Thar's a storm a-brewin' off to the west. Yargh (or whatever that sound is they always have old-time mariners make in movies).
Speaking of which, who came up with the notion that people in the 17th and 18th centuries talked like that? And when did people stop having English accents?
I probably said this already, but I brought this up in my high school civics class and was slapped down by the teacher. It had probably never occurred to him that colonial people did not speak regular "American." But ... !
I got this from the site antimoon.com, which looks to be a site for linguists: Some linguists believe that the American English of Maine may be the closest to what general American Colonial English sounded like before the Revolutionary War. This is because the people of Maine were very isolated. They had few contacts with Boston and New York and none to speak of with Canada despite the close proximity.
Also, apparently, both British English and American English have changed a lot in 250 years, with linguists believing that British English has changed the most in that time.
So maybe the colonists spoke more like we do today than people in England do today. "Hey, dude, you know, like, John Adams is coming over to, you know, like, talk about the Declaration of Independence ... you know?"
I sure wish my teacher had at least looked it up and given a reasonable answer to my query.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
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i would assume it would be quite the opposite, since most colonials were from england. it would seem to me that they would have spoken like the british until a few generations passed after the revolution.
That's what I would have assumed also, Ben. Of course, it's all conjecture. I wonder if we today would even understand their spoken words?
Thinking about this kind of stuff takes up a lot of my time ...
The revolution would have had little to do with it. The accent and the words used would have started changing as soon as a person left England. I believe it is deepest Appalacia that is considered to have the language that has changed the least. Check out the best book I've read recently: "Albion's Seed" (http://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-America/dp/0195069056/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214964147&sr=8-1)
Something I missed on first reading... Just why should your teacher had looked it up? Were you blind or crippled? Couldn't you have gone to the library?
Because he did not know and it was obvious he didn't give a shit! Even if I had gone and found out myself (which I kind of did, only not in this detail), he should have done something, don't you think?
Or even if he had opened it up for discussion in the class (a good way to get around the fact that you don't know the answer)... it would have stimulated all of us to think about it. As it was, it pissed me off and most everyone else just assumed he was an asshole and made fun of him (the most popular theory for his lackluster teaching methods was the fact that male teachers could get out of the draft).
And my high school did not have a library, that I recall. It was a bad, bad school (lost its accreditation the year after I graduated).
Added to that was the fact that we lived way out in the country and I rode to school in a bus and the public library was ... don't remember there being one of those, either, although there must have been one, somewhere.
Funny, I remember going to the library a lot when I was in elementary school - in another town.
My parents had tons of books (fiction, non-fiction and reference) and always bought us tons of books, btw. Which is partly the reason I was educated enough to get into the Univ. of Michigan despite my h.s. being so bad.
And no, I also don't recall being blind or crippled at any point in my adolescence!
I don't subscribe to that "go look it up yourself" method of teaching a child. When my nieces or nephews ask me a question I answer it if I can, and if I can't, then we go look it up together.
It would have been much better, I think, for him to have opened a discussion or just admitted he did not know and suggest we ALL look it up and report back. In the non-existent library.
That would have been much more stimulating to our young minds.
Oh, and I agree the Revolution would have had little to do with it (although I believe I once read somewhere that there was a concerted effort to change the diction(ary) starting with Webster, so as to disconnect further from the 'motherland'- that was in the 1800s, though).
But I think it probably must have taken a while in places that were concentrations of people from the same area of England, or the Continent.
The thesis of Albion's Seed is that there were four unique settlements of America from England.
- New England from East Anglia,
- VA/NC/SC from Southwest,
- Mid-Atlantic from the center,
- Appalachia from the North.
Each group had its own customs, folkways, and dialect. And, traces of them can still be found in the four American regions today.
It's a very interesting book.
I should have put a smiley on my sarcastic comment. I was a real loner (mainly because there were no peers withing walking/bike-riding distance). As a result, I spent most of my time buried in books which, in the long run, was probably a good thing. :-)
Dick,
No smiley was necessary! I only took offense for about an hour ... of course, I spent that hour kicking the cat around the living room, pretending he was you. ;)
Seriously, though, I also spent most of my time buried in books, which is always a good thing, IMHO.
I received a comment via email, from Bob Gould, in which he writes of the "colonial lag" phenonenon, in which a colony's linguistic usage stays closer to that of the "mother country" ... is fairly widespread. I remember the Portsmouth Herald referring to the "quaint Elizabethan patois" spoken in Seabrook not so long ago. And Icelanders can easily read, so I am told, the Norse sagas dating from around 1000. I believe the phenomenon is found in many languages and dialects (Quebecois, for example). Googling "colonial lag" will reveal more information than I care to plow (or, should I say, plough) through ...
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