It’s the Brits who have it wrong

Lately I’ve started to become interested in language. Not grammar or punctuation or any of that nonsense, but raw language itself. So I was fascinated to learn today that the modern American accent is actually closer to traditional English than the modern English accent. Apparently, the R sound was dropped in the local London accent around 200 years ago (probably due to the diverse population), a change which then spread across most of the rest of Britain as well as the later colonies such as Australia. Already independent and isolated from the rest of the civilized world, America at the time had a less diverse society that was therefore less disposed to evolve, and didn’t change.

So as it turns out any British friends you might have that complain about how we Yanks have murdered their fair language have got it backwards. We Americans kept Elizabethan English more or less pure. It’s the Limies who went and screwed it all up.

Tags: fun