Specifically I’m wondering how the typical English accent became the typical western accent (Which sounds relatively country), and how did that become the modern accents on the West Coast? What factor was added in that made cowboys start sounding like the modern day Californian.
I’m assuming the typical NY accent comes from Italians coming over.
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Bonus question: Why are there no places in the US at all that kept the English accents????
In: 613
Others have partially answered. Here is a bit more in depth
The American accent, during the colonies and early US was very similar to posh, or proper, more upper class English accents at the time. During this period, accents in England were highly variable by geography and class, even English people often sounded nothing like each other despite living close by to each other.
The American accent, again still extremely recognizable as a posh English accent was considered pretty high class, and even more so, it was uniform across the US, which threw English people for a spin that a single accent was so universal across the country, no matter class or location. American accent was an anomaly in a good way
The nearly uniform American accent, based again off a higher class English accent at the time, stayed fairly consistent, while in England, accents continued to have significant difference and changes.
The New England accent is partly influenced by these “new” English accents that came about later, but most of the US did not get inflicted by the changes in style in England.
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