文档介绍：美英与英英:口音大不同
Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents?
美国人和英国人口音为什么会不同?
In 1776, whether you were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your loyalty to King e III, your pronunciation would have been much the same. At that time, American and British accents hadn’t yet diverged. What’s surprising, though, is that Hollywood costume dramas get it all wrong: The Patriots and the Redcoats spoke with accents that were much closer to the contemporary American accent than to the Queen’s English.
1776年,无论你是宣布美国独立或是宣誓效忠英王乔治三世,你的发音都是大致相同的。当时,美式和英式口音尚未分化。然而,令人惊讶的是,好莱坞古装片都搞错了:爱国者美国兵和英国兵(美国独立战争时期英国士兵穿红色军上衣)的发音更接近于当代美式口音而不是女王时期的标准英语。
It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly.
Traditional English, whether spoken in the British Isles or the American colonies, was largely rhotic. Rhotic speakers pronounce the
“R” sound in such words as “hard” and “winter”, while non-rhotic speakers do not. Today, however, non-rhotic speech mon throughout most of Britain. For example, most modern Brits would tell you it’s been a “hahd wintuh”.
It was around the time of the American Revolution that non-rhotic speech came into use among the upper class in southern England, in and around London. According to John Algeo, this shift occurred because people of low birt