southwest England
You are an idiot. Why is American in quotes?
@@shawnv123English didn’t just come from those places
Truly there needs more historical dramas set with authentic accents and languages set in whatever time period it’s set in.
Robert Eggers has you covered.
You have no idea how much it drives me insane to hear Romans with British accents. Especially considering Romans thought the inhabitants of the British Isles all sounded like they could only shout "Bar bar bar!"
You would Probably like the German show “barbarians” then. Set around the battle of teuteborg Forrest, depicting Romans speaking authentic sounding Latin.
@Slow Decay unfortunately the actual events in the show were heavily dramatized (even though the original events were already quite dramatic). But the Latin dialogue is great, definitely helps with immersion.
@Henning that drove me crazy too. In high school my friends and I joked that they should sound like west virginia coal miners cuz at least a lot of em were italian 😆
eY tU bRuTaY????
I hate camera angles from the 18th century.
New York had then only recently had its name changed from New Amsterdam, and the angles were still Dutch for a while after that
they didn't had tripods back then
@@YIIMM Holy shit! Most underrated comment right here! I love it!
@@YIIMM, beat me to it. Well done. Well done.
At least shaky cam hadn't been invented yet.
It sounds like a mix between a southern USA accent and a West Country U.K. accent.
Mind blown🤔🇺🇸🇬🇧
Actually more like New England (East Coast of America) accent mixed with Southern Regional dialect of England or some place similar.
Hi
@@ABAlphaBeta hey
@@ABAlphaBeta Hi AB!
And Congress has continued their long standing tradition of saying much and accomplishing nothing, to this very day.
To be fair, after what happens every time they do accomplish something, I might prefer that they don't.
It’s an American pastime
@@LEFT4BASS anyday that Congress works together is a day that the American people should be drowning in fear
They accomplish quite a bit over the years... the complete erosion of the independent spirit and freedom that made our society great by creating a new type of slavery with them as the masta.
❤️
Honestly, I kinda wish that there were more movies or dramas that were based on this time period or the early 19th Century.
@Blu I know that.
There are
HAMILTON
outlanders takes place around that time
It's quite strange how few films are based around the Revolutionary War.
I like how it doesn't sound exactly British or American
Edit: I know about West Country accents now, this comment is multiple years old.
Hey Eric, I'm British and can tell you that the accent sounds VERY English. Visit places like the south-east of England and you'll hear it, also Shropshire.
Yvonne Williams It's funny that regional/rural accents like the ones you've mentioned have maintained their nature while the "correct" or "standard" accent has changed drastically from the 18th century.
Yes, and I hope that we can retain them.
Yvonne Williams Thanks! I'll definitely take a look.
Liberty Warrior Definitely some West County tones in there. And what's funny is that our Appalachian accent has some aspects of that accent as well, like saying "dawg" instead of "dog," "yer" instead of "your," and that strong "hard R" sound. Just goes to show that rural accents change least.
"We need no reminders."
"Which no one will honor."
"Which his majesty will not read."
Sarcasm in an 18th Century accent! 😂
Believe the first was "Who need no reminders" referring to "The inhabitance of British America."
I, too, saw the video.
Brony cringe 🤮 disgusting
Sarcasm is when you say the opposite of what you mean. He just states what he meant.
The following was written by a semi-literate Revolutionary War veteran:
“We the subscribers officers and solgers what marched with me Joseph Dykman to Westpoynt in June the 26 day 1780 on a sartane towr of duty Do acknolledge that we have received our full pay for said tower of duty by Joseph Dyckman our captain by a sartificat we Say Received in full as witness our hands.”
Note the way he spelled "towr," "sartane," "sartificat," etc. I can certainly see this as being written by someone with this accent. It really shows how the modern American accent developed: from something resembling modern West Country.
Chathan Vemuri thank you for that piece
True Chathan, and the rhoticity is still in common use as far north as Shropshire.
Dead right, very similar to West Country. And also, the modern West Country accent has stuck very close to the Elizabethan southern English accent. So the 'American' accent heard here hadn't changed much in the ~100 years since the first New England colonies, when most colonists would've been speaking with the southern accent. Not sure on this one, but I'm guessing that a lot of the early settlers in the New England colonies came over via Plymouth, so most would've had that distinctive accent, and so it dominated the other regional accents and stuck in the colonies. Would be great to hear that either called out as bullshit/supported; I'm genuinely interested.
+Elcore Traces of the accent still exist in some islands off the east coast of the US, what is called “high tide talk”, pronounced “hooye tooide tahlk”
@@Elcore Half of the Puritan colonists were from east Anglia tho
"The business of this Congress has been to achieve nothing."
And the tradition lives on to this day!
Ron Swanson is smiling
And so it is with democracy 😅😂
It gets even more infuriating when you look at the system and realise that either the Founders were the most incompetent people to ever live at setting up a government (which they very well could have been considering they believed in Democracy and could not get the concept of minimal taxes to repay their share of war debts through their skulls) or they intentionally made Congress worse than useless at quick decision making.
@@codieomeallain6635 "quick" and "Congress" are antonyms. The synonym for Congress is "useless". I can't think of one thing aside from freaking just making daylight savings time permanent in the US that was actually good that came out of Congress since I've been alive.
@@directorjames1855 Only 1/2 of Congress, the Senate, has approved DST. House of Reps procrastinating.
its like a british accent, a standard american accent, and a southern accent at the same time
I'm wondering what a standard American accent is. I feel like it's a mythical thing like when my fellow Americans say British accent.
@@51stparedoctober4 Standard American = the way DJs are trained to talk.
Do you know the Boston or New York working class accents?
@@lylecosmopolite Being from Philadelphia and having watched more than two movies in my life... yes, I do. But considering that they are "New York" and "Boston" accents, I wouldn't consider them standard for Americans. They're more irregular than standard. Obviously accents and colloquialisms are not one in the same but take for instance here in Pennsylvania where "ya'll" "yous" and "yins" all mean the same thing but which one you use is based on where in the state you are from.
@@51stparedoctober4
Note that I defined "standard American" as "the way DJs are trained to talk."
Where I lived in my teens, people without college degrees said "youse". That is not standard American, but I never said it was.
I am sure John Adams accent would never raise an eyebrow across the pond in 21st century Devon.
Sounds rather similar to how people speak here in the West Country.
+MrSquidman007 Smith Island between Maryland and Virginia has retained many of the same features
Yes, I watch a video about the accents in that area. Although the commentator said the present accents were the result of English and Irish ancestry, I would say that I couldn't hear the Irish accent, but I did hear accents reminiscent of 16th century English (which many Americans mistake for Irish accents).
Matan Cohen's Studio it’s basically a mix of modern English and American accents
That's where the settlers were largely from...a lot came from Plymouth.
This is how English used to sound, even during Shakespeares time. The modern British English accent comes from lowclass people trying their damndest to sound posh. Working class, non cosmopolitan people retained original pronunciation like the hard r. For example Westlanders, Americans/Canadians, and the Irish. Other places in the anglosphere Australia/New Zealand/South Africa don't use the hard r because most emigration occurred after the "poshificaton"
My many-greats grand father came to America in 1635. Reading his and his sons' and relatives' writings, documents, and wills, it amazes me how English was so different from what we know today.
The fact that you have your family's writings from that time period is quite astounding. Very lucky to have those.
Yeah that’s pretty cool
Is there any way I can read those things too?!
Bro you could make thousands by selling that shit to a museum. Let your kids go to it and show them it.
Do you have any examples?
I find the early American accent really interesting. It sounds like the British accent, but with sprinkles of a modern American accent here and there. It’s like a mix between the two.
It's more modern American than modern British. The old British accent (shown in the video) kind of froze when it came to America and became known as the American accent because British speak changed so much in the following years.
So Baiscly it sounds Irish
@@Centermass762it does sound British but not the accent you and most would think of. Sounds West Country, Bristolian accent
Like Centermass is saying, this is closer to how the English spoke when Shakespeare was around. Only afterwards did the more modern English accents come about, and then they only influenced the U.S. on the east coast as the rich tried to imitate them a bit, hence Boston.
@@Centermass762 you have a spanish accent mi amigo you dont sound english scottish welsh irish or swahili you sound spanish
“The business of this Congress has been to achieve nothing.” - And so began a long-standing US tradition.
The last example of this accent found in the United States is the Ocracoke Brogue, spoken by the inhabitants of Ocracoke Island, NC. The island's isolation and inaccessibility allowed the accent to stay relatively intact, although with the introduction of a ferry system from the mainland in the 60s, it is slowly dying out.
Hoi Toiders!
To curious Americans, this accent is essentially a West Country English accent, which is what would have been spoken by most of the colonists who came over in the first 200 years.
No one going to acknowldege the fly?
they didn't have insect repellent
honestly i thought it was a nice touch, just enforcing the idea that even though these are powerful people these were still primitive times and even with buildings, there was no air conditioning or any rules on installation. I especially like how nobody in the scene is pointing it out, it’s just normal to them.
That Fly's performance is Oscar worthy... Very realistic... Very 18th century
What accent was it buzzing with?
@@hatbrigade I was wondering if someone had mentioned the Mike Pence fly incident in the comments. I was thinking the same thing.
Up to that point there had been maybe 3 or 4 generations of Americans living in the colonies so it'd make sense that their accents would be difficult to distinguish from British or American accents. Really cool.
There was no "American" accent at that time. Most colonists spoke a variety of early modern English as spoken in the south of England
As a historian it’s insane how spot on this is. They really did their homework on this. The one error is they haven’t gotten down how big regional accents in America were. Someone from Pennsylvania would talk completely different from New England or Virginia
Hi, I’m subscribed.
"A historian" lol
New England accent is a Norfolk accent because of the puritans, also the main puritan strong hold was east anglia
@@vodyanoy2 ???
You hitlerite bastard
Sounds like a mix between Irish and west country English.
Yes indeed.
@@AbrahamLincoln4 holy shit Abe your 90 years too early
@No Name No these are definitely southern Irish accents I think they're all Southern Irish actors too or doing southern Irish accents, I know the guy who did the reconstruction based them off that.
From what iv'e researched on the topic it would seem the American colonies were based on the Munster planation's, beyond that another reason might be because the style of English brought to Ireland was the same style brought to America later, so the Irish accents retained the old features and American accents lost them over time. Northern Irish is the origin of the hillbilly accent. Ulster planation's happened after America was colonized and during.
www.carrigdhoun.com/post/from-carrigaline-to-virginia-usa
Kortmann, Bernd; Schneider, Edgar W., eds. (2004). A Handbook of Varieties of English: CD-ROM. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3110175320.
@@thenextshenanigantownandth4393 I can only assume you've never been to Southern Ireland nor the south west of England
@@RottingEarth I have I live in "Southern" Ireland and it sounds very similar. I can't speak for south west england but some of these accents are clearly just west country actors. I recommend you check out this article here www.acelinguist.com/2018/09/dialect-dissection-founding-fathers.html
you clearly know nothing about this topic so that might help you.
My cousin won a golden globe for producing this series. I miss you Steven.
It's like British but with a hint of American popping out, the accent was still evolving.
or IS still evolving
I love it when shows and films pay attention to historical accuracy. Rather than just making them speak with a modern American accent or an English RP accent which would've been easier. Bravo.
Interesting. The crux of the thing is that US English is actually generally more traditional and closer to older forms and manners of English than the current nondescript UK English is. The closest speech to original colonial era English is the Appalachian dialect, as it retains very strongly some Germanic features that later, intentionally latinized iterations of the language, attempted to get rid of. These include:
1. "Prepositions" being used for ending sentences. When they're used this way, they're called pospositions. This is completely nonsensical and against all the rules in Latin, but in Germanic language, it's totally fine and it's something we can put up with.
2. Phrasal splitting. Phrasal verbs are when you put two words, often a preposition and a verb, to describe one thing. German also does this. But in English, to describe a train leaving, you can say "The train is outgoing", "the train is going out", "Out is where the train is going", "going out, the train is", and they all make full sense and are grammaticall correct. Latinate languages like to keep all their verbs in singular compound words.
3. Retention of the R. In the early 19'th century, much of Britain got the idea to stop saying R when it didn't need to. They did their best to put this accent into the populace through schools, the military, civil announcements, and so on. The reason why the NZ and Australia accents don't say many R's compared to most American accents is because they were colonized after this change.
4. Americans prefer to say "gotten" over "got". This is the older form and dates back to medieval English, which we call Middle English. The British mostly prefer "got" as their past passive participle.
5. Neutral copulas. In Southern US dialects, "That is good" and "that would be good" and "that good" can all be understood to mean the same thing, that something is good. This is also found in more archaic texts and writings up throught the early 19'th century. In British, the first would be an indicative statement, the second is subjunctive, and the final is a demonstrative.
This list is not exhaustive, but I hope it was enlightening.
+ Motablunt
Large parts of Britain still have accents very similar to the one in the vid in the 21st century. The problem is that many Americans are influenced by Hollywood movies, but the whole of the southwest of England from Gloucester to Lands End roll their "R's" as indeed they do in East Anglia and some parts of Lancashire, so we are talking about a large parts of England. My ex wife was from Norwich in East Anglia, she would say "gotten" on a frequent basis and pronounce words like "turtle" "hard" and "sword" the way Americans do.
In fact many Americans must have sounded English until after the Civil War, listen to the recording of Confederate General Julius Howell on UA-cam at the age of 101 in 1947. Even then take into account that his accent will have changed considerably and it's not difficult to theorise that Americans from English decent, did sound very English until not that long ago. Listen to the YT vid of Julius Howell (a lovely sounding old man) for the RP/posh southern English influence along with some rhotic undertones of south western English and guttural northern English.
Well said, Dick Turpin. I don't know what Mortablunt's description means re: "current nondescript UK English" accent. The regional variations are still present ...and long may they be so.
Sort of. The non rhoticity of English had been on a slow burn for a little over a hundred years, mostly located in the South. What happened is that in the decades before the turn of the 19th Century, London became non Rhotic and suddenly most of England followed. That said, non rhoticity was very present in the US at the time. The spelling of prominent New Englanders and Bostonians especially indicates that final -r’s were dropped quite regularly. And Virginia and the rest of the South would become Non Rhotic soon after this. Which is why I get mad whenever folks complain about Giamatti’s accent in John Adams. It IS accurate, just different
What mate? You sound really damn pretentious. All of these are still present in British accents, you're bitching about 'RP features' and these aren't universally present in all American accents.
1. All English accents use postpositions. Any English speaker has encountered 'where's it (at/to/in)?' because nobody actually says 'where to is it?' except when that's an dialectal feature, or they're failing to sound posh.
2. Honestly British English does this to at least the same extent as American English. 'Outbound', 'pre-packaged', 'upscaling', and 'rewrapping', for example, are all general-use words in British English.
3. Loss of rhoticity is only in certain environments, like at the end of words (RP still has r, ffs), and there are rhotic and non-rhotic American and British accents. These all developed naturally, and independently of each other, with no stupid big brother scheme. American Southern accents, East Cost accents, and Afro-American accents are generally non-rhotic, for example. I would counter that there are still rolled-r accents in British English, and none elsewhere in English, which is an Old to Middle English feature just not present in American English.
4. This is again a moot point as it's extremely accentally variable. Some regions of the US use get-got-got, some regions of the UK use get-got-gotten. This is honestly more of a 'linguists made it up' point, as it varies by speaker, even in Southern English accents where get-got-got is at its highest frequency, and 'gotten' is still fully treated as functional. 'Gotten' is also a Modern English word, the Middle English equivalent is 'geten'.
5. I have no idea how many Southerners you've talked to, but most of them would also treat those as three different things, and all of those could mean that something is good if the something is hypothetical in any English dialect. The third phrase also has no copula, so, what?
DickTurpin that’s because southern accent comes from the English modern accent received prononciation the rest of the u.s sounded like this
it's crazy how some parts sound fully british while other parts sound like an American accent that still sounds normal in the 2000's.
I just moved to Northern Virginia two days ago from LA by way of Atlanta. Best believe I'm gonna be rewatching this series now on HBO max.
What is this show called??
Damn man, kinda wish we still held onto that accent
Its pretty good
Thank this show. I’ve always wondered about this and never knew how to voice really early American characters in my head when I read books
The quiet heckling from John and Sam Adams is priceless
This is essentially exactly how the people of the west country, particularly Cornwall speak. This comes as no surprise because all of England spoke this way until very recently, actually. There has been a considerable decline of the hard 'r' in England for the last century. Today modern Americans each speak in their own accents. The deep south, and the Appalachians still speak remarkably similar to how early Americans did. The midwest and great lake states have a strange Scandinavian ring to them, especially in Minnesota, which is only natural when you realise that many Swedes, Norwegians, and to a lesser degree Germans, settled here. In the north east there appears to be the greatest diversity; as it has huge Irish and Italian heritage.
@it_blows_my_mind Wrong. Read my comment. The entirety of England spoke like this for the longest time. Since the 1950s there has been a huge decline in this accent, and it only survives in the west country (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset).
@@it_blows_my_mind how would you know ? Were you alive 100 years ago? 😂 complete and utter idiot, the entirety of England spoke rhotic English until thick morons like you started speaking slow and drousy and skipped over letters altogether
@moccus3466 sorry but you're very wrong
I detected a smattering of England East Anglian(notably Cambridgeshire,Suffolk and Norfolk) _ the accent that would've been used by the Pilgrim Fathers. Some present day East Anglian pronunciations are still used today in the US, a good example is the pronunciation of "news" - "Nooze". Another one is "pootin" for 'Putin'.
@@moccus3466You’re wrong about all English people speaking in the same dialect and accent as the Cornish south west English accent, there are about 22 different distinctive accents in England. Stop being ignorant.
"this congress has achieved nothing"
Mmmmm. Plus ça change......
Dear god, I forgot how enamoured with handheld everyone was when this came out. They really thought they were gonna make a costume drama 'feel raw and real'? It just looks like the cameraman is drunk.
Someone from the 1700s recording with their cell phone. Real AF.
If the cameraman isn’t drunk while filming a Congress meeting, then he’s not a true American.
I love the sound of flys in the background. It really humanizes the situation and the time.
Finally some accurate pronunciations in a colonial era film/TV! Another good one is George Washington in Turn.
Sounds like a mixture of East Anglian and West Country English.
We need a lot more shows like this
I live in the West Country and my old postman sounds like the founding fathers! XD
I would call the accent a gentle version of the New York and Boston accent I heard 40-50 years ago.
I love how the people from each state have different accents.
Wiltshere accent turning into an American southern accent. Now I can hear the wiltshere in every southern American.
One of the reasons I thoroughly enjoyed this show was the appropriation of those early American accents; such good acting.
What show is it?
Around that time, the accents of England and America were beginning to diverge. The standard British accent, received pronunciation, was in its embryonic stage. British English changed more than American English as North America stayed an isolated backwater, with the exception of Atlantic coast cities that continued being influenced somewhat by Britain even after the Revolutionary War. Thus the accents of New England, NYC and large parts of the coastal south adopted a few British features like non-rhoticity and especially for east New England, the 'traps bath' split in which the A in words like "can't", " ask" and "bath" are pronounced the same as the A in words like "palm" and the North American version of "ball" or unrounded "lot".
It reminds me of the English accents from the Isle of Wight, London, Bristol, West Country, etc.
When king James I & VI took the english throne in the early 1600s he released his new english bible, and he tried making all his subjects speak one language by edict, attempting to erradicate the fringe celtic languages endemic to the UK (Welsh, Cornish, Gallic and Gaelic).
Weirdly the english accent of the 17th has been preserved by multiple people. The westcountry dialect is just standard 17th century english frozen in time and the emerging American colonies took that dialect and language and persevered it also. Hence the similarity.
Currenlt in the globe theatre, the Royal shakespeare company reproduces plays in vernacular and authentic accents that pretty much boil down to shakespeare in a west-country accent as londoners would have sounded like back then.
Some artifacts of 17th century english are preserved in American-english, like the word fall for what brits would now call autumn. This is also not long before the brits and americans began standardising spellings in dictionaries (which was a freeforall before) hence our differences over colour/color and realise/realize and defence/defense ect
Most prominently Americans like our common ancestors kept the rhotic r, (pronouncing the r at the end of words like war, star) whereas the brits lost theirs in the 1800s. (Weirdly Massachusetts and other new england accents also lost the R, likely with proximity to transatlantic trade) not coincidentally the only english accents that retain the R are both westcountry accents: cornish and bristollian (Scots retained rhoticity through the prominence of their own new dialect: scots which retained features from their own languages)
If you listen closely, you can hear the buzzing of the flies. Flies were famously a nuisance that the Congress had to contend with during the Philadelphia Summers.
It must have stank of body odour.
This is another kind of Mid-Atlantic accent (neither British nor American; both British and American). I like it.
I've been in that room . Really amazing to hear them speak.
To be honest though, the UK sounded very similar at that time, I wish they depicted the UK with a similar accent.
That used to be the real British accent. The one they used today is a crappy version of the upper class. Fucking morons.
Even in the scene with King George, the King speaks with a tiny bit of this rhotic-flavored West Country accent. Not sure where that came from.
Even southern England, though? When Shakespeare was around, yeah, but in the late 1700s?
John Adams senior came from Braintree in Essex, 20 miles from where I live. Adams junior may have picked up a bit of the old Essex dialect, but they may of sounded a bit like modern Bristolian
That's funny because I'm from Boston, MA U.S. - and the next town over from Quincy MA, where the Adams homesite is, is named Braintree.
The British don't want to admit it, but the Americans sound much closer to the original English accent than English people today.
Don’t mind admitting it,most everyone in the comments agreed it sounds English West Country,it’s fascinating.I wish the English had been able to keep this ‘softer’ country English,outside of the West Countries!
This is very close to Simon Roper’s video on America accents throughout time.
And what a surprise. No diverse cast and all for these sort of scenes. 🎉 thumbs up
"Oi be drinkin' zoider."
Very West Country.
He sounds like a southern British accent combined together it sounds like the Carolina Southern accent combined with Cajon and a little British
I can understand these guys better than a lot of people in our current time.
'The buisness of this. Congress has been to achieve nothing'
250 years later nothings changed...😢
Not true. In the present day congress does all it can to make things worse.
I can’t take the Revolution as seriously when thinking about how they all sounded something like this 💀😂
in real life they all had thick hispanic accents like americans do today
I love the fact the the Founding Fathers were descendants of The Wurzels. Proper Gersh, as I think they say in Bristol
From what gather, most English people sounded like people from the West Country for a long time.
It’s shocking to me that this sounds a lot like a regular Massachusetts accent to me but with Rs/rhoticism and some occasional words that sound Irish- but in the comments there are Brits saying it sounds English. Maybe we’re not as far off from each other as I thought.
I'm from Massachusetts, too, and I thought it sounded more American than British.
So here's what's actually going on:
This is very similar to what Shakespeare performers call Original Pronunciation. They largely reconstructed it from how Shakespeare's writing rhymes and a few firsthand descriptions of how words were pronounced.
By the time most English immigration to the U.S. happened people in England still pretty much sounded like that. But not long after what we now think of as a "posh accent" came about in the rich southern bits of England, and _that_ then influenced people on the East Coast as the wealthy elite still sort of licked England's boots.
Sounds like Somerset/West Country, UK. Željko Ivanek is a criminally underrated actor! He was incredible in The X-Files and should have won an Emmy.
I agree. One fine actor.
You can hear early & mid 1900s men in their real voices sounding far different than we do today.... its wild
I wish we still had this accent. Cursive American
Really interesting part of history. As far as I know, at the time pretty much all of England spoke with a similar accent to this, what we would term a 'country' accent, or West Country. It then became the fashion to speak in a received pronunciation in the upper classes to distinguish themselves, which is essentially a made up accent. You could say that the American accent is actually closer to what an English accent should be!
That's a fact. The American accent is an old, mostly frozen-in-time British accent.
Pretty much everything said here is true, but I do have one issue - British accents were incredibly regional up until the mid-late 1800s. Before then, you could travel for 2 hours (with today's vehicles) and see 3 accents each quite similar but clearly distinct. As you moved around the country, there would have been a huge range that could occasionally make it seem like a completely different language. This would have been more extreme further back in the past, but it was still apparent in the late 1700s.
@@Centermass762 its not old its spanish you have a spanish accent
@@Centermass762It's the west country accent mate. Not all of England sounded the same at that time. Northern England has accents closest to the original english if you wanna go there.
@@ltr1745 fair enough. I don't know every regional dialect in bumfuckinghamshire, England, but it's still an English accent.
Sound like a lighter Cornish accent. I don’t doubt that this is how Blackbeard sounded.
Bristolian,West Country,pretty close to how Newly portrayed him!
The director really got the actors to speak in cursive
The southern accent evolved from this
It's as I thought: Samwise Gamgee was an early American!
I like the theory that the American accent is the proper British one, and the UK are the ones that moved away from it, not us.
Really interesting. American English in transition. Some of the vowels sound very Irish to me.
More west British than Irish tbh
@@MrDrProffPatrick You are probably right. You're a leg up on me because I am not familiar with west British.
Well west English really, it sounds nothing like west Scottish
@@ieatmice751 Ulster -Scots learn your true History.
That series is one of my favorites.
Tbh, I kind of like the camera angles. It looks like they went back in time and snuck a camera in the room
Benjamin Franklin who spent much time in England said there was no difference between the accent of London and Philadelphia in the late 18th century. That is certainly not the case now.
British English has changed a lot over the years
Isnt that the dude from straight out of compton?
Why yes I am, thanks for noticing
Which one?
Yeah, Paul Giamatti, he played Jerry Heller in Straight Outta Compton
No. He’s the guy from Big Fat Liar
Every colony sent somebody to this thing which means they were all pissed off about something. Amazing.
The Cornwall accent took over america
That first guy speaking has a somerset/ Gloucester maybe Devon accent which is in the UK.
Interesting time to be an English speaker in the Colonies at the time hahah!
I love the amount of thought that has gone into this series.
It's one of those things where you don't really know what people sounded like in those days. It's kind of like being able to interpret what Old English language and accents sounded like. When you consider the multiple combinations of different languages and cultures being in America at the time I like to compare it to modern day Switzerland. When I was in Switzerland it was absolutely amazing to me how many people not only spoken English but they sounded so much like Americans because of the combination of so many different languages that they speak in that country. Of course whichever area of Switzerland you were in and its proximity to another country would ultimately determine whether they sounded more German French or Italian. But in the middle it was everything at once. So we know that America was a very strong refuge for Irish and Scottish immigrants trying to flee from Total British dominance. It was also a place where German Protestants could practice their multiple sects of protestant religion. And also the former Dutch and French colonies that the British took over still had a strong Dutch and French population.
A lack of standardised spelling and / or education at the time did mean people tended to write words the way they sounded, which is actually a bit useful for "reconstructing" accents.
As for the Romans, Ancient Egytptians and the like, though, who knows? (There's a sizeable group of people who fiercely debate what ancient egyptians even looked like, let alone sounded like!)
@@worldcomicsreview354There are people who still debate on what ancient egyptians look like? I assume they would resemble the other North Africans.
One of thr big hints here is how Shakespeare's work rhymes. By the time most English immigration to the U.S. had happened, English accents were still O.P. ish so it's safe to assume that people in the U.S. spoke the same way, and then as accents across the pond shifted there was only second-hand influence on the U.S.
The closest accent I've heard to this, today...and this is probably not surprising given the historical connections...is that of an old school friend of mine who was a White Bermudan. Bermudans of African heritage obviously are a different story. His accent was what I can only describe as a cross between American Southern and Australian.
devonians of north devon speak very much like this
@@edmundprice5276 what is north Devon?
@@gjfkhvjzjsxbq the north of the english county of devon
As this was the 1st continental congress shouldn’t the opening shot have been outside of carpenters hall not independence hall? Seems like a simple oversight.
How fascinating; watching this after watching the video about Shakespeare's accent is very revealing. There are many similar features between them. I wish there was some way to know what cadence they spoke with; the differences in cadence between the 1920s and modern day implies it was probably quite different 200 years ago, but of course there is no way of reconstructing it, so I guess we will never really know.
StarlitSeafoam no, there isn't anything similar between Shakespeare's English (actually called Early Modern English) and this. They're 200 years apart, what are you even on?
The English of the 18th-Century was far close to Shakespeare's English than 21st-Century dialects. I've even read a book from the 18th-Century that described such English as 'modern.'
@@deutschesmaedchen Rhoticity, some vowels, and syllable lengths seem similar to me.
sommerset x southern american accent?
Literally went from an original British accent and his voice inflection turned into that of a CNN reporter in a matter of seconds.. What a transformation.
If you spoke like this in England, people would just assume you were from west country.
Literally sounds just like my friend from Cornwall
You can hear the beginning of a New England accent
When I was watching I noticed the authentic pronunciation, it felt so real. Bravo to them
You can tell who the Americans are in these comments because they're the ones who are saying they hear an Irish accent whereas the British (et al) people are the ones who are saying they hear a West Country accent. The latter are much more right than the former. I don't hear Irish at all, while the "West Country" accent people are hearing is just how people in rural areas of the South of England (not just the South West) spoke until comparatively recently. Listen to this collection of accents from places like Surrey, Sussex and Kent (you literally cannot get more South East than Kent!)
ua-cam.com/video/sPJxS43ByYE/v-deo.html
That's notwithstanding the fact that there was no great immigration to the United States from Ireland - apart from those Scottish and English who had previously settled in Ireland - till the 19th century.
It sounds like a west country accent. Anything from Cornwall to Gloucestershire
To British ears it sounds like an extremely rural British accent, almost with hints of Bristol/ West country.
I remember Kenneth Williams doing a skit on how the American accent evolved from the West Country accent and the Australian from Cockney!
"The business of this congress has been to achieve nothing!"
Well, the more they change, the more they stay the same.
It's like a mix of Dublin Irish, Estuary and some regional English like West country or something.
I love the choices they made for accents in this miniseries. But I think going out of the way to show the characters being bored with each other's speakers in so many different scenes made for bad drama.
But if in fact the real historical persons were bored, I would rather have a more historically accurate, but less dramatic TV show, rather than a more dramatic, but less historically accurate one.
FYI: the actors name is Zeljko Ivanek lol.
Sounds somewhat like a Cornish or West Country fella, I'd love to hear him, Ow are you me old lover,that would clinch it, lol
So early Americans talked like Sam Gamgee. Good to know.