I lived in Little Italy in NYC for eight years. Dropping the final vowels in Italian foodstuffs happened because the majority of immigrants were from regions in Italy where that is a feature of their dialects. Another feature of those dialects is how they pronounce CI/CE and GI/GE, (I’m not familiar with IPA symbols, so I’ll have to use comparisons to English consonants.) In standard Italian, as I’m sure you already know, the C in this combination is pronounced like English CH and the G like English J. But where the “Little Italians” came from, the C and G are pronounced like SH and ZH, respectively. This, combined with dropping the final vowels, resulted in the words for 11 and 12 (undici and dodici) being pronounced “undish” and “dodish” in a conversation in Italian between two guys who were working on my apartment.
Wonderful discussion about the development of American English dialects. As a former student of phonetics and historical linguistics (I'm an American), I was taught that the reason why dialects along the East Coast, particularly in the American South, showed stronger phonetic similarities to the dialects of southern England was because of the practice of wealthy families sending their sons to boarding schools in England throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, who would return back as adults and introduce their acquired speech patterns into the United States. This would explain why the absence of postvocalic rhoticity in pre-World War II America was strongest in the South and in Northeastern cities, including Boston. I think Geoff Lindsay recently put out a video discussing how non-rhoticity was likely a feature of early San Franciscan English and may have contributed to the non-rhoticity of the so-called "Transatlantic dialect" that was used in films produced in Hollywood. My sociolinguistics professors told me that postvocalic rhoticity didn't become the norm across the US until during and after the wartime era, when nationalism picked up and pronouncing post-vocalic Rs became more of a standard in broadcasting and cultural productions. This also coincides with the Great Migration, where predominantly non-rhotic talkers from the South, moved into largely rhotic cities in the North, and due to their accents, either the linguistic feature of "r-dropping" or the non-rhotic speakers themselves came be to perceived as less educated. Also bear in mind that the larger urban areas, such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco, were constantly growing with increasingly larger numbers of people from different parts of the country and world throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
I understand your prognostications about the evolution of American dialects, which are quite different from UK English, being due to in-country pressure and changes, but let's think about Australia. Almost the same timespan, but not very different to Estuary Ebglish. Explain that please?
9:35 There are counties called "Orange" in California, Florida, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia. Both South Carolina and South Dakota had counties called "Orangeburg".
I'm new here, but have been following Simon for some time. I'm not a linguist, but I find the various Englishes interesting, and their changes over time and across geography fascinating. My own Standard Australian English is interesting enough, in its own way, but it's the way it fits with other Englishes, its similarities and differences, and how these adapt and evolve over time that I find most intriguing.
I love the British dialect map you used! 1:06 It's not perfect (dialect maps never are, inherently) but it's more detailed, accurate, and aesthetic than any similar maps I've seen.
Regarding the rhoticity of Southern American English, the areas that were initially heavily settled by the Scotch-Irish are mostly in the Appalachian Mountains. The story being that the Scotch-Irish would arrive in northeastern ports, especially Philadelphia but also Baltimore and New York, these areas already heavily settled and property being relatively expensive, the new immigrants would travel west through the lower, sparser portions of the mountains between the coastal plains and the Great Valley in Pennsylvania to follow the Great Valley southwesterly, eventually settling areas in the valley and traveling across the mountains to settle the southern Appalachians. Much more recent migrations have found people from the mountains moving into cities in the Piedmont and lower-elevation parts of the south and midwest, therefore influencing the dialects in these areas to varying degrees. The stereotypical non-rhotic southern dialect is the dialect of the lowland and coastal regions, my understanding is the initial settlers to lowcountry South Carolina are from vaguely southern England. The stereotypical Lowcountry dialect is quite distinct, and it and it's relatives are noticeably different from speech in the majority of what is classified as the "south".
You two are brilliant thank you, I wonder if you could do some more on east Anglian accents please I find very little online it often gets imitated poorly but even though I hear bits in Colchester it’s becoming rarer I can’t even copy my nan 🤣
3:04 "especially in the early days of the American colonies, most people in Britain wouldn't have really ever met an American. I mean there weren't very many of them." True enough for the early days of the Colonies. However, the population of the U.S. in 1800 was recorded as 5,236,631, and that of England, Wales, and Scotland in 1801 was recorded as 9,950,423-i.e., 1 American for 1.9 Britons. In 1700, there were about 5,200,000 in England and about 250,888 in some version of 'the Colonies'-about 1 American for 50 Englishmen. In 1650, England had about 5,310,000 people, and the Colonies 50,368, supposedly.
for me, (not 100% certain) it feels like my face vowel is close to a monophthong before voiced consonants and at the end of a word (eg fade [feːd̚] and day [deː~de̞ː] compared to the word "face" itself (something like [feɪs~fejs]. i'm from florida.
Don't know how likely people who'd already migrated far from their homelands might've been to stay put somewhere along the east coast of England. But back in Jutland, in the 1970s, dialects could be almost mutually unintelligeble at a distance of 10-15 km, even less sometimes. In a landscape with no mountains, rivers or other notable geographical features that might logically keep communities separate to some extent. This does make me wonder whether the ancestors of these speakers were next level homebodies, and if so how common or unique that might be. Especially since Archaeogenetics is producing ever more evidence that Holocene migrations were likely way more frequent and complex than we already imagined. Also, it's pretty wild that "to be" in modern Danish is "er" exactly as written for Old Norse here. I guess it didn't sound _exactly_ the same, but we're talking +/- 1000 years here.
That's fascinating. In North-Western England there are big accent differences across small distances, where again there aren't natural barriers keeping people apart. As for migrants, I guess the first move makes subsequent ones easier - like with the Scots who moved to the North of Ireland, then to New England and then kept going West.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I know, it blew my mind when I first heard some recordings and had to double-check the locations on the map. Also, wow, just wow to your ability to weave seamlessly between accents (just watched your Myths about US English vid too)! Took me a bit to even notice you were doing it cos it was so natural (and my multilingual brain doesn’t bat an eyelid that it doesn’t have at 3+ languages in a sentence 😅).
At 4:50 not David Hackett Fischer? His brilliant book Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America covers exactly what you're showing. He covers many aspects including styles of building, dress, baby naming, food, etc as well as language. I did wonder how well his linguistic chapters would hold up to scrutiny by linguists. The Scottish Borders > Northern Ireland > Pennsylvania > Southern Uplands is probably what you have in mind.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages You're welcome! His basic premise is that America's underlying cultural framework had been set in place prior to mid-19th century to early-20th century mass migrations of Famine Irish, Italians, Poles, etc who congregated in the Northeastern cities.
@@TerryMcKennaFineArt Hi. I think both Simon and I are more interested in pronunciation than vocabulary so Dutch didn’t really come up in our research.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages well i guess the pronunciations disappeared over time. I am someone who studies industrial development in NJ from 1790-1900. So I see Dutch names, Dutch churches and lots of folks who whose first language was Dutch. But re pronunciation... I guess it just was absorbed. Oh well. I grew up in NJ and one typical dutch word we used was stoop - same pronunciation as to bend over, but this meant the front steps.
I keep telling my English brother in law that people in 'ackney say 'ackney and not hackney. Of course I have never actually been to 'ackney. I am going next year.
My thoughts (as a complete layman) on accents becoming quite different from the mixing of their parent accents (e.g. scouse, various American accents) are this - there isn't one group identity at play here, you've got several. You have the 'My family has lived here for generations!' identity, and the identities of the various immigrant groups, and my theory rests on the idea that the former group has always been strongly opposed to the latter groups throughout time, i.e. this is not a new thing at all. Not to pick on the Irish (I'm part Irish myself!), but I can imagine existing populations faced with new Irish immigrants suddenly speaking with the most 'non-Irish' accent possible, to differentiate themselves from them, to let people know purely by the sound of their speech that they aren't one of these new people who have come off the boats, we've been here since Time Immemorial! So I can imagine a pressure happening that causes components of a dialect to reflexively diverge away from those of the 'new crowd', and a rhotic dialect can become non-rhotic. And then many of the new immigrants (and even more so their children and grandchildren) will adapt their accents to fit in and be accepted, especially those 'higher' in the socio-economic structure. None of this should inform you on my own personal feelings about immigration and immigrants!
I think both linguistic innovation and opposition to it are natural phenomena and both deserve to be described. After all, if innovation skyrocketed and everyone spoke however he felt like it, people would stop understanding each other pretty quickly. Taking sides (change is always good, linguistic conservatism is wrong) is kinda prescriptive, isn't it?
I grew up in Southeastern MA, & there were so many distinct accents in the general area. I could understand a degree of someone's past, & a little about their personality through their accents. There was North of Boston, South of Boston, & various accents within the Boston area. Class differences were also pronounced - a nasal, heavily non-rhoticized accent was considered lower class in most cases. My parents, from different suburbs of Boston (Somerville & Dedham) had vastly different accents, so it was a little confusing - in fact now you wouldn't think my sister & I were related because our accents vary. It's actually fairly common for siblings from this area to have differing accents, mostly due to our friendships & schooling I would imagine. I currently live in Florida, & it's always so comforting to hear any of the Boston area accents now - now & then I'll meet someone & feel "closer" to them or trust them somehow, then realize 15 minutes later that it's their familiar accent, then I can usually figure out where they're from...
I remember growing up and watching old tv series. I thought everyone in the uk sounded like jean-luc picard (patrick stewart from star trek tng), sir humphrey and other characters from yes, minister, and a few old movies. The face vowel sounded much more american. Then i visit several years later and everybody uses the f-eye-s vowel foh [face] (even being more prevalent in modern rp, though not as drastic). Even modern rp sounds different than the rp from just 30-40 years ago. 😂 What caused that shift or was there a big conspiracy to hide the real british accents? 😂
I think there was a big shift away from people wanting to sound upper class. Dr Geoff Lindsey has a great video on the topic. ua-cam.com/video/jIAEqsSOtwM/v-deo.htmlsi=fEYmkAkQEfcsg0T8
Boston English I think was influenced by both Irish and British English. After the American Revolution, Boston was an important trade city, and contact with non-rhotic British merchants was common. Then, Boston received massive waves of Irish immigration from 1840-1880, which influenced the a fronting before r, the cot-caught merger, and the unmerging of father-bother in that region.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages the cot-caught merger has its presence in Boston and Western Pennsylvania as well, but it's pronounced differently than the west coast. In Boston it's closer to ɔ and in western Pennsylvania it's closer to ɒ.
americanized, Italian, especially Sicilian or Neapolitan: you end up with pasta fazzool’, without the ending. I’m not Sicilian so I don’t know the actual pronunciation in classic Sicilian, dropping the A or U or I or O would qualify, wouldn’t it?
Dave it has been a pleasure to see you guys collaborate. I’ve been surprised at how many people are teaching language and linguistics on UA-cam of all places, but Simon has never bored me. Your work is always interesting and entertaining.
The explanation I've heard for southern nonrhoticity is that in languages like Yoruba and Akan there are no closed syllables at all and this resulted in extreme reduction of final consonants. African-Americans may even have nasal vowels through dropping of M or N.
17:00 Why do you think aussies are fine with using words that cannot be used in the uk? I know if someone says theyre gonna use the toilet in the us, theyre looked at oddly, but in the uk and other countries with that translation (eg トイレ) its normal. Also, isnt the word that rhymes with punt but starts with a C a normal word in the uk, but considered a female slur of the youtube censoring kind? Also, iirc, the word that rhymes with lackey but starts with p is fine in Australia and just seen as a demonym for pakistanis much like aussie is a demonym for australians, but in the uk it is a slur? Wth? Note: I learnt my English from a Japanese teacher, a Canadian and aussie JET, youtube and movies, and working in Texas 🤠
It all very much depends on age, social class, gender, context etc. etc. Maybe Australia is in general a bit more accepting of taboo words but I don’t think by much. The c-word is still very taboo in the UK much more than the f-word. It’s true that Americans prefer euphemisms like bathroom restroom instead of toilet. When I was at university in northern England a friend from Kansas City was mocked by a train station employee for asking for the bathroom. He was told he couldn’t have a bath at the station. He instead asked for the restroom, only to be told he could rest anywhere he wanted. Americans also don’t die. They ‘pass’.
@@amandachapman4708 That was a confused emoji. I get it now - the monk. I guess he was writing Middle English, while complaining about people speaking Millde English.
Nice to see two of my favourite UA-camrs doing a video together. Thanks.
Agreed!
@@ajs41 so glad you think so. Many thanks.
More of this collaboration please. I could listen to any amount of it.
@@MeTheRob thanks so much. There’s definitely more to come.
We are very lucky to be able to view your work and enjoy your knowledge. Thank you.
Greetings from a Simon subscriber, now also a Dave subscriber!
I lived in Little Italy in NYC for eight years. Dropping the final vowels in Italian foodstuffs happened because the majority of immigrants were from regions in Italy where that is a feature of their dialects. Another feature of those dialects is how they pronounce CI/CE and GI/GE, (I’m not familiar with IPA symbols, so I’ll have to use comparisons to English consonants.) In standard Italian, as I’m sure you already know, the C in this combination is pronounced like English CH and the G like English J. But where the “Little Italians” came from, the C and G are pronounced like SH and ZH, respectively. This, combined with dropping the final vowels, resulted in the words for 11 and 12 (undici and dodici) being pronounced “undish” and “dodish” in a conversation in Italian between two guys who were working on my apartment.
Yes, I lived in Naples for several years and what you describe is very much a feature of Neapolitan.
Wonderful discussion about the development of American English dialects. As a former student of phonetics and historical linguistics (I'm an American), I was taught that the reason why dialects along the East Coast, particularly in the American South, showed stronger phonetic similarities to the dialects of southern England was because of the practice of wealthy families sending their sons to boarding schools in England throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, who would return back as adults and introduce their acquired speech patterns into the United States.
This would explain why the absence of postvocalic rhoticity in pre-World War II America was strongest in the South and in Northeastern cities, including Boston. I think Geoff Lindsay recently put out a video discussing how non-rhoticity was likely a feature of early San Franciscan English and may have contributed to the non-rhoticity of the so-called "Transatlantic dialect" that was used in films produced in Hollywood. My sociolinguistics professors told me that postvocalic rhoticity didn't become the norm across the US until during and after the wartime era, when nationalism picked up and pronouncing post-vocalic Rs became more of a standard in broadcasting and cultural productions. This also coincides with the Great Migration, where predominantly non-rhotic talkers from the South, moved into largely rhotic cities in the North, and due to their accents, either the linguistic feature of "r-dropping" or the non-rhotic speakers themselves came be to perceived as less educated. Also bear in mind that the larger urban areas, such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco, were constantly growing with increasingly larger numbers of people from different parts of the country and world throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Well done guys. Fascinating, in a metaphorical way!
@@canterburyjhiguma8387 thank you, literally.
I love Simon Roper and now perhaps I will love you too 😉
I hope to earn that.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I will certainly listen to some more.
Your channel is amazing. Glad I stumbled upon it.
Wow. Thank you. I’m glad you did too.
I enjoy learning about the English language accents from different English speaking countries
Me too!
I understand your prognostications about the evolution of American dialects, which are quite different from UK English, being due to in-country pressure and changes, but let's think about Australia. Almost the same timespan, but not very different to Estuary Ebglish. Explain that please?
Two legends!
Great video id love a video on the evolution on Australian English being a aussie myself
@@matthewjh138 your wish…
ua-cam.com/video/rWCVFw1vK6g/v-deo.htmlsi=4DoYVNxkjRVe59n1
9:35 There are counties called "Orange" in California, Florida, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia. Both South Carolina and South Dakota had counties called "Orangeburg".
My two faves. Loved this
@@Miss_Toots wow. Thank you.
Simon, your American accent is perfect. (I'm writing from the state of Michigan.)
@@kathryndeering2532 I’ll make sure to let him know.
I'm new here, but have been following Simon for some time. I'm not a linguist, but I find the various Englishes interesting, and their changes over time and across geography fascinating.
My own Standard Australian English is interesting enough, in its own way, but it's the way it fits with other Englishes, its similarities and differences, and how these adapt and evolve over time that I find most intriguing.
@@carolinejames7257 welcome! Have you seen my video about Australian English? Australian English accents
ua-cam.com/video/rWCVFw1vK6g/v-deo.html
@@DaveHuxtableLanguagesThank you for pointing me there, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I love the British dialect map you used! 1:06
It's not perfect (dialect maps never are, inherently) but it's more detailed, accurate, and aesthetic than any similar maps I've seen.
Here from Simon's channel 🤠🍋🟩
@@LimeyRedneck welcome!
Regarding the rhoticity of Southern American English, the areas that were initially heavily settled by the Scotch-Irish are mostly in the Appalachian Mountains. The story being that the Scotch-Irish would arrive in northeastern ports, especially Philadelphia but also Baltimore and New York, these areas already heavily settled and property being relatively expensive, the new immigrants would travel west through the lower, sparser portions of the mountains between the coastal plains and the Great Valley in Pennsylvania to follow the Great Valley southwesterly, eventually settling areas in the valley and traveling across the mountains to settle the southern Appalachians. Much more recent migrations have found people from the mountains moving into cities in the Piedmont and lower-elevation parts of the south and midwest, therefore influencing the dialects in these areas to varying degrees. The stereotypical non-rhotic southern dialect is the dialect of the lowland and coastal regions, my understanding is the initial settlers to lowcountry South Carolina are from vaguely southern England. The stereotypical Lowcountry dialect is quite distinct, and it and it's relatives are noticeably different from speech in the majority of what is classified as the "south".
You two are brilliant thank you, I wonder if you could do some more on east Anglian accents please I find very little online it often gets imitated poorly but even though I hear bits in Colchester it’s becoming rarer I can’t even copy my nan 🤣
Thank you. I’m fascinated by East Anglian accents so they are definitely on my list for the next time I’m in the UK.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages there seems to be a link between east Anglian and Australian I had a lady ask me why people in Ipswich speak Australian
3:04 "especially in the early days of the American colonies, most people in Britain wouldn't have really ever met an American. I mean there weren't very many of them." True enough for the early days of the Colonies. However, the population of the U.S. in 1800 was recorded as 5,236,631, and that of England, Wales, and Scotland in 1801 was recorded as 9,950,423-i.e., 1 American for 1.9 Britons. In 1700, there were about 5,200,000 in England and about 250,888 in some version of 'the Colonies'-about 1 American for 50 Englishmen. In 1650, England had about 5,310,000 people, and the Colonies 50,368, supposedly.
i have a monophthongal face vowel. northern WI. mostly an old person thing & it's not in all words but it's certainly not rare where i grew up
for me, (not 100% certain) it feels like my face vowel is close to a monophthong before voiced consonants and at the end of a word (eg fade [feːd̚] and day [deː~de̞ː] compared to the word "face" itself (something like [feɪs~fejs]. i'm from florida.
Don't know how likely people who'd already migrated far from their homelands might've been to stay put somewhere along the east coast of England. But back in Jutland, in the 1970s, dialects could be almost mutually unintelligeble at a distance of 10-15 km, even less sometimes. In a landscape with no mountains, rivers or other notable geographical features that might logically keep communities separate to some extent.
This does make me wonder whether the ancestors of these speakers were next level homebodies, and if so how common or unique that might be. Especially since Archaeogenetics is producing ever more evidence that Holocene migrations were likely way more frequent and complex than we already imagined.
Also, it's pretty wild that "to be" in modern Danish is "er" exactly as written for Old Norse here. I guess it didn't sound _exactly_ the same, but we're talking +/- 1000 years here.
That's fascinating. In North-Western England there are big accent differences across small distances, where again there aren't natural barriers keeping people apart. As for migrants, I guess the first move makes subsequent ones easier - like with the Scots who moved to the North of Ireland, then to New England and then kept going West.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I know, it blew my mind when I first heard some recordings and had to double-check the locations on the map.
Also, wow, just wow to your ability to weave seamlessly between accents (just watched your Myths about US English vid too)! Took me a bit to even notice you were doing it cos it was so natural (and my multilingual brain doesn’t bat an eyelid that it doesn’t have at 3+ languages in a sentence 😅).
At 4:50 not David Hackett Fischer? His brilliant book Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America covers exactly what you're showing. He covers many aspects including styles of building, dress, baby naming, food, etc as well as language. I did wonder how well his linguistic chapters would hold up to scrutiny by linguists. The Scottish Borders > Northern Ireland > Pennsylvania > Southern Uplands is probably what you have in mind.
I'm not familiar with David Hackett Fischer - I'll check out the book though. Thanks for the recommendation.
Bailyn's "Peopling of British North America" and Woodard's " American Nations" leap to mind too.
@@richarddelotto2375 thank you!
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages You're welcome! His basic premise is that America's underlying cultural framework had been set in place prior to mid-19th century to early-20th century mass migrations of Famine Irish, Italians, Poles, etc who congregated in the Northeastern cities.
love this. One question... you seem to ignore the dutch influence in NY and NJ - which gave lots of words lie cookie for example.
@@TerryMcKennaFineArt Hi. I think both Simon and I are more interested in pronunciation than vocabulary so Dutch didn’t really come up in our research.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages well i guess the pronunciations disappeared over time. I am someone who studies industrial development in NJ from 1790-1900. So I see Dutch names, Dutch churches and lots of folks who whose first language was Dutch. But re pronunciation... I guess it just was absorbed. Oh well. I grew up in NJ and one typical dutch word we used was stoop - same pronunciation as to bend over, but this meant the front steps.
I keep telling my English brother in law that people in 'ackney say 'ackney and not hackney. Of course I have never actually been to 'ackney. I am going next year.
Anyone under 40 in Hackney will probably speak MLE and will say Huckney, with an H.
My thoughts (as a complete layman) on accents becoming quite different from the mixing of their parent accents (e.g. scouse, various American accents) are this - there isn't one group identity at play here, you've got several. You have the 'My family has lived here for generations!' identity, and the identities of the various immigrant groups, and my theory rests on the idea that the former group has always been strongly opposed to the latter groups throughout time, i.e. this is not a new thing at all. Not to pick on the Irish (I'm part Irish myself!), but I can imagine existing populations faced with new Irish immigrants suddenly speaking with the most 'non-Irish' accent possible, to differentiate themselves from them, to let people know purely by the sound of their speech that they aren't one of these new people who have come off the boats, we've been here since Time Immemorial! So I can imagine a pressure happening that causes components of a dialect to reflexively diverge away from those of the 'new crowd', and a rhotic dialect can become non-rhotic. And then many of the new immigrants (and even more so their children and grandchildren) will adapt their accents to fit in and be accepted, especially those 'higher' in the socio-economic structure. None of this should inform you on my own personal feelings about immigration and immigrants!
I think you may well be onto something there.
I think both linguistic innovation and opposition to it are natural phenomena and both deserve to be described. After all, if innovation skyrocketed and everyone spoke however he felt like it, people would stop understanding each other pretty quickly. Taking sides (change is always good, linguistic conservatism is wrong) is kinda prescriptive, isn't it?
I grew up in Southeastern MA, & there were so many distinct accents in the general area. I could understand a degree of someone's past, & a little about their personality through their accents. There was North of Boston, South of Boston, & various accents within the Boston area. Class differences were also pronounced - a nasal, heavily non-rhoticized accent was considered lower class in most cases. My parents, from different suburbs of Boston (Somerville & Dedham) had vastly different accents, so it was a little confusing - in fact now you wouldn't think my sister & I were related because our accents vary. It's actually fairly common for siblings from this area to have differing accents, mostly due to our friendships & schooling I would imagine.
I currently live in Florida, & it's always so comforting to hear any of the Boston area accents now - now & then I'll meet someone & feel "closer" to them or trust them somehow, then realize 15 minutes later that it's their familiar accent, then I can usually figure out where they're from...
Ok, but why did you guys decide to transform into birds?
@@webbess1 because we can. We are both animagi.
I remember growing up and watching old tv series. I thought everyone in the uk sounded like jean-luc picard (patrick stewart from star trek tng), sir humphrey and other characters from yes, minister, and a few old movies. The face vowel sounded much more american. Then i visit several years later and everybody uses the f-eye-s vowel foh [face] (even being more prevalent in modern rp, though not as drastic). Even modern rp sounds different than the rp from just 30-40 years ago. 😂
What caused that shift or was there a big conspiracy to hide the real british accents? 😂
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I think there was a big shift away from people wanting to sound upper class. Dr Geoff Lindsey has a great video on the topic. ua-cam.com/video/jIAEqsSOtwM/v-deo.htmlsi=fEYmkAkQEfcsg0T8
Boston English I think was influenced by both Irish and British English. After the American Revolution, Boston was an important trade city, and contact with non-rhotic British merchants was common. Then, Boston received massive waves of Irish immigration from 1840-1880, which influenced the a fronting before r, the cot-caught merger, and the unmerging of father-bother in that region.
Indeed. Thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't aware Boston merged COT and CAUGHT, so I've learned something!
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages the cot-caught merger has its presence in Boston and Western Pennsylvania as well, but it's pronounced differently than the west coast. In Boston it's closer to ɔ and in western Pennsylvania it's closer to ɒ.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages It is also worth looking into the lack of the 'horse-hoarse' merger in Boston and the same with Irish and Scottish accents.
@@ryanwani216 very good point. Quite a challenge since I’m not fluent in any of the accents that haven’t merged.
And I have heard that Norwich in Connecticut is still pronounced Norridge, although this is partially changing to Nor-witch these days.
In broad Norfolk, it’s Naaj.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages so it is 😁
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages My Dad's family were from slap bang in the middle of Norfolk, and you're totally right boy!
americanized, Italian, especially Sicilian or Neapolitan: you end up with pasta fazzool’, without the ending. I’m not Sicilian so I don’t know the actual pronunciation in classic Sicilian, dropping the A or U or I or O would qualify, wouldn’t it?
@@mesechabe it comes from the Neapolitan pasta e fasule.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages thank you!
Dave it has been a pleasure to see you guys collaborate. I’ve been surprised at how many people are teaching language and linguistics on UA-cam of all places, but Simon has never bored me. Your work is always interesting and entertaining.
@@mesechabe thanks - so glad you like it.
The explanation I've heard for southern nonrhoticity is that in languages like Yoruba and Akan there are no closed syllables at all and this resulted in extreme reduction of final consonants. African-Americans may even have nasal vowels through dropping of M or N.
Quite possible, though both Yoruba and Akan do have final nasals.
17:00
Why do you think aussies are fine with using words that cannot be used in the uk? I know if someone says theyre gonna use the toilet in the us, theyre looked at oddly, but in the uk and other countries with that translation (eg トイレ) its normal. Also, isnt the word that rhymes with punt but starts with a C a normal word in the uk, but considered a female slur of the youtube censoring kind?
Also, iirc, the word that rhymes with lackey but starts with p is fine in Australia and just seen as a demonym for pakistanis much like aussie is a demonym for australians, but in the uk it is a slur? Wth?
Note:
I learnt my English from a Japanese teacher, a Canadian and aussie JET, youtube and movies, and working in Texas 🤠
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It all very much depends on age, social class, gender, context etc. etc. Maybe Australia is in general a bit more accepting of taboo words but I don’t think by much. The c-word is still very taboo in the UK much more than the f-word. It’s true that Americans prefer euphemisms like bathroom restroom instead of toilet. When I was at university in northern England a friend from Kansas City was mocked by a train station employee for asking for the bathroom. He was told he couldn’t have a bath at the station. He instead asked for the restroom, only to be told he could rest anywhere he wanted.
Americans also don’t die. They ‘pass’.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguagesAt least us Yanks aren’t like those Canadians who say “washroom”.
:)
Wlaffing cf. waffling? 😁
😕
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages not you, I was just comparing one of the Old (or was it Middle) English words in that quotation
@@amandachapman4708 That was a confused emoji. I get it now - the monk. I guess he was writing Middle English, while complaining about people speaking Millde English.
Scotch Irish is APPALACHIA! boston? NO!
map at five min thirtie is RUBBISH nonsense
Quite enjoyable, but far, far too many filler “umm, erm” etc. which demonstrates someone either struggling with the accent or with cognition.
@@tidaljunk Lucky I’m not running for president. As for ‘struggling with the accent’….
Says the person with superfluous spacing and missing punctuation 🤠
@@DaveHuxtableLanguagesi didn't mean you... You sound wonderfully fluent in so many languages; a pleasure to listen to!