There are multiple American accents. I consider west coast and to some extent Midwest unaccented… New York or Boston, yeah, and southern drawl, yeah. Alabama is like a new England who drank lead for 120 years. But obviously thats just my perspective. It was hilarious to me to hear my Australian friend do an American accent from her perspective.
In port cities that had lots of similar immigrants during the 1800’s, you can often tell what neighborhood someone is from by their accent. NYC (and other East Coast cities to a lesser extent) and New Orleans have some overlap because they happened to be the biggest port cities at the time and some neighborhoods had similar demographics. (Obviously, both cities have unique accents where demographics were different but there’s a lot of overlap due to that time period.)
The “neutral American accent” is supposedly originally from the Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa part of the Midwest, apparently by an accident of history. Walter Cronkite (a popular news reader as national TV broadcasts became ubiquitous) was from Kansas. Other national TV personalities happened to be from the area and it basically became the “TV” accent.
There were different historical reasons for it but it’s sort of like how “BBC English” became the accent people consider the default in England and Beijing Mandarin became “standard” Mandarin instead of Shanghainese. It’s just who was on TV/radio when media went national.
Shanhainese would be 吴语, rather than the 汉语 of Mandarin. And the choice of Beijing Han as the linga chinois was an active choice, not an accident of broadcasting.
Likewise, the first BBC broadcasts were deliberate in their choice of RP as the chosen voice. It had to be “respectable”. If you didn’t speak it, you weren’t allowed on the airwaves until much later.
There are multiple American accents. I consider west coast and to some extent Midwest unaccented… New York or Boston, yeah, and southern drawl, yeah. Alabama is like a new England who drank lead for 120 years. But obviously thats just my perspective. It was hilarious to me to hear my Australian friend do an American accent from her perspective.
In port cities that had lots of similar immigrants during the 1800’s, you can often tell what neighborhood someone is from by their accent. NYC (and other East Coast cities to a lesser extent) and New Orleans have some overlap because they happened to be the biggest port cities at the time and some neighborhoods had similar demographics. (Obviously, both cities have unique accents where demographics were different but there’s a lot of overlap due to that time period.)
The “neutral American accent” is supposedly originally from the Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa part of the Midwest, apparently by an accident of history. Walter Cronkite (a popular news reader as national TV broadcasts became ubiquitous) was from Kansas. Other national TV personalities happened to be from the area and it basically became the “TV” accent.
There were different historical reasons for it but it’s sort of like how “BBC English” became the accent people consider the default in England and Beijing Mandarin became “standard” Mandarin instead of Shanghainese. It’s just who was on TV/radio when media went national.
Shanhainese would be 吴语, rather than the 汉语 of Mandarin. And the choice of Beijing Han as the linga chinois was an active choice, not an accident of broadcasting.
Likewise, the first BBC broadcasts were deliberate in their choice of RP as the chosen voice. It had to be “respectable”. If you didn’t speak it, you weren’t allowed on the airwaves until much later.
Thanks. Those are the “different historical reasons” I was alluding to but I couldn’t remember many details. Thank you for adding them.
I’m glad to have been able to add more details.
And thank you for the polite reply; I may have been unduly brusque as I misunderstood your “just who happened to be on” comment.