It seems that from quite early on there was an erosion of original regional accents. Being crammed into a single boat and forced into cramped intimacy might have speeded this up. The central and essential features of life were reading aloud from the Bible and listening to very long sermons. Rhetoric, the delight of Elizabeth I, was not encouraged. As the preface to the Bay Psalm Book, the first book published in English in America in 1640, said, “God’s altar needs not our polishings.” A standard accent began to appear reasonably quickly. These people were obsessively aware of the power of
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