Majority of America is Europe and considering how American based Brits won revolutionary war, it should be obvious that either British or Irish accent should’ve been more prevalent.
The more intriguing is that despite expansion towards their west, Americans should’ve retained their accents but from what I’ve heard online, it varies from New York to Midwest to California and South US has different accent altogether. So folks, how did this happen?
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>So folks, how did this happen?
Time and distance. Plus you can add in the massive amounts of immigrants mixing in with the remaining British settlers.
Same for the unique accents of Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans who are even more recently “British.”
>Americans should’ve retained their accents
Why…? no accent stays the same forever
Accents change with time, distance, and influence from other languages.
Same reason why different parts of any country have accents, time, distance, and foreign language influence.
I don’t know how did the British get all their different accents when the size of their country is smaller than some of our states
I always assumed that at one time Americans spoke like the British, and our accent evolved.
But what we perceive as the British accent didn’t come to being until the advent of the Received Pronunciation of the 19th century.
So the British actually spoke more like Americans in 1776. *They* changed.
Even the British accents now are different from hundreds of years ago so I don’t know how you came to this idea. Speech changes over time. Eventually, entire languages disappear.
Here is the first part of a short series from an expert on accents that gives a ton of information on where a lot of our accents came from and how they have changed over time.
Good watch and has a ton of info related to your question along the way.
[Link to video on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1KP4ztKK0A)
I don’t understand why you think Americans should have all retained the same accent?
People living in different parts of England or different parts of France speak with significantly different accents. The US is as big as the entire EU.
>Majority of America is Europe and considering how American based Brits won revolutionary war, it should be obvious that either British or Irish accent should’ve been more prevalent
It is. Just an older variant of it. Same with quebecois being more similar to older French. Also, Appalachia and the south more broadly would be Scottish, not Irish.
In as nice a way as I can possibly say it – you need to learn how language grows and develops over time because your premise is flawed. Even if your original thesis that Americans are essentially British were to be true (which it’s absolutely not), we would still have wildly different accents over time. Sorta like the British do to this day.
I’m curious what OP’s native language is and how it is void of accents.
>Majority of America is Europe
Yes, England and Spain and France and Germany and….
>American based Brits won revolutionary war,
Yes, but only the original 13 colonies that became 16 states, the other 34 came from France Spain, Mexico, Russia and an independent Hawai’i
>it should be obvious that either British or Irish accent should’ve been more prevalent.
The South African, New Zealand and Australian, Cheshire, Cockney, Scottish, Irish English, Welsh, and Geordie accents are all different. Time and distance change language.
>despite expansion towards their west, Americans should’ve retained their accents
Which accents? The spanish accents from Spain and Mexico? The French from the Louisiana purchase? Perhaps the Russian and Native accents from the Alaska purchase? Language grows and changes in time and with usage. Perhaps the German and Polish accents from the first great wave of immigration? Or the African accents of the enslaved peoples?
> So folks, how did this happen?
I hope [this](https://people.howstuffworks.com/how-accents-develop-language.htm) helps.
>Americans should’ve retained their accents
We did. The Brits changed theirs.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english
The modern batch of British accents emerged AFTER our revolution. They used to talk more like us.
Add a bunch of immigrant influences and the natural drift of separated populations over time and here we are.
Both the American and British Accents have changed since colonial times. American accents are closer to the colonial era than the modern British is.
Americans retained rhotic pronunciations while many British people decided to make their speech largely non-rhotic. So that’s an interesting point in which the parent country and inventor of the language themselves changed instead of one of their former colonies. Most languages change over time aren’t the pronounced the same way since they were invented. There is a UK-American accent called the Transatlantic Accent that was used in film and radio ages ago. [Here’s a short summary of the accent with examples of when it was still in use.](https://youtu.be/BLT-SQUBRDw?si=tyl1gd092cw5DdyK)There is a great three part series by professional linguists who break down how American accents came to be with settlement patterns, immigration, contact with other languages, isolation, socio-economic, as well as geographic and climate issues that effect language. It is a three part series [This Part 1](https://youtu.be/H1KP4ztKK0A?si=OyoA-bXZLqy0uDlb) [This is Part 2](https://youtu.be/IsE_8j5RL3k?si=HuWcF2m6K4cphMZC) and [This is Part 3.](https://youtu.be/Sw7pL7OkKEE?si=7EBLzPsjbH7FwEKn)