The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

by Melvyn Bragg

The blend of dialects started on the ships quickly came to mean that no single accent dominated. The accent today around the north-eastern corner of America is largely uniform and beguiling in its crisp distillation of dialects. And across America, to this day, there is a comparatively small variation of accents compared to the deep differences still rooted in Britain. English upper-class visitors to America noted the absence of regional pronunciation with approval. In 1764 Lord Gordon wrote: “The propriety of language here surprised me much, the English tongue being spoken by all ranks, in a degree of purity and perfection, surpassing any but the polite part of London.” Another visitor observed: “We hear nothing so bad in America as the Suffolk whine, the Yorkshire clipping or the Newcastle guttural. We never hear the letter ‘h’ aspirated improperly, nor omitted to be aspirated where propriety requires it. The common pronunciation approximates to that of the well-educated class in London and its vicinity.”