0:47 "Talk weird when someone is listening", now that's an accurate job description of a news anchor.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

I like it!

@frankgerace5997

Ай бұрын

I’m a news anchor, and you’re right!!

@gmcoates63

Ай бұрын

Talk weirdly

@frankgerace5997

Ай бұрын

@@gmcoates63 you kids today, with your proper English….🤣🤣

@scrappybobbarker5224

23 күн бұрын

Some bad preachers also do this.

General American is the guy who won the Vietnam War against the Taliban in Panama.

Listening to the accents change effortlessly when talking about different groups was seriously impressive.

I was born in Birmingham, England. I spoke thick Brummy. (From Bromwicham, the old name for Birmingham,) When I went to Grammar School, Received English was drummed into me. Then I went to Exeter University, where most of the inmates seemed to be from London, but my landlord and his wife spoke thick Devonian. My accent became mixed up. What was evident when I was at school is that people varied their accents depending on whom they were talking to. I later married a girl from Nebraska, and later still we moved to California, where I've been living for the last 44 years. I soon learned at work that speaking in a local accent didn't work. Somebody mentioned that I was comprehensible most of the time, but then I would receive a telephone call from England and my voice changed, as if I were speaking a different language, just as when I received a call from France I would change languages. My wife reckoned that each time I flew the Atlantic my speech would change half way across. Nowadays I'm perceived as English in California, and American in English, but I only have to spend a couple of weeks in Birmingham to become a Brummy again. One of the things that disturbs me is the way the subjunctive is almost gone in Britain, but heavily used in the USA. Whilst an English person would say, "It's important that it's done", and American will almost always say, "It's important that it be done". There is, of course, a big difference. "It's important that it's done" infers that it actually has been done, and the fact that it has been done is important.

@alanfbrookes9771

Ай бұрын

At one time I was living in Berkeley, California, not far from the university. A couple of students came to the door with pamphlets, and said, "What do you know about Proposition 8 ?" "Nuffink", said I. "What part of Birmingham do you come from?" they responded. I was impressed by their being able to recognise where I came from from just one word !

@SunofYork

Ай бұрын

@@alanfbrookes9771 I was checking out in Home Depot in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, and the check out guy said "Yorkshire". I asked him how he knew and he said he shared an apartment with a Yorkshire guy.. I thought I was neutral ! Been in the US 20 years.. When I visit Yorkshire I am (automatically), broader than the natives. Before I emigrated, I used to visit London all the time.... (investing 100 million), and I automatically spoke neutral English. Her indoors is Milwaukee. She is educated and doesn't say stuff like "Should of went"... Ignorant speech like that in the US is mostly south of the Mason Dixon line

That joke about the accent before the assassination have made my day!

Thanks for an unusually fact-based and hilarious video. Fun fact: in my hometown of Milwaukee, we're so German-influenced that we just say, "I'm coming over by you."

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

Ай бұрын

Glad you liked it. And thanks for the fun fact about Milwaukee.

As I South African, I almost laughed when a black lady told me that "we" including her and I, don't have an accent! I have an Afrikaans accent, and she had an accent which was influenced by her home language and Zulu!

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

I love it. Maybe Zulu-influenced Afrikaans is the true English accent after all.

@20chocsaday

Ай бұрын

No wonder. If you live near someone but don't interact very much you see the other person as a separate person in their own right.

@DavidSmith-vr1nb

11 күн бұрын

Creaky Blinder (and every other Welsh person) would beg to differ.

Katharine Hepburn is an interesting example of the “fake” mid-Atlantic accent, because she actually was an upper-class New Englander, and that was very likely her actual accent. There were certainly many other actors who did “fake it,” though, like Joan Crawford, who grew up in Texas

@ablestringer9063

2 ай бұрын

Then there's the reverse TA accent of Cary Grant, an Englishman who made himself sound more American.

@inbcetc3569

2 ай бұрын

TA accent kzread.info/dash/bejne/e4Bmr6xxorSXYqg.html

@GenerationNextNextNext

2 ай бұрын

I think he was saying the whole "Mid-Atlantic Accent" was fake in a sense because it wasn't a natural accent formulated from the environment, but actually "taught".

@leeprice133

Ай бұрын

​@@GenerationNextNextNextI would describe such a dialect as 'cultivated' rather than 'fake'

@blackpowder4016

Ай бұрын

In The Philadelphia Story Hepburn was trying to sound like a stuffy old-money Philadelphian. She couldn't entirely shake her Boston Brahman accent. She makes the same error in Stage Door where she's trying to sound Midwestern but doesn't get much farther west than Wellesley. For me, the classic Mid-Atlantic accent is Vincent Price, who actually grew up in Connecticut. Many people thought he was British.

What I love about English is, in this modern era, that we have constant contact with each other, and we evolve together. We learn some things from each other’s dialect, we copy each other’s expressions, and I am fully confident that we will have our individual Accents in the future, but we will continue to be connected and mutually intelligible.

Another interesting and entertaining video, thanks Dave. Love the humour you put in too.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it

@dancinggiraffe6058

2 ай бұрын

This is the first of your videos that I’ve seen, and I’m looking forward to watching more, since this one was so informative and entertaining. I loved your RP pusher! You also do very good American accents.

It's funny... when you said, "Port cities in North America remained in regular contact with England...", I was reminded that the phenomenon isn't gone and forgotten even lately. My dad was in the Royal Canadian Navy, sailing out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and quite often visited Britain in the 70s. Canadian sailors were constantly picking up new music from their travels there, mainly in southern England, and bringing it back with them, where it frequently wound up on local radio stations like CFDR and CJCH. There was a scrumpy band in Bristol, called The Wurzels, that enjoyed notable local popularity in Halifax-Dartmouth at the time. :)

The English that the English speak is called English, not British English. You can call it Standard English to distinguish it from the other dialects of English, which include for example Northumbrian English or US or Jamaican English or Californian English. British English is a misnomer: Scotland and Wales have their own languages, but use a variant of English as the main language. You could call it Scots English or Welsh English if it’s distinct from Standard English - otherwise just call it English. We don’t say “French French” or “Spanish Spanish” to distinguish the home language from variants used in other countries.

I'm in New Zealand, and before an American visitor or expat speaks six words or less you already know his or her country of origin. Everyone has an accent! I was especially enlightened by your expose of the British royal family's true accent. They have obviously been going to extraordinary efforts to disguise it.

@klingoncowboy4

Ай бұрын

Certain Americans give away their State of origin without even speaking... I remember years ago taking an H2S Alive course to work on an oil and gas site. There were two Texans in the course with us. Nice people but you could tell without even speaking to them. They held their bodies like their spines were solid bars of steel and their clothes were ironed and tucked in. All the Canadians in the course were messy and relaxed. But this makes sense as body language gives away a lot as well.

@NoNumbersAtTheEnding

Ай бұрын

How do you distinguish if they are American or Canadian though? They speak the same dialect and the accents are supposed to be indistinguishable to the untrained ear

@klingoncowboy4

Ай бұрын

@@NoNumbersAtTheEnding The regional variance across North America is very striking. Even within individual States or Provinces. For example the stereotypical "Canadian Accent" often depicted in US ans UK television is actually limited to Southern Ontario. The Martimes have there own and so does Newfoundland. Even in Alberta there are variations with a region commonly referred too as the "Borscht Belt" being distinct as there is a heavy influence of Eastern European, French Canadian, and Indigenous... they are known for using a slower tempo being soft spoken and struggling with th sounds often saying "dis une dat" rather than "this and that". With only minimal exposure to Americans and Canadians you can quickly pick it out.

@klingoncowboy4

Ай бұрын

That said I would expect that many Kiwis would mistake my Alberta accent as American. Much like how my Kiwi father gets mistaken for Austrialia, British, or even South African by Canadians.

@MichaelKingsfordGray

Ай бұрын

Mute folk don't have an accent.

I get that a lot of people haven't had opportunities to travel but the fantasy world you need to live in to think you 'don't have an accent' is amazing. And thinking that unfamiliar ones are made up? These people are being failed by basic education.

@OzCrusader

Ай бұрын

I remember, as a primary school child in Wagga Wagga NSW Australia, saying to my mother sometime in the late 1960s, “I hear all these people on the TV with accents. Why don’t we have an accent?” My mother told me that other people tell us we DO have an accent. I just shrugged and wandered off.

@theodorekorehonen

29 күн бұрын

The level of discourse on KZread comments is usually about as low as you can get. There are certainly people who believe it is possible to "not have an accent" though sadly

@anitapeludat256

20 күн бұрын

I was born and raised in the USA. I was very fortunate to have parents that loved to travel and this was back when simple two lane roads were the norm, before massive interstates. We met many people all over the USA that had far too many regional accents, even per state, to count. We have many more, in this day and age . Sometimes, understanding the USA, accents and other countries and cultures comes down to having the means to travel and meet many different people and cultures. My parents were highly frugal people of The great depression/WWII era. Therefore, they managed every penny, extremely well. Traveling was the very best education they could have given me and my two sisters.

I have enjoyed this video. I do think our modern communication has wiped out some of the odd accents I heard as a teenager, particularly in rural parts of the US. It is both inevitable and a bit of a shame.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

It is sad when accents are lost. New ones are being created too though.

@theodorekorehonen

29 күн бұрын

I agree. Linguistic evolution will never disappear but I think that isolation is what allows for a lot of divergence in language and of course the internet has made isolation ever more difficult. But you can't stop the march of time and I don't think it's useful to want to

This is interesting thanks. My family comes from Bristol UK. The older generation like my Grandmother born in the eighteen hundreds had a thick accent with many unique Bristolian words. I was surprised in the seventies to meet someone from Newfoundland who sounded Bristolian and even used some of the Bristolian slang. While the Bristolian accent is still identifiable the edges have been knocked off by the BBC.

@ajs41

Ай бұрын

I particularly like the pronunciation of licence that some people in Bristol use, where the "i" sound at the start is instead a "oi" sound.

What annoys me most is calling a toilet a bathroom when there's no bloody bath in it.

@johnclements6614

Ай бұрын

I heard a story on the radio a few years ago where this American women asked to use the bathroom. She was directed to a bathroom that just had a bath and washhand basin. Not wanting to explore or ask she attempted to pee in the washhand basin. She pulled it off the wall and hit her head. Not sure if true.

@scrimshank1

Ай бұрын

And then there is "washroom". I don't want to wash anything, just get rid of something.

@evanbartlett1

Ай бұрын

@@johnclements6614 I suppose the person who directed her learned a very important lesson about provincial cheek as they cleaned up a bunch of urine, blood and water before the plumber arrived to install a new sink.

@kyleelsbernd7566

29 күн бұрын

It’s an ironic euphemism. We don’t refer directly to the locus of stool. It’s a very traditional Brit example

@heronimousbrapson863

24 күн бұрын

Principal bathrooms in North American homes do, in fact, have baths or showers in them. Smaller ones don't and are frequently called "half baths".

I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the recordings of McKinley et al. as well your analysis of them. Well done!

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

Ай бұрын

Many thanks!

the one thing i’d add is about how most UK singers lose their accents when singing because they’re trained to, to appease an america centric market. as an aside bro doing the accents he’s talking about is a surprisingly helpful learning tool

@theodorekorehonen

29 күн бұрын

And it's amazing how well he can do so many of them. I'm horrific at emulating any accent but my own

Really great video, fascinating stuff.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Thank you!

Of course, rhymes often give evidence of changes in pronunciation. For example, some of the lines in Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas no longer rhyme because some of the a's remained "flat" while others "broadened." My favorite example is "Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes (broad a); bow, bow, ye tradesmen, bow ye masses (still flat). I wonder if the "broad" a was a slightly later development or whether it just spread to new words afterwards. (There is, of course, variation today in some words (e.g., "gather," "lather" and "mask").

“After not singlehandedly winning WWII, the United States…”😂

@davissae

Ай бұрын

Always gotta capture the urine from us Yanks 😂

@SunofYork

Ай бұрын

@@davissae I do it every night coz her indoors is Milwaukee. She has immense "patriotism" and the US cannot be criticized... They are the übermensch and all foreigners are untermensch... (except trumputin who is 50% British)..

Loved it! Great video, Dave. Thanks

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Glad to hear it.

Another solid video, Dave - great stuff! Making language engaging for all :)

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Thank you!

I have a very distinct West Coast American Accent--which, because of American movies and TV sounds 'neutral' to many Americans and ... American to everyone else. I really liked your historic reproductions of phonetics, especially that bit with Franklin. Bravo.

@Ev_deGallery

Ай бұрын

We don't have accents😂

@Cougar139tweak

Ай бұрын

Nah, I can spot West coast Americans, you guys always drag your vowels Okaaaaay instead of O-Kay, and many other words. You think you sound like "Baseline TV accent.........but so do New Yorkers, and we know that's BS!!!!

@alessandrorossi1294

16 күн бұрын

@@Cougar139tweakyea I’m from NY and when I studied abroad they told me “wow you talk exactly like they do on TV”

@byronhamilton8021

12 күн бұрын

I was raised on the West Coast and used to think the same thing, but it's not the case. I've lived in NH, FL, TX, and CA and even if everyone is speaking phonetically neutrally, they all have their region's way of emphasizing certain vowels at certain speeds in certain 'arcs'. I'm in New England now and most people here say they can hear I'm from Texas (or some sort of southern) just because of the canter and flow of my speech.

I really appreciated this video! Thanks a lot!🎉 The ending is hilarious!

Nicely done Dave!

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Thanks!

This video is great and is both funny and enlightening. I liked the D-iD segment!

Thanks for the good information and subtle humor. 🙂

@cyberpotato63

2 ай бұрын

Not sure I'd call the humor "subtle". Quite a hoot, if you ask me.

Loved this video, Dave!

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Glad to hear it.

This is the first of your videos I’ve seen. I’m looking forward to seeing more. This is very informative and highly entertaining. I loved the RP pusher! And you did a very good job with the American accents.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

Ай бұрын

Awesome, thank you!

that redcoat sketch really caught me off guard 😂

You make this highly intense educational video and then put a cherry like that at the very end. Bless you so much. I loved it.

I enjoyed every second of this. Thanks.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

Ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it and nice to hear from you.

Finally a real life Huxtable. The first time I heard the surname Huxtable was in the 1980s when I was watching Cosby Show. The Huxtables were an upper middle class family of seven. A mother, a father and their five children living in Brooklyn. The father was an obstetrician and the mother was an attorney. The reason why the show was ground breaking was due to the family being of African descent and the show was a positive spin of the African descendant family.

Thanks for another interesting and fun and funny video. Thanks for all the weird points of view you quoted. Keep up the excellent work xxx

I’ve always found the assertion that everyone’s singing accent is American to be ridiculous. No American sings with the accent in which they speak. It’s so silly how people convince themselves that they do.

Long but informative video. Definitely worth the reveal at the end!

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Glad you liked it!

excellent ... thanks for posting this

The Bard must have been a very naughty boy, inventing all those newfangled words.

@rsmcroberts

Ай бұрын

Well, he did incorporate several jokes about rape in his accent.

Very well done video. Happy I found your channel. I am from NYC. We nearly have our own version of English.

Very informative and you got quite a few laughs out of me. Bravo!

Glad I found your channel. Also happy you mentioned children. I remember as a boy asking my mother why we were the only ones who didn't have an accent. I also, as a boy in the USA watched my favorites, Laurel and Hardy. I didn't realize until I was an adult that Laurel was from England and had an English accent. I'm still not sure about Hardy's accent. It sounds Northern to me even though he was from Georgia. In fact he pronounced words like "first" sounding like "foist". At least in his comedies.

28:58 - I should note that this is not merely a linguistic difference but an allusion to a specific satellite system. The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the USA’s government-owned and operated satellite navigation system, while “satnav” is just an abbreviation for the generic term “satellite navigation system”. It’s similar to the Xerox/Band-aid/Jello example you give a bit later, but referring specifically to the system only used in the US.

@reprapmlp

Ай бұрын

ehh, the [US operated] GPS constellation is used by more than just the US; some modern "satnav" devices can listen to GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, QZSS, etc. as well as GPS to get a better fix

I so loved this discourse. I was reminded of my father who ostensibly had what was called a "Standard Midwestern Radio Accent." As the eldest of a multilingual family, I continue to have an inadvertently mimicking ear (caught myself with an Irish intonation after listening to a long audiobook, for instance). But I digress. My father said that one day he looked up from his breakfast newspaper to wonder how his daughters came to sound like Black children. Indeed AAVE must have made its way from our ears to our mouths. When I spend any time with my S. Carolina sister, I revert to that time, say my Canadian friends, though, to my American friends, I sound Canadian. My French grand-mère defended me from my maman's lamentations over a blooming Joual accent.

@ruthmiale1239

2 ай бұрын

I used to pick up accents in a flash. Someone told me-- that's a talent! Cultivate it, work at it, and you can use it in Community Theater!

@reprapmlp

Ай бұрын

@@ruthmiale1239 apparently we Australians have a "neutral palate" and thus find accents easy ...

@robinholland1136

Ай бұрын

@@ruthmiale1239 Similar with me. Born in Liverpool, brought up largely in Yorkshire, lived in France and Wales and find that, depending on which of these locations I'm in, my accent changes. Not deliberately or consciously, but simply because I sort of 'tune in' to whatever I'm hearing and find myself mirroring accent and intonation.

@polyglotpress

Ай бұрын

@@reprapmlp That's amazing...

@polyglotpress

Ай бұрын

@@robinholland1136 You have such a good way of putting it. I've had to stand up in an auditorium of so-called scholars to defend an artist (who was featured in a film) who derided him for ostensibly "putting on" the speech of his original Appalachian village after having "adapted" a more urban pronunciation and syntax. Most of them unilingual, inexperienced, and probably triggered by another aspect of his work without the courage to address it.

This was thoroughly entertaining and informative. I am a South African from the city of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. The British established a fort there in the late 1700s, but the White population were mostly Afrikaans-speaking. (I'm calling it Afrikaans because the language had already significantly diverged from Dutch) in 1820, a large group of mostly working class British settlers arrived there. I have noticed similarities between your reconstructed working class English accent form the 18th century, Simon Roper's upper-class London accent from the early 1800s, and the current local South African English in Port Elizabeth.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Fascinating! I’d love to come and check it out some day.

amazing video, gonna have to rewatch this several times to learn everything! also, those comments sure do make people's ignorance evident! LOL

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it.

The "standard" American accent, as I've been told, originated in radio, imposing a national standard for broadcasting. Most people don't talk in that accent. I'm glad you mentioned the "TransAtlantic" accent, which I've sometimes seen called (incorrectly) a "mid-Atlantic" accent. (Mid-Atlantic, to folk in the US, means that area of the Atlantic seaboard from New York to Delaware or Maryland.) Back in the 1960s and 1970s, there were efforts towards what is now called "accent neutralization" in government schools. The idea was to replace or minimize regional accents (such as the "flat 'a'" in New York City regional accents) and alternative pronunciations (such as the fricative "f" in place of the interdental unvoiced "th" used in AAVE and also in some English accents - you'll hear this when the Duke of Sussex speaks). It had us 10- and 11-year-olds making fun of the Speech teacher, who - based on what I've learned since - was trying to mold us into that "TransAtlantic" accent as opposed to the "General American" that, depending on whose story you're listening to, may have derived from Iowa or from California... Given your ease with replicating accents, I'm pretty sure your daughter was just echoing back what she heard as being appropriate for her age. I grew up on Long Island and went to uni in the Boston area. New York metro area students quickly learned to adopt Boston-area accents and lingo to avoid being discriminated against by the natives, as the Boston-area economy of the time was largely dependent upon the university population, whose demand for goods and services hiked up prices and decreased availability of goods and services for the native population (I have since been calling it a "tourist economy", as it is similar to the love-hate relationship tourist area residents have with the tourists who bring in money but cause prices to rise)... I cannot replicate an accent "on demand", but put me in an area for more than a few minutes and I'm echoing back that accent... without intention, since I don't want to be perceived of as "making fun" of a local accent, and as I tell anyone who'll listen, I can be caught out in a trice by my unfamiliarity with local terminology.

@chrisnorton4382

Ай бұрын

To British people, a 'transatlantic' accent would be 'across' the Atlantic [trans=across in Latin], i.e. an American accent. A hybrid, half and half accent with elements from both sides of the ocean (e.g. Katharine Hepburn or Cary Grant) is thus (to the British) logically called a mid-Atlantic accent. Unfortunately, as you say, Americans already use the term mid-Atlantic for something else. So the term is definitely not incorrect in Britain, but is in the USA. Just one of those transatlantic differences :)

Very informative and entertaining. Thanks

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Glad you found it so. Thank you!

Brilliant as usual!

Surprise surprise. Things are more complicated than they at first appear. Very interesting- Thank you for your effort!

Great video. People will argue about anything and everything.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Glad you like it.

This is your best yet! Hilarious what some people think 😂 I especially like the AI bits with the British soldiers and the King and Queen. Well done.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Wow. Thank you!

Great video with awesome information, and so funny!

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Thank you!

Absolutely enjoy your accents and the historical background. Just fascinating and so interesting. Thanks very much. Some of mom’s family came from Dorset.

I love the animations! Lol!

I love the way language moves and changes to take on new concepts and new cultural phenomena.

I enjoyed this video very much. Excellent work.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it

This was splendid! Thank you.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

You nailed the origin of the mid-Atlantic accent in Pennsylvania. However, the origin of the New England accent is also complex. Between 1620 to 1640 the Great Migration of British people emigrated to New England. We don't have exact figures, but somewhere between 20,000 to 40,000 people left the UK for New England. What we do know about those people is that about half were from the Westlands, and the other half were from East Anglia and Lincolnshire, with smaller numbers from the rest of England. So if you can imagine such diverse accents in the 1600s being thrown into a blender, resulting in the New England accent. When I here people from the midlands, I hear them dropping the final g from gerunds and certain vowels that are common in American English. But also when I hear farmers from East Anglia and Lincolnshire, I hear certain qualities or terms that are typical of American English. And English itself is such a blend/leveling of Norman French and Anglo-Saxon, which happened in a relatively short time. The blending of such a diverse range of accents explains why in general American we pronounce butter they way we do. It's between the glotal sound that people of the Westlands use, and the frontal upper dental sound that people from East Anglia use. It's sort of like a d sound, but it isn't either. The general American d is articulated with the top of the tip of the tongue pressing up against the palate, where as the sound vocalized for butter is usually articulated with the tongue tip barely touching the palate. If you pronounce butter as budder, that sounds strange to our ears. The sound in butter is softer. In fact, sometime I notice that I don't even touch the palate with the tip of the tongue for that sound. Of course regional accents in the States will pronounce butter differently. Language is sooooo complex. If there were only two people in the world, they would not talk exactly the same. We use language to both blend in and distinguish ourselves, depending on context. Also, during the 1660s quite a few of the new immigrants where of strong religious convictions and so made a choice not to use certain English words in America. Hence the term rooster was invented to use instead of cock. This religious affect on language happened across all the thirteen colonies. Strong religious convictions affected social norms, such as not talking while eating dinner, or addressing people with the title Sir and Ma'am.

wonderful presentation

FABULOUS video: fascinating AND a hoot! 👍👍

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

Ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it

Great video. I love your accent work here! My dad was 13 when he came to America from Egypt with his parents and younger brothers (12 and 3) in 1962. My dad strove to be American so much, he almost completely lost his Arabic accent. My uncle, who was 15 months younger than my dad, eventually studied political science, embracing his multinational linguistic heritage, combining Egyptian Arabic, French, and Armenian with American English, into what I describe as "Posh British". It's quite fantastic, actually, how differently they spoke, and how interesting that we're able to change accents after decades of speaking a certain way.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a lot of the gripe with American English is the fact that it seen as taking over without giving anything back. This is largely since TV and films became mainstream, and especially since the internet as we know it became mainstream. Makes sense seeing as the majority of people speaking English on these platforms are American either by design or by chance. Naturally, kids spending a lot of time watching TV and being online will pick up more on American English, rather than the British English their parents speak. By itself, people don't find an issue. The bigger issue (as some see it) is that American English seems to take over, yet does not seem to adopt any quirks of British English in return.

@TerryMcKennaFineArt

2 ай бұрын

Well what quirks would you suggest?

@Dave5400

2 ай бұрын

@@TerryMcKennaFineArt I wasn't especially advocating whether or not it was a bad thing that US English encroaches into UK English. All I was saying is that it is seen by some that US English "infiltrates" UK English (e.g. by replacing words like biscuit for cookie, or adopting US spellings) while at the same time, I can't off hand think of any UK expressions or words that have caught on across the pond. As to your question, I really couldn't say. At the end of the day, language should evolve organically by the natural mixing of cultures, and not because certain words and phrases are foisted upon people.

@naufalzaid7500

2 ай бұрын

@@Dave5400 ​​⁠ Some UK words that have “infiltrated” US English that come to mind are “spot-on”, “dodgy”, “one-off”, and “ginormous”. British English is still definitely receiving more American English words than American English is receiving British English words though

@freneticness6927

Ай бұрын

​@@Dave5400America barely ever created any words. Essentially all of the words they use are words that predate the colonization of the usa. Not that many conpletely new words have been created in the last 100 years. The word meme was created by richard dawkins so thats one. And I think internet was aswell.

@freneticness6927

Ай бұрын

​@@Dave5400I cant think of almost any words created in the usa at all.

It is curious that the way Roosevelt pronounces "T" reminds me of the way that people of India pronounce it .

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

That’s true.

@lilamdahal6119

2 ай бұрын

Similarity: Lack of aspiration Difference: Indians' T's and D's are retroflex

@lilamdahal6119

2 ай бұрын

Similarity: Lack of aspiration Difference: Indians' T's and D's are retroflex.

@dancinggiraffe6058

2 ай бұрын

Audrey Hepburn used unaspirated T and P. I thought it made her speech sound constricted.

You said you would do it and you did it! I loved the ending lol. 👁️ 🦎 Looks like you are in SoCal. Would be nice to lunch with you if you’re ever in L.A. My treat

Quite enjoyable indeed. 😉

I love this topic, but overall I find it strange that anyone is surprised that a different dialect of English formed in America. How could anything else have happened?

In Canada, I find both US and UK English to be quirky. Because of immigration patterns in English speaking areas, migrants came from the US first, UK later and other parts of Europe and the rest of the world, we bias towards American English for some things and UK English for other items and both are acceptable. It makes it challenging to keep writing internally consistent.

Thank you!

That was very interesting, thank you. I live in the US and I am a sort of an English Geek and it was my college major. I live in the south and there is a lot of R dropping going on. I love our language, its beauty, history and anything else interesting. What does it matter what an accent is like or what we do with the letter R, as long as we can and do understand each other, enjoy reading each other's books and consume media and TV shows. However North America is the big boy on the block with hundreds of millions of American/Canadian accents going on. Love how English is lingua franca

Great video! Minor tangential question: at 34:26, you say “[RP is] clearly very closely related to the local accents of university cities like London, Oxford and Cambridge”, but the relation seems a bit less clear to me. For example, many of the characteristics of modern Cambridge(shire) speech derive from Cockney (similarly to modern Essex and Kent speech), but presumably this influence only came after the RP that Jones described, so I'm a bit fuzzy on how people in Cambridge would have spoken at the time (my guess is something close to what we think of as an East Anglian “farmer” accent today). Also, to suggest that universities were relevant to the development of RP would seem to suggest either 18- to 22-year-old students picking up features from porters and shopkeepers and so on in their brief time there, or the relatively small number of academics and their families having huge influence over RP-speakers (after having themselves picked up local features). I think what's clear is that RP shares a lot of features with local south-eastern English varieties; the specific association with university towns is less clear.

@ablestringer9063

2 ай бұрын

Stephen Fry has a Cambridge University acccent, and I've known several Cantabrigian scholars over the years with the exact same way of speaking. Locals in Cambridgeshire (I live there, in exile from Norfolk!) to me have a very defined Suffolk pronunciation mixed in with a bit of London and even sometimes I detect a Midland intonation in the mix too. To someone with tin ears, certain people from the area sound almost Australian.

Top job.

Another great video. Your Benjamin Franklin sounds really Scottish/ Welsh. Is that really what he would have sounded like? Maybe he would have ? Just surprised me. I expected him to sound more east Anglian or west country. But I believe your interpretation.

This is such a cool video

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Thank you!

Hilarious ending 😂

I’ve recently found myself following Jimmy Carr to 8 Out of Ten Cats and from there I’ve broadened my interests in the various British (born or transplanted) comics. The various accents blow my mind. Listening to Henning Wehn’s German accent applied to English terms, some of which actually sound more English accent influenced in cases that the pronunciations are noticeably different from American English, always catch my ear. Not directly connected except by KZread algorithm, Scottish comic Larry Dean has an amazing ability to bounce between accents.

Easy my guy. Love the video. First time watching. I'm from West Yorkshire, and not sure most people outside of WY could tell, but Its kinda easy to tell what part of WY someone is from. I'm from Halifax, and can seriously distinguish a Bradford accent from ours. And HX folk living super west of the county, Hebden Bridge/ Todmorden, for example, actually speak with both Yorkshire and Lancashire accents. Not sure what is it like nowadays, but the Yorkshire and Lanc accent would be separated and would change at one row of houses between HB and Tod. Despite being in Yorkshire, the Lanc accent very much starts in Yorkshire. A good way before the Yorks/Lanc border. And speaking of accents, I really can't place you. Obvs south of Yorkshire. I can almost hear a West Midlands twang from time to time. Great video brother. Peace out from HXWY

A PBS show, form the 60s, The Story of English, has a film of kids talking that are in high class school in England and then compares to the same school with kids from the 60s and there is a big change in accents and word usage.

Great video. The myth that "American English is 17th century British English" seems to be based solely on rhoticity, as if that was the only difference between modern General American and RP/most modern accents of England. Despite the fact that modern General American pronounced without postvocalic /r/ still wouldn't sound like anything remotely resembling any modern British accent. And the fact that there are still plenty of rhotic accents in Britain, which don't sound anything like modern American English. There are recordings available online of the Survey of English dialects that was done in the 1950s of elderly rural speakers born in the late 19th century, many with rhotic accents in places where you wouldn't here them today, like Kent. They don't sound anything like modern General American.

@DavidSmith-vr1nb

11 күн бұрын

Are you pushing to get "hear" replaced with "here"? What are we going to use for "in this place"? I don't think I want to say that every time.

Im an American who descended from English settlers. I love this sort of video. Im homesick for England even though I've never been.

Lots of good things here, one interesting thing is that the biggest group of settlers was from Southeast England and indeed, most dialects of English spoken around the world are ultimatley descended from Southeastern English (Appalachia as you say due to the Ulster Scots influence is different).

What a fab video, Dave, a true delight! -- thanks so much! How's this for a thought experiment? Queen Elizabeth I spoke with what sounds, to our ears, like a West Country accent. Today that's an accent with 'exotic' associations to some people. How might 2024 RP (whether Colin Firth or Keira Knightley) have struck upper-class Londoners in 1600? With more non-rhotic r's, fewer broad vowels, and less H-dropping, would it have come across as less lively? Perhaps more inhibited, more buttoned-down? (As a speaker of the world's most monochromatic accent, Standard Canadian English, I find other anglophone accents endlessly fascinating!)

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

23 күн бұрын

So glad you liked it. An interesting scenario indeed.

Fantastic accents ! Talented !

The way Benjamin Franklin spoke reminds me of the spoken part of the song Atlantis by Donovan.

I believe that one of those regional dialect polls available on the net shows that "Will you come with?" is considered acceptable in the Upper Midwest, where German and Scandinavian immigration dominated, but not so much in the rest of the US. The recordings of US Presidents from around the turn of the 20th century were very interesting. I don't believe I've heard any audio of Presidents prior to Franklin Roosevelt, who spoke distinctly with a mid-Atlantic accent. I was raised in Minnesota, then attended graduate school in New Jersey, and was struck by how British the older faculty who grew up in the northeast sounded. Although most of my professors were of foreign origin, with corresponding accents. Only the department secretary had the stereotypical Joisy accent.

A bluff is not s riverbank. It is akin to a very low cliff and does not necessarily overhang a river. Thank you for a delightful learning experience.

Flippin ek that Charles went all lizard like scared me so much.

Wonderful again.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

20 күн бұрын

Thank you!

Zinc became Sink, zinc use as a coating on steel so it did not rust. I was told that because many people bought Frigidaire refrigerators when they first came out, that name was later shorten to Fridge, and is were the D came from. Being born in Philly and also 75 now, and then going into the Air Force and becoming a Vietnam War Vet, it is hard for me to hear many different accents unless they are really strong or I really listen to hear them. As for plots to change accents, I'm with you. Languages change all the time. Many people need plots because it makes things that happen normally, look like they are controlled and/or designed. It would not surprise me that even American Native languages have changed some since the Europeans landed and were changing before that.

Yank here. I have lived in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Illinois, and spent a good bit of time in other states across the country. This is anecdotal, but I tend to hear a lot of folk, but not all, say 'restroom' or 'mens/womens' room if they are referring to a lavatory in a store, at a gas station (petrol station), or in other public places. In a private home, the majority seem to call all rooms with a toilet a bathroom, even if there isn't a bath. I have also heard it called 'the facilities' sometimes. Mostly, when out and about, people seem to ask for a mens or womens room. Some female octogenarians, with proper old-fashioned manners, call it the 'power room'.

@stevelknievel4183

Ай бұрын

This resonates with my experience of travelling to New England (from the old one) in 2006. I worked out this bathroom/restroom split over the course of 3 weeks being there.

@dmikewilcox

Ай бұрын

@@stevelknievel4183 Interesting. Except spending a weekend visiting a Hutterite Bruderhof, in the very cold winter, I have only been a few times. I have spent time out East coast, the Midwest, down South, and out in the South West. I really need to visit there and the North West.

@stevelknievel4183

Ай бұрын

@@dmikewilcox To be fair while I was in New England I spent most of my time with college students who came from all over the country.

@dmikewilcox

Ай бұрын

@stevelknievel4183 I grew up the son of a university professor, and spent a lot of time on campus growing up, and attended there for university, and also we had international students from India and Africa living with us some semesters. The student body was incredible diverse. That sort of thing does tend to make one realize that others have had different circumstances and experiences. Were you a student or faculty?

@stevelknievel4183

Ай бұрын

@@dmikewilcox I was a student at the time but at a university in the UK. I came to the US as a part of a short term Christian mission project that visited Dartmouth College for 3 weeks back in summer 2006.

The biggest problem with judging accents from public speeches is that it is a performance. I would prefer to listen to more casual discussions.

@DavidSmith-vr1nb

11 күн бұрын

Casual discussions were seldom recorded back when sound recording was a new and expensive thing. You aren't going to get much prior to 1930 or thereabouts.

@kozzy18

11 күн бұрын

@@DavidSmith-vr1nb I know. They didn’t do a whole lot of man on the street interviews until television became popular and even then, they didn’t keep the film.

Simon Roper has done some really amazing videos that explain how both British and US accents evolved over time.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Simon and I are talking about doing a video together.

@starknight103

29 күн бұрын

​@@DaveHuxtableLanguageswhat will the video be about.

Interesting subject, has always fascinated me. And I think from the music angle, even English people sing with an ameriçan accent because it is so rounded, making the words smoother and easier to understand. Only on a few occasions is singing such as folk music ? Better with an English accent.

Of Something that always jars with me is the seeming excessive use of “of” in US English. All too often, I find I can take a passage (anything from a phrase to a tome) in US English and remove at least 50% of the occurrences of “of” rendering it much more acceptable, and being able to do that without loss of meaning. How big a problem is it? How big of a problem is it? But leaving it in some constructions: How much of a problem is it? Obviously that applies to the ear-offending “off of” though that is just a particular example. My personal rule is always to check use of “of”. If it is not absolutely necessary, remove it. Mind, after so many years I rarely use an excess “of” to start with. Medicine Trade Names The USA seems always to use the brand name, the trade mark name of medicines. One example is Cytomel - the first USA medicine based on the active ingredient liothyronine. Everywhere in US language they refer to Cytomel - whether the branded product or a generic. Just occasionally you see “the generic for Cytomel”. More often leaving it undefined which they are referring to. In the UK, at almost exactly the same time, we got Tertroxin - also the trade mark for a make of liothyronine. But use of that brand name had faded even while Tertroxin was the only branded product available in the UK. Now there are several generic products, and Tertroxin was debranded a few years ago, the name is hardly ever seen. Liothyronine is pretty much universal. But it doesn’t seem to only be marketing. Nor the advent of widespread generic prescribing. Nor even the worldwide adoption of recommended internal non-proprietary names. It always looks as if in the UK we are more aware of the brand name being applicable only to that company’s product.

Yes the thing about children mimicing their peers is often very funny. We grew up in a neighbourhood with lots of kids, and one family had some kind of genetic thing where the kids all had cleft palates and talked a bit funny due to that. Over time some younger kids started mimicing their speech and dropping the same consonants they did, forming like a unique mini-dialect :D I'm sure their parents were thrilled.

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

Ай бұрын

That’s a cool example of how new language varieties form.

I'm cracking up! 🤣

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

Glad to hear it.

That ending tho 🤣

Ok yes American English is not a fossil. But it does contain elements that reveal its roots in speech that diverged from British usage centuries ago. Thus when Shakespeare rhymes are looked at, some make more sense if we don't use current British speech. One fossil is the pronunciation of "R" which differs from London. In any case the story of English is complicated. The real mystery of the Engish language is that the bulk of English speakers can easily understand each other rather than developing distinct dialects (except in places like Scotland).

@DaveHuxtableLanguages

2 ай бұрын

I think mostly even in Scotland. Shakespeare had some features closer to modern American and others closer to modern British.

@JustMe-dc6ks

2 ай бұрын

Every accent keeps different parts and makes different changes and additions.

@tantuce

23 күн бұрын

​@@DaveHuxtableLanguages I'm near B'ham and Shakespeare rhymes just right in Black Country accent.

So enjoyed the comments from US citizens., so very incisive. Genuine chuckles from me while watching your response.😅