So, I was in Center City the other day as a pre-revolutionary “loyal subject of the crown” when a group of school kids, who being teenagers know everything…, when one of them starts snarking in a cockney accent that I don’t talk like a Britton. Let’s set the record straight. People from Philadelphia, DON’T speak with accents from the British Isles! We’re kind of proud of that, even those of us who have non-North East patterns of speech and diction. We never have and we never will.
Americans speak a distinct version of English. Despite its similarities with British English (the so called “Queen’s[i] English) is not the same language. American English is the new “lingua franca[ii]” of the world. So, don’t go telling me I speak an inferior or improper English. Above all, don’t tell me I should adopt a non-rhotic pronunciation to sound authentic. It’s simply not true.
Americans inherited their native language as a result of British colonization, but from the beginning the language spoken in North America was began to diverge from the what was spoken in Britian. New dialects were introduced as immigrants from Germany, France, Spain, Africa, the Netherlands, and Sweden became integrated into our communities in the Americas. As the people moved westward, American Indian words and patterns of speech were assimilated into our language. By 1700, it was easy to spot someone who was a new immigrant from England as they talked funny.
So, back to the kid with the non-rhodic Rs. Rhotacism is the pronunciation of the letter “r”. Americans and Germans tend to have a “hard” r which is clearly enunciated with a “ruh” sound. Speakers of Latin languages tend to have an elongated or “rolled” r with a “RRRRuh” best achieved by flailing the tongue against the teeth. Finally, there are the non-rhodic speakers most commonly seen in British Standard English, and to a lesser degree in Boston, where the r is silent with words like card sound more like cahd, star more like stah.
During the American Revolution, non-rhotic speech came into use among the British elite. They wanted to distinguish themselves from other commoners hence cultivated the prestigious non-rhotic pronunciations to demonstrate their new status. This stereotypical “posh” British accent, also called “Received Pronunciation,” is a relatively recent phenomenon. In a funny way, standard American English is more traditionally English than the English spoken by the British aristocracy.
Of course, then there are regional accents. As immigrants settled in America, they brought with them a unique interpretation of Traditional American English. Germans spoke English with more guttural nasal tones and with the clipped speech patterns. Scandinavian immigrants brought complex vowel pronunciations and slurring of consonant groups. Yiddish-speaking Jews, of course, brought all sorts of new words and numerous turns of phrases into English. Slaves, especially from West Africa, often spoke their own dialects with differing word usages, simplified verb conjugations, and patterns of speech with eventually led to African American Vernacular English. Each ethnic and even social group added their own twist to spoke creating a melting pot of speech and nowhere was that more common than the fourth largest city in the British Empire – Philadelphia.
Like today when you can hear American English spoken with a Southern or a Minnesota accent, you hear New Yorkers routinely add a little Italian “ah” at the end of words, or folks from Baltimore skip a few syllables in the word; Americans of the 18th Century spoke their own Non-British version of England. Similar evolutions occurred in Hong Kong, India, Australia, and New Zealand. We have always been and will forever be “…people divided by a common language.”
So, give up on asking a German Jewish former Texan who routinely speaks five languages and lives in Philly[iii], to speak like a BBC correspondent. It’s meshugana. It ain’t happening. That dog won’t hunt. Es ist völlige Dummheit! I speak like an American and am damn proud of it.
[i] I’m not yet ready to shift from over 70 years of Elizabeth II to the new “king Chuck.” Perhaps we’ll get a new king before I have to accept this reality. (That’s not treason, by the way, I am NOT British; I just paly one on the battlefield and in the pub).
[ii] Although at points in history French took on this role just as American English does today, lingua franca does not refer to French. In fact, it was probably originally something like German (the language of the Franks). Lingua is from the Italian for ‘a language’. Franca is literally ‘Frankish.’ Lingua Franca is ‘language of the Franks’. During the late Byzantine Empire, Franks was a term that applied to all Western Europeans and lingua franca was a language regularly used for communication between people who do not share a native language.
[iii] NOT Philadelphia — PHILLY!
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Michael Carver -- Historical Interpreter/Reenactor 