You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
There’s lots of clever people about the forum so I wondered if we could post some questions or answers and a achieve an educational response a few posts later.
I’ve been wondering all day, when was the first known recording of the American - as we know it - accent?
first known recording of the American – as we know it – accent?.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's entirely subjective, and therefore impossible to reach a consensus.
Sorry, that is not the answer you are looking for.
Yes if you mean physical audio recording then it would be Edison as he invented it and he was American.
The modifier 'as we know it' is doing some heavy lifting...
Who are 'we' in the context of the question?
I’ve been wondering all day, when was the first known recording of the American – as we know it – accent?
"Recording" I don't know. But the modern-day midwest US accent is apparently closer to olde British English than modern-day British English is - we diverged from our roots farther than the US did. So your question might be better posed as the first recording of an English accent?
For the record by “recording” I meant , noting, writing down, diarising for example not a “recording of a voice” e.g. when do we know that someone first notices that American accent.
But thanks for the info, gives me a bit to go on.
My question was but an example, I’d love to see others post some intellectual asks that provoke some thought of investigation .
Why do we continue to strive to stay alive?
Our lives are just to grow, possibly reproduce and then expire. To what end?
Regional accents are very much a thing in America, so not sure exactly how you'd define an 'American accent'. Even to British ears, most of us can differentiate between Californian, Southern drawl, New York, Boston etc. To natives I'm sure it varies a heck of a lot more. My Brother lives in Minnesota, the accent there is very distinctive, similar to some Canadian accents. To my ears, what most of us think of as a generic US accent seems, not surprisingly heavily influenced by Scots and Irish.
I love regional accents. I love the way in UK almost every county and often adjacent towns in the same county can have different accents or dialects.
My ramblings are slightly off topic - apologies
when do we know that someone first notices that American accent.
in the mid 18thC. There's folks commenting on the language and accent differences between British and Britons who live in the 13 states in things like Punch and the newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. But then really you could also ask when the British stop sounding like we did in the 18thC and it would be equally valid. Regional dialects aside, listen to recording of Roosevelt and he has this really weird accent that's almost entirely disappeared
To natives I’m sure it varies a heck of a lot more.
Yes and no, My wife from BC sounds pretty much exactly the same as our friend Hal who's from Cali. There's very subtle differences, but casually you'd not be able to tell, and that's true for most folks living on the west coast from Cali all the way through the border.
also ask when the British stop sounding like we did in the 18thC
Won't be long before the UK is completely Estuary!
in the mid 18thC. There’s folks commenting on the language and accent differences between British and Britons who live in the 13 states in things like Punch and the newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic.
That's fascinating, but presumably at that point Punch is pretty London-centric so might be comparing American accents with urban South-Eastern England when they wouldn't think to make comparison with other parts of the UK. It might well be that the colonists are just sounding like a blend of regional UK accents. We will never know but it's interesting to think about.
For the record by “recording” I meant , noting, writing down, diarising for example not a “recording of a voice”
Its interesting that there are few things that we don't really have a history of before the relatively recent invention recording sight and sound.
Dance for instance - there have been ways of notating dance in the past but just in terms of an order of steps and moves we don't have a history of what dancing looked like in terms of the spirit or vigour those moves would be implemented until the invention of film. In period dramas we depict these very formal, stiff, ordered dance scenes but thats because the only record to reference are paintings and these seemlingly strict order of steps and becuase we perceive adherence to etiquette to be so important in those times we show people stiffly and precisely going through the steps like automatons. But at what point in history and any level of society would not get sweaty, drunk, dizzy, perhaps even bruised and grazed dancing at a social occasion?
If you worked it backwards and had to send a message back to the past how would you distinguish between the way hippies danced and the way punks danced if you we just annotating foot moves and positions
It might well be that the colonists are just sounding like a blend of regional UK accents. We will never know but it’s interesting to think about.
No, we know all about it becasue of folks like Ben Franklin and Dr (fatty) Johnson are writing about it (when he's not trying to figure out a meaning for contrafibularities) And folks like him are doing articles like "10 things the Americans say that are really weird", or "Why does that man speak funny" The 18thC in lots of ways is the start of modernity, they do loads of things that we'd recognise, laughing at the funny man's accent being one of them.
Edit: Weirdly the American war of Independence is fought (on both sides) by loads of blokes who were originally from or descended from folks originally from the Eastern Counties like Cambridgeshire Suffolk and Essex - because that's where much of the Godly (the Puritans who settled the northernmost of the 13 States) were based. Many of them had those accents, It's weird to think of Germain and Cornwallis sounding like Essex lads on the piss.
It doesn't answer your question, but Bill Bryson's "Made in America" is a great read about the development of American English.
In terms of voice and accent - microphones have changed speech over the past century or so - women's voices in particular are softer and deeper now
Compare Amy Johnson in a period where people had to talk over crowds, or machinery and speak in a shrill, enunciated, clipped manner to make themselves understood to the voice of someone like Jenny Murray in the radio now
Brian Eno did a fascinating radio show on 6 music years ago about the effect of microphones on singing through the 20th Century - things like that disco / funk thing of having very falsetto and very deep voices singing together would have been impossible without amplification because a deep voice would be too quiet to be heard next to a high one - you couldn't do that 'So low you can't get under it" Funkadelic line in a crowded room and be heard by anyone.
So regardless of accent - ways or speaking have changed markedly - so historical accounts of how American accents differed to English ones don't take into account that all accents and all speech sounded different then than they do now
Why do we continue to strive to stay alive?
Our lives are just to grow, possibly reproduce and then expire. To what end?
Because we do.
Imagine an empty world. Now randomly insert a being which wishes to stay alive and reproduce. It will thrive (until it’s consumed all resources).
See the selfish gene by Dawkins.