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
If you’re talking about the Received Pronunciation as “English accents”, that didn’t start to appear in the form we know today until the late 19th century, about a hundred years after the US had broken away. A lot can change about an accent in 100 years. And that’s important, because even when the US first broke away, the colonies had been around for some 200 years. Especially without mass telecommunications to keep people closely connected even when they were geographically isolated, the cultures diverged, and with them, the accents.
[Though in more recent research, some have theorized the accents never actually left](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english).
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