http://i.imgur.com/x6SOHbR.png
created by IAmCacao on 12/08/2016 at 12:17 UTC
125 upvotes, 12 top-level comments (showing 12)
Comment by Cosmic_Colin at 12/08/2016 at 14:50 UTC
40 upvotes, 3 direct replies
I've heard this before, but it's actually from a study that was misinterpreted.
Basically, in the 17th and 18th centuries most British accents were rhotic. That means they pronounced the 'R' in words like car: carr rather than caah.
These days, most British accents are non-rhotic, while most American accents are. In that respect, American English is closer.
However, that's just one aspect. In many other ways, American English has diverged more. What's more, many Americans have non-rhotic accents, and many Brits do.
It sounds very similar to some modern British accents, certainly more so than any American ones.
Comment by [deleted] at 12/08/2016 at 13:31 UTC
17 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Americans are so far off the right wing that their own language identifies as conservative.
Comment by FlowersOfSin at 12/08/2016 at 13:31 UTC
21 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Okay, I am not American nor British, so I don't actually have any knowledge about this specific matter, but I lived a situation that might give this guy some truth.
I'm french Canadian and I dated a girl from Paris. Many times, especially at the groceries, she or I would say that we should buy x or y and the other didn't know what we were talking about, so we would point at it and then the other would be "That's not x, that's z!" So when we came back home, I loved to make some research about the words and generally, the french Canadian version was the word used in France 300-400 years ago. Let's remember that at first, they mostly sent lumberjacks, soldiers and whores... Not exactly the elite of society. It's thus pretty normal that the French of France evolved a lot faster than it did in Canada, leaving us using the old french.
Comment by CRAZEDDUCKling at 12/08/2016 at 14:03 UTC
4 upvotes, 3 direct replies
That sounds like a SAS, but I've heard this before, and it doesn't seem far fetched.
Comment by Cr3X1eUZ at 12/08/2016 at 17:43 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
http://mentalfloss.com/article/29761/when-did-americans-lose-their-british-accents
Comment by lengau at 12/08/2016 at 21:14 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
How does this jive with British English being "English (Traditional)" and American English being "English (Simplified)"?
Comment by Zaratthustra at 12/08/2016 at 15:53 UTC
3 upvotes, 2 direct replies
If true, is something not to be proud of, language is supposed to evolve not remain stagnat
Comment by yankbot at 12/08/2016 at 12:18 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Snapshots:
3: https://web.archive.org/20160812081826/http://i.imgur.com/x6sohbr.png
4: http://megalodon.jp/2016-0812-2118-28/i.imgur.com/x6sohbr.png
6: /r/elsbot/submit?selftext=true
Comment by Mr_Bigguns at 12/08/2016 at 13:39 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Winningest.
Comment by yoy21 at 12/08/2016 at 18:29 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I like this post because the comments here are interesting.
Comment by [deleted] at 13/08/2016 at 14:27 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
"America is closer to the 1600s and 1700s than the British are"
Comment by heidavey at 12/08/2016 at 12:51 UTC
-5 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I read a linguistics study that stated that colonial English varieties were more similar to the English of the time of mass emigration. That is to say that there was some kind of social protectionism of heritage in the colonies that prevented the divergence of the language.
That is in accord with what is being said here.
