Which accent is closest to Old English?
I do know that according to some linguists, the language that theoretically sounds the closest to Old English (also known as Anglo-Saxon) is not English at all; it's Frisian.
Yesterday i came across a Vsauce youtube video and according to the video, The General American Southern Accent is much closer to the old English accent than the British Received Pronunciation accent.
As a result, although there are plenty of variations, modern American pronunciation is generally more akin to at least the 18th-Century British kind than modern British pronunciation. Shakespearean English, this isn't.
British English (BrE) or Anglo-English is the standard dialect of "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere".
The British Library has completed a new recording of 75 minutes of The Bard's most famous scenes, speeches and sonnets, all performed in the original pronunciation of Shakespeare's time. That accent sounds a little more Edinburgh — and sometimes even more Appalachia — than you might expect.
The British Accent
The Great British accent proved to be the most difficult of all the accents to imitate – along with the regional Yorkshire and co*ckney pronunciations, in particular.
R.P. The accent of the Home Counties area (the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex) is closest to what people call Queen's English, also known as Received Pronunciation (R.P.) or Standard English.
The first is isolation; early colonists had only sporadic contact with the mother country. The second is exposure to other languages, and the colonists came into contact with Native American languages, mariners' Indian English pidgin and other settlers, who spoke Dutch, Swedish, French and Spanish.
Most scholars have roughly located “split off” point between American and British English as the mid-18th-Century. There are some clear exceptions.
The British accent was voted the absolute hottest on earth, coming top in countries as far-flung as Sweden, China, India and the USA. A British brogue was particularly desirable in Asia, with South Korea and Malaysia also finding UK accents too hot to handle.
What is the most attractive English accent?
British accent has been rated as the most attractive English accent in the world, according to a new survey by the CEOWORLD magazine. The results were revealed in a global study, which questioned 96,398 people across 32 countries worldwide to list “most attractive English accents” other than their own.
Furthermore, General American is often used when teaching English as a second language in schools worldwide (especially in Asia). It is the most commonly used English accent in the world today, and some linguists have argued that General American will eventually become the global neutral English accent.
The Netherlands has emerged as the nation with the highest English language proficiency, according to the EF English Proficiency Index, with a score of 72.
In the main, British English and American English are very similar, even with differences in spelling. In today's world, American spelling is probably winning thanks to Microsoft's spell checker. There are vocabulary differences and some can cause embarrassing situations if you only know one flavour.
American English is actually older
When the first settlers set sail from England to America, they took with them the common tongue at the time, which was based on something called rhotic speech (when you pronounce the r sound in a word).
Considering all of this and his farmer upbringing, it is safe to speculate that Washington's natural accent was, as Morse portrays it, predominantly American with a detectable English influence.
According to a Big 7 Travel survey, the accent found among New Jerseyans has the least sex appeal compared to the state accents. "Poor New Jersey dropped down one place from 2019 to end up in the last spot this year, making it the least sexy accent in America.
The 'Brummie' accent is considered to be the ugliest accent in the British Isles, according to a new poll from YouGov. The UK and Ireland has a massive range of accents for such small islands - we have the same amount of dialects as the whole of North America- including Canada, Bermuda and Native American dialects.
Option 1: the American accent
The most popular English accent of them all. Spread around the world by American cinema, music, television and more than 350 million North Americans (including Canadians, eh), this is the easiest accent for most people to understand, whether native speakers or non-native speakers.
Nationally, southern accents were voted as the best and sexiest among participants; New York were picked as "most likely to make someone sound smarter" and midwestern accents were voted as "most trustworthy." You can view all of the results here.
Why do British singers lose their accent?
It's partly that many of the distinctive characteristics of an accent aren't reproduced well when you sing. Vowel sounds get stretched, and the precise articulation of the consonants is lost. The result is a neutral baseline accent that sounds vaguely American.
The Indigenous languages of the Americas had widely varying demographics, from the Quechuan languages, Aymara, Guarani, and Nahuatl, which had millions of active speakers, to many languages with only several hundred speakers.
It's just an old English way of speaking. Many people say "us" but if they are writing will use the word "me". I was born in Sunderland and I use it some times, depends who I am talking to. "us" meaning you and me sounds like "uss".
Dialects and accents developed historically when groups of language users lived in relative isolation, without regular contact with other people using the same language. This was more pronounced in the past due to the lack of fast transport and mass media.
The Anglo-Saxons bring English to England
Since the first two groups were the largest, the settlers came to be known collectively as Anglo-Saxons. They all brought with them distinct dialects of their native Germanic language, the language we today call Anglo-Saxon or Old English.
- Scouse (Merseyside)
- Black Country (Wolverhampton, Dudley and Walsall areas)
- West and South Yorkshire.
- Leicestershire.
- co*ckney (Greater London)
- Essex.
- Somerset.
- Brummie (Birmingham)
Speaking accented French is considered attractive by 39% of respondents in a new poll. FRENCH people consider the English accent to be the most attractive - while the rest of the world considers the French language to be the most seductive, a new study has found.
And Swedish accents are thought to be the most “intelligent” and “trustworthy” (24 percent and 15 percent, respectively).
Preply, a Brookline-based online language learning platform, took a survey of more than 1,700 people across the country on the most loved and hated accents. The Boston accent came out on top as the most annoying, followed by the Midwestern accent.
“The Western Pennsylvania English accent is often considered the ugliest in all of America, so Pittsburgh locals can feel lucky that they've escaped last place this time around,” the staff at Big 7 Travel wrote in a ranking released last week that asserts Pittsburghers have the 46th least sexy accent in the nation.
Is the American accent the original English accent?
In all reality, the standard British accent was the one that changed significantly in the last two centuries while the American accent stayed more or less the same. During the American Revolution, the English language started to change in Britain. A new wealthy sector emerged during the industrial revolution.
Experts have suggested that Shakespeare's accent would have sounded something like Irish, Yorkshire and West Country accents mixed together. Also, they believe that words were spoken much more quickly than in contemporary Shakespeare productions.
People that live in the Black Country are very proud of the way they speak. They have their own dialect and vocabulary as opposed to just being a different accent. One of the most famous features is the. 'yam yam' sound when saying certain phrases. 'You are' is pronounced yo'am and 'are you' is pronounced 'am ya'.
American English is actually older
When the first settlers set sail from England to America, they took with them the common tongue at the time, which was based on something called rhotic speech (when you pronounce the r sound in a word).
