Hi Folks: I am Colby related and received this newsletter, its quite interesting. Gordon Crooks Sent: Friday, October 22, 2010 8:54 PM Subject: Re: [COLBY] Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? > Very interesting. I followed the link and read the Wikipedia (very > technical) article, as well. This is the stuff I mentioned last week (or > so), > excerpted from The Story of English: > > Divided by a common language, each generation has made the enjoyable > discovery that the English of England is different from the English of > America. As > early as 1735, the settlers' word bluff (meaning a bank or cliff) was > under > attack as "barbarous English." As pioneers, the first Americans had to > make up many new words, some of which now seem absurdly commonplace. > Lengthy, > which dates back to 1689, is an early Americanism. So are calculate, > seaboard, bookstore and presidential. As members of a multiracial > society, the > first Americans also adopted words like wigwam, pretzel, spook, depot and > canyon, borrowing from the Indians, Germans, Dutch, French and Spanish. > > In 1776, the spoken English in both countries was essentially the same. > A > contemporary diarist reported that the Americans "in general speak better > English than the English do. No country or colonial dialect is to be > distinguished here." A conversation between George Washington and Lord > North > would probably have produced only a handful of noticeable contrasts in > vocabulary and accent. > > The Americn Revolution marked the turning point in the making of this new, > American kind of English. In 1782 the citizens of the new Republic were > proudly christened Americans and in 1802 the Congress recorded the first > use > of the phrase, "the American language." > > Thomas Jefferson was fascinated by words. Belittle was one of his most > famous, much ridiculed in London at the time. He also lent his approval > to > the new currency terms like cent and dollar. Benjamin Franklin was the > godfather, if not the midwife, of such spelling differenes as honor for > honour, > theater for theatre, plow for plough and curb for kerb, a familiar cause > of > Anglo-American linguistic friction. > > In 1790 when the first census was taken, four million Americans were > counted, and 90 percent were descendants of English colonists. > +-+-+ > Thanks for launching me on this revisit to the language. > > Kate Forster > > > ============================= > Colby list archives: > http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/COLBY/ > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > COLBY-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message