British and American English

[SteveD]

Notwithstanding the influence of television, film, international communications and travel, will American and British varieties of the English language ever diverge to the extent that they are mutually unintelligible to "ordinary" people?

[Quizmonster]

Given how many Americanisms we have happily adopted over the years, I should have thought that 'divergence' simply wasn't a problem...rather the opposite. I'd guess that Indian English, say, tended more towards unintelligible divergence from ours.

[jno]

the American media (film and TV) carry all American neologisms to Britain and elsewhere very quickly. I don't think it works nearly so fast the other way, though, so it should be possible already for a Brit to talk to Americans in youthspeak or regional dialect or estuary English and be only partly understood. And as QM says, other varieties of regional English - Indian, Caribbean - travel much less swiftly or not at all. Indians and Jamaicans may have problems understanding each other.

[SteveD]

My question was prompted by an item on Radio 4's  "PM" yesterday.  A woman who was the owner of a large furniture store was being interviewed because she was offering shelter to some of the hurricane victims.  She talked very fast using colloquial American English with what was, I presume, a local accent.  I found her rather difficult to follow in spite of the fact that I consider myself to have a good "ear" for such things.

[Quizmonster]

Quite, Steve, but you would probably have had equal difficulty listening to an Aberdeenshire fisherman in full flow!

[SteveD]

Some of my best friends are salty old Aberdeenshire sea-dogs!  Many's the hour we have spent round a pint of heavy reminiscing about the old days.

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/elphinstone/kist/

 

NOT!

[Ouisch]

Just sort of an addendum to SteveD's comment...do most Brits find an American accent difficult to understand at first?  I noticed during my travels throughout the UK that I was often asked to repeat what I'd said.  Meanwhile, in my own mind I was speaking quite clearly, and the various accents I heard throughout England and Scotland required a second-saying.  :)

[Quizmonster]

OK, Steve, how about an irate Geordie ship-builder (if any such person still exists) or an excited Devon farm labourer or a pee'd off Glaswegian bin-man?

Ouisch, I wouldn't say American accents are hard to understand. For a start, there is a tendency - particularly among people from southern states - to drawl, which obviously slows speech-delivery down and thus makes it easier to grasp. On the other hand, an overwrought Louisiana lady, as described by Steve above, is clearly going to be a handful in the intelligibility stakes!

[Ouisch]

Quiz, I'm from the Midwest (Detroit area) and don't have any sort of accent (we're always told how plain and boring our speech is compared to the rest of the country).  But I was told a few times in the UK that I spoke too fast, which made me laugh inside, because I think of, say, New York types as the fast-talkers.

A propos of nothing, another constant I noticed was that most Brits pronounced my home state as "Michigan", with a hard "CH", like the one in "cherry."  (We natives use an "SH" sound instead.)

[Narolines]

I'm trying to get my head round the idea of not having any kind of accent........isn't it impossible to speak without an accent?

[Ouisch]

Narolines - We in the Midwest are often told that our speech is "as flat and boring as the land you come from."  :) 

[Quizmonster]

Quite a coincidence that you come from Detroit, Ouisch. I say that because I spent quite a few evenings recently having a drink - or three - with a visitor from Detroit here in the UK. He was actually born in this town but emigrated to the USA over three decades ago, so I would have expected to find quite a change in his accent. However - apart from just the occasional word - he still just sounded English! That would perhaps bolster your claim that mid-westerners have "no accent". Perhaps, to fit in with Narolines' comment, we might have to say "no American accent".