Why Do Americans In Old Movies Sound British?

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Video written by Adam Chase
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[@eclogite]

What's funny to me is if you were really born on one of the islands in the middle of the Atlantic, you'd probably just speak Portuguese

[@prion42]

Bermuda if we're speaking English

[@diogorodrigues747]

@@prion42 Hello, the Azores?

[@diogorodrigues747]

Yeah, and actually a weird Portuguese in Lusophone standards. LOL Here is a comparison: kzbin.info/www/bejne/kJnCd5dtoNGVrLs

[@esquilax5563]

Or Icelandic

[@glowingfatedie]

Buhh-muda

[@timthecatman6576]

It's funny how, as a brit, it sounds like a 'vaguely american accent' to me. I didn't even notice the non-rhotic part of that accent, as it's just the norm here. Fascinating!

[@nevreiha]

it being the "only correct way to speak" and nobody speaking it is funny as one of its components being RP which less than half the country speaks

[@timthecatman6576]

@@nevreiha It's also interesting how in american culture, alot of people seem to think RP is the only accent in England, or at least the big one. Personally, I'm a propa geordie, leek, pet.

[@sciencerscientifico310]

Non-rhoticity is more likely to be noticed in North America because non-rhotic accents aren't usual there, with the exceptions of the accents Eastern New England, New York City , Tidewater region of Virginia, and much of southern Louisiana like the greater New Orleans area.

[@nevreiha]

@@timthecatman6576 ah, from west Yorkshire me

[@darkpixel1128]

oh thank god i thought i was going mad, i thought it sounded old-chimney american to me

[@simsandsurgery1]

As someone getting a master’s degree in linguistics, I was a little offended by the “you don’t know what a glottal stop is” assumption 😂

[@SergeiAndropov]

"We'll skip over the boring phonetic notation." "No, wait! Go back! That's what I'm here for!"

[@IFearlessINinja]

Would it be less offensive if I said you don't onow what a real degree is

[@simsandsurgery1]

@@IFearlessINinja I’ll see that, and I’ll raise you. It would be, if it weren’t for your spelling errors.😂

[@bealu9459]

same(of the assumption)

[@mattybrunolucaszeneresalas9072]

Well some people don’t know

[@luxford60]

As an English person I had never considered that accent as anything other than American. I was astonished when I discovered that Cary Grant was British as to me he always sounded American in films. British films from that era also tended to use a contrived accent that nobody used in real life.

[@davidbrims5825]

Grant or given his real name was Archibald leech was born in Bristol , it’s a contrived accent, no one speaks like that. Tony Curtis did a good impression of him in some like it hot.

[@toastnjam7384]

He was in two movies where he spoke with a Cockney accent. None but the Lonely Heart and Sylvia Scarlett.

[@ericametzinger4061]

Cary has a Bristol accent

[@Seagaltalk]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/b6nSdaaQe9x5Y8U

[@SoniQ93]

I remember reading somewhere that the mid-atlantic accent was also useful for maximizing the clarity of actors and actresses' voices in early sound films since the nasally, mostly treble sound of the accent worked well with the less-than-stellar sound quality of early movies and radio programs that struggled to reproduce more bass-heavy voices.

[@OtakuUnitedStudio]

I've heard that too, but apparently it was mostly an excuse made up by the people claiming it was the superior "proper" way of speaking English.

[@AxxLAfriku]

HELP!!! Everybody at my school cyberbullies me because they say me good good GOOD videos are extremely BAD!!! Please help me, dear shok

[@hedgehog3180]

@@OtakuUnitedStudio I figured it was a post hoc justification. I mean not pronouncing the r clearly actually makes it a lot harder to clearly hear what someone is saying since you don't have a clear stop before the next word.

[@DaimyoD0]

Am I the only one who strongly prefers the label "Transatlantic accent?" As someone who lives in the Mid-Atlantic region (think Philadelphia), I kind of feel like that word already means something else lol. Even though admittedly there isn't much of a defined, universal Mid-Atlantic accent, more like a collection of distinct accents, like Jersey, Delawarean, Baltimore, Philadelphian. But living here might make me biased and believe they are more different than they really are lol

[@jamie1602]

You are correct, OP. I've never actually heard of this "superiority" explanation and I was trained in acting. We're taught to enunciate as well as possible because sometimes, we aren't working with the best quality of things. Though shooting on iPhone is amazing now. None the less, I still had to be very clear if we didn't have sound dampening supplies. This meant sometimes adjusting my natural accent... Which is Mid Atlantic with a bit of Philly thrown in. And that sounds a great deal like Transatlantic. It's not exactly fake. Not quite. While that scholarly crap isn't real, it is very similar to what we speak in this area of New Jersey (barring our Philly influences). Thing is, I can still hear the "rs" pretty well even in that clip. I'm aware of what is said the accent is supposed to do, but in practice, it's not really doing it. It's certainly softening the r's impact but not muting it entirely. It's still there and pronounced. But all of the harder rs are now softer. Considering my unit on accents and speech in acting took a near week to do, I don't consider this to be a very good explanation. We do use certain vocal patterns and tones for "superiority" and while transatlantic lends well as in the US during a certain time period, the East Coast was known for Ivy League schools, there are better and more effective ways to convey superiority. This is an incomplete explanation from Half as Interesting.

[@FayeSomething]

One time I asked my grandma who was born in the 30's if people actually talked like that and she laughed and said "Oh heavens no!"

[@RST]

the spunsklobs are plentiful

[@andrewjgrimm]

“Oh heavens no!” Is very old-fashioned itself.

[@joonaa2751]

It was the accent of the old money East Coast aristocracy from the late 19th century onwards up till WWII. Very few regular Americans spoke it, that’s true.

[@thebasketballhistorian3291]

Mind blown by all of this. I really thought this is how everyone talked liked back then... at least, in semi-formal situations.

[@k.umquat8604]

@@joonaa2751 I have a sort-of Mid-Atlantic accent (although for me it's self taught) I am Turkish,and I chose this accent when I was learning this language so I would be more easily understood.

[@GiftSparks]

The issue is that the USA was such a large country with so many different accents, that they needed a common accent for films. The equivalent today is the “Anchorman” accent used by all news people in America. Anywhere you go in the country, the news readers sound exactly the same- even when off camera they revert to their natural accent.

[@voz805]

And so many of us say we sound just like them. LOL I did get a laugh once when I heard Dan Rather's natural Texas accent and thought what a pain to be forced to speak differently.

[@AMcDub0708]

There is absolutely no need for a common accent for films. What purpose does that even serve? Also, anchor people having the same accent is very outdated. Just like covering up your tattoos and taking out your piercings and wearing closed toed shoes is considered outdated.

[@GiftSparks]

@@AMcDub0708 Correct- that is why the “Transatlantic” accent didn’t survive past the 1930’s. People started to adopt a more generic accent, rather than a “posh” American accent. The thing about Anchor People, however, is that newspeople - if they are successful, move from local market to local market, often in completely different regions. So it helps them to have a more general accent. Someone in a New York Market would not be inclined to hire someone with a heavy southern accent.

[@leslieinadress]

@@AMcDub0708 The anchorman accent is easy to understand no matter where you live. I have lined where I do for 22 years and I still have trouble understand some of the locals. I can’t imagine if someone from the other side of the country had to get their news from them .

[@artdonovandesign]

@@leslieinadress Your point is completly lost on the writer of this episode, who views the practicality of "news anchor accents" as some kind of nefarious social plot.

[@vladimirenlow4388]

I may have the closest thing that comes to a naturally developed Transatlantic accent. I grew up in the South in the '80s, but all the TV I watched caused me to lose any trace of a Southern accent. I inadvertently started mimicking the vaguely Midwestern ones in the shows I watched. Even as a kid, people always mistook me for a Yankee. Then for a while in my teens, I got really into Britcoms and somehow incorporated _that_ into my speech patterns. The moment I introduced myself to my high school Latin teacher freshman year, she immediately asked if I had British parents. Now as an adult, people listening to me assume I came from anywhere other than South Carolina. So, yes, I apparently have an accent that supposed to be fake... only for me, it's 100 percent real!

[@User31129]

Did you know Stephen Colbert grew up in South Carolina, but taught himself to drop the Southern accent? Because he thought that people with Southern accents weren't given the same respect as people with other accents.

[@thunderbird1921]

My parents are from Iowa, and I grew up in Virginia. I've noticed that I don't sound like traditional Southern drawl, but what's weird is neither did many in central Virginia, where we lived for a number of years.

[@ppppppppp64]

@@thunderbird1921 Virginia isn’t really a southern state. It’s only considered southern because of its political past. geographically on the map it is on the northern half of the east coast

[@Ea-Nasir_Copper_Co]

Wasn't part of the issue that so many early talkies film stars were British - including Cary Grant - and the transatlantic (or trasnatlantic) accent was easier for them to achieve than a standard American accent?

[@dollhousemakr]

Yes, Cary Grant was British.

[@Great_Olaf5]

Technically there is no standard American accent. There's General American, but that's just as constructed as the Mid-Atlantic was, most New England accents are equally non rhotic compared to common British accents (and plenty of this are rhotic, especially as you move north and west of London), so they could have just used those if it was really a problem to get them to pronounce their Rs, most British accents also have the wine whine merger. Overall, it doesn't make much sense for pronunciation difficulties in either side to have been involved so much as an early foot in the door and the ensuing prestige.

[@davidrenton]

which is ironic as there is research that says the American accent is maybe more close to old English than the English accent which has evolved more and sounds a lot different to the 16/1700 's accent.

[@United-Nations]

I am from Ireland but I cannot make myself sound American they just sound so basic most of them

[@United-Nations]

Like so basic it's actually hard

[@kerdalidec6542]

As a Brit, I always just thought that's how some Americans spoke back then. Didn't realise it was all for show.

[@ToastbackWhale]

As an American I didn’t know any better either.

[@tunajoe74]

Yeah I thought it was just Americans gradually losing the british accent from colonisation haha

[@SuperSmashDolls]

@@tunajoe74 Nope! In fact, that's the opposite of how it happened. Americans did not lose their accent, the English *gained* it; because of a thing called "colonial lag". People who live in the peripheral regions of a nation tend to miss out on language innovations that happen in it's core. So pre-colonial American English is closer to modern American English than modern England English. FWIW some linguists actually reconstructed pre-colonial American English and recorded samples of it, and it *very roughly* sounds like Eastern Canadian English. Which would make sense under the colonial lag theory: they were part of the UK for a lot longer (depending on what level of independence you care about, they became independent either in 1867, 1931, or *1982*) at which point America had already become it's own superpower with it's own language innovations.

[@Unownshipper]

I mean… technically you’re not wrong. Like the guy says, children from upper class backgrounds were taught it at a young age for a while so even though it’s a contrived form of speech, once it sticks I’m sure some of them never lost it. Katharine Hepburn sounded like that all time even outside of films.

[@micayahritchie7158]

@@SuperSmashDolls interesting. I wonder if you could model phonological change more broadly then as innovations spreading from population centres with different strengths. Like if I started with a "blank" language sheet of homogenous speech and added three cities if I could model the spread of changes from these population centres as being outward propagating pulse waves with some amount of attenuation. I wonder if we could expect the wave speeds to be roughly the same. Maybe not given how speech politics work in reality being so linked to identity but. I wonder if it's a valid thought

[@EMSpdx]

Fun bit: Spock in "Star Trek" speaks like this- both TOS and SNW. Nimoy SPECIFICALLY chose this accent to make him sound both upper class (Spock is from a high status, upper class clan) and separate from his 'normal' North American crew mates.

[@RunnerX13]

I’ve honestly never thought about the “old movie” accent sounding British. At this point, we’ve heard it parodied more times than heard it in an actual movie, it just sounds like fake old movie talk.

[@pipolwes000]

In case you wanted to know what a glottal stop is, it's the sound the "-" makes in "uh-oh", a sudden cutoff (stop) of voicing caused by an obstruction at the back of the throat (the glottis).

[@jzorec]

I once heard the description "the sound you make just before throwing up", which actually describes the sound perfectly

[@daleykun]

@@jzorec or when anyone from Yorkshire tries to produce the word "the"

[@gljames24]

And here is the symbol: ʔ

[@joshrainwater2822]

@@jzorec Or how some americans pronounce the t in mountain

[@DiabolikSilhouette]

Knowledge.

[@djbeathound2989]

I loved learning about the Trasnatlantic accent. Thanks, Sam!! Wonder if it’s anything similar to the transatlantic accent!!

[@m0llux]

Very similar to the Mdi-atlantic accent, I might add.

[@djbeathound2989]

@@m0llux oh wow, thanks so much for that luminescent clarification!!

[@stevenlubick2689]

I believe this is

[@jacobmcgovern3753]

Thank god someone else commented this before I could, I don't want Sam to know how pedantic his audience really is. XD

[@Cal90208]

Time stamp?

[@stephenwatson8040]

You know what's strange in these old movies..........YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THE DIALOG. Something totally missing in movies over the past 20 years.

[@jdsmedley]

A lot of that is likely due to newer movies’ sound being mixed for modern high-tech cinema speaker systems, and not for an average person’s TV.

[@leonardo.diCATio]

I was in a performance of the play "And Then There Were None" as Blore last year, and I had to use this accent during my performance. Since the play was set in England, however many of the actors were American, this accent was easier to keep up than a fully committed British accent. It also helped with the illusion that it was happening in the 30s (since our perception of that time is mainly through remaining films that include the accent).

[@irenejohnston6802]

"..and then there Was none". None is a contraction of not one. One is singular. Cary Grant was English born in Bristol. The film clip is his character's voice. Other eg. Ray Milland was British born in Wales. Claude Raine's (Louis in Casablanca)

[@Kitsaplorax]

Hollywood hasn't changed. Everyone speaks with a Californiaiated version of a non-offensive Midwestern English. Movies don't reflect real accents. I lived in Los Angeles and saw numerous courses on "How to speak properly and get into the movies". Eliminating all dialect features considered odd is an industry.

[@francophone.]

And when actors in movies try to do regional or foreign accents, they fail fairly often.

[@BJGvideos]

That's funny. When I hear a standard American dialect in movies it sounds just like the ones I grew up with in northern Indiana.

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

At least, compared to the Transatlantic accent, General American English actually sounds American. A lot of people speak kind of like that, just to different extents.

[@francophone.]

@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 Regional accents and dialects aren't General American. A lot of people speak like that, though, because of dialect levelling, meaning regional accents are disappearing.

[@paradoxmo]

But the thing is, a lot of people in California and the Midwest actually talk like that, so at least it’s not a completely artificial dialect. There will always be dialect leveling in the movies because regional dialect features distract from the plot if the character isn’t supposed to represent someone regional.

[@Metifyre]

I was already having a lucky day when RLL uploaded, but it was even better when you uploaded 5 minutes later

[@chadgamerbro962]

Yes they are both Chad gamer bro’s

[@spetnaz9338]

7 minutes not 5

[@christophersteele5709]

good to know, thanks!

[@ironagentm544]

🙌

[@Jhfisibejoso8pkabrvo2is8]

My sister and I grew up on Turner Classic Movies, so we had been baffled by this accent for most of our childhood. We'd keep saying "Where are all these people from!? There's NO WAY all these actors are from the exact same place!" 😂 Anyway, I love the way it sounds....but that's probably just due to my love of old film in general.

[@kcmisulis425]

I speak Georgian 🇬🇪 as a second language, and when you brought up glottal stops, it brought back all the memories of my first lessons with sounds which sound exactly the same. 😂😅

[@mygetawayart]

The Italian language is very similar in origin. It has been created as a "proper way" for all Italians to understand each other in the late 1800s but in reality, only trained actors, voice actors, politicians and journalists actually use it. Most italians have either a local accent they refer back to or their own regional language. However, "standard" Italian is what's taught in school and speaking "proper" Italian is a sign of wealth and refinement where speaking a dialect or with an accent is looked down upon.

[@gireeshgprasad7589]

This pretty much applies to any formally taught language.

[@joeduckburyofjoeducania4587]

My grandad spoke Comascan which I found out is a dialect of Lombard and it was one of those "dialect"

[@JackTheBeast88]

Well, today if someone is looked down upon if he only spoke in a dialect is because the teaching of "proper" Italian has succeeded. Not longer than 60 years ago a common folk from the South wouldn't be able to speak to a norther without issues, imagine what a huge mess would it be today if that was still the case.

[@JackTheBeast88]

Well, today if someone is looked down upon if he only spoke in a dialect is because the teaching of "proper" Italian has succeeded. Not longer than 60 years ago a common folk from the South wouldn't be able to speak to a norther without issues, imagine what a huge mess would it be today if that was still the case.

[@Georgije2]

It's similar here in Slovenia, even though it's a much smaller country, the official language is the "average" way of speaking, but some dialects are really hard to understand.

[@spartaninvirginia]

"you don't know what a glottal stop is" Jokes on you, my accent is based on the glottal stop taking over entire words. Thanks, Michigan!

[@United-Nations]

What is a glottay

[@United-Nations]

Hlottat

[@United-Nations]

U know what I'm talking about my massive hands cannot type on this phone that I could probably fit in my whole mouth

[@United-Nations]

Nvm just found out I can make the keyboard bigger

[@Great_Olaf5]

Hang on, I'm from Michigan too, and I'm not sure what accent you're talking about. I know we turn all of our intervocalic (between vowels) ts and ds into taps (like a trill, but shorter), but I'm not aware of any glottalization, unless that's an urban thing?

[@ieatbananaskins7926]

5:24 you’ve heard of maps without New Zealand, now get ready for maps without Ireland

[@joeduckburyofjoeducania4587]

Scily corsica sardinia hokkaido and a bunch of others

[@ytrav]

also why is africa so far away?

[@ieatbananaskins7926]

@@ytrav the Suez Canal, duh, after that boat crash the entire continent drifted and lets ignore East Russia and Japan

[@ytrav]

@@ieatbananaskins7926 dear god what is this map

[@helloxonsfan]

*Katharine Hepburn is my favorite actress from that era...* *... & she was the pitch-perfect epitome of the Mid-Atlantic accent...!!!* *Awesome vid...!!!* 👍

[@TXnine7nine]

I thought it was prevalent in movies and radio back then because it sounded better and clearer when recorded using the limited capabilities that sound equipment of the day had.

[@krabes8613]

This doesn’t explain the radio side of things. No way sports announcers were trained to speak it.

[@OtakuUnitedStudio]

@@krabes8613 I've heard recordings of sports broadcasts where the announcer has a distinct transatlantic accent.

[@OntarioTrafficMan]

How would dropping "R"s make it easier to understand? Surely that makes things sound even more ambiguous?

[@Angel24Marin]

@@OntarioTrafficMan If I have to guess the r made a sound similar to static noise.

[@hedgehog3180]

@@Angel24Marin Not really, it's a lot clearer when you put the r sound at the end of words with them since the r is always preceded by a vowel in this case and we use consonants to represent the end of a syllable.

[@koalbehy9760]

for those who want to know, the glottal stop is that little catch of between the, “uh,” and, “oh,” in “uh-oh.”

[@UnQuacker]

It also appears in bri'ish (british) way of pronouncing wo'ah (water)

[@brightblackhole2442]

it also happens at the beginning of a word that starts with a vowel

[@United-Nations]

So it's just where the syllables start/end

[@United-Nations]

Or some shit

[@pompshuffle562]

@@UnQuacker Bah'ol

[@petersmythe6462]

It's interesting to note that there seems to be somewhat of a KZbinr accent that's developing. Not as a result of the planned construction of an Anglo-American accent but as a result of what naturally works well to get attention.

[@sion8]

Not unprecedented, I don't remember where I heard it but yeah linguists have noticed the raise of a common accent KZbin personalities have developed which is quite cool to me!

[@SpiritmanProductions]

And the one word they all seem to mispronounce is 'the' before a consonant sound, where it should be 'thuh'. But, instead, they go for the 'thee' pronunciation which normally only occurs before vowel sounds (or in certain cases of emphasis). So, rather than 'thee' apple and 'thuh' banana, we get 'thee' apple and 'thee' banana, and it sounds so ignorant! 🤦‍♂

[@tiramisu7544]

@@SpiritmanProductions I think it makes the english language more consistent. Either say “thee” or “thuh” before words. Why should we say both depending on what letter a word starts with? It makes absolutely zero sense. I say this as a non-native speaker of English.

[@SpiritmanProductions]

@@tiramisu7544 Just to clarify: it's not vowels and consonants, it's vowel SOUNDS and consonant SOUNDS, because it's all about ease of pronunciation. 'Hour' begins with a vowel sound, so we say 'thee' hour just as we say 'thee' apple. But 'unit' begins with a consonant sound (IPA /j/) so we say 'thuh' unit, just as we say 'thuh' banana. Because of the shape of the mouth when we speak, it's almost always easier to say 'thee' before a vowel sound and 'thuh' before a consonant sound. Why make it harder? 🙂

[@honkhonk8009]

Bro thats so true. Look at all the british youtubers on the platform. They all have americanized accents lmfaooo

[@santi2683]

This is really interesting, I always thought it was the English equivalent of the "neutral Spanish" that it's used in Latin America for dubbing so as to make it as appealing as possible to everyone regardless of their accent

[@eriottomakurashi]

Oml spanish movies as a native speaker make me feel so off, like why they sound so fucking weird. I guess if they do in fact use such “global” accent it makes sense

[@santi2683]

@@eriottomakurashi yeah that's intentional, they make it sound artificial (even though it clearly sounds Mexican like) to make it neutral

[@maryocecilyo3372]

@@santi2683 I also think so, it's sound Mexican Spanish. Maybe because Mexico is largest Spanish speaking in the Americas and more influences.

[@pollyparrot8759]

The interesting thing about Cary Grant speaking with a transatlantic accent is that he was British, so he had to learn both transatlantic and American accents.

[@thunderbird1921]

Even more impressive is that he never really let his accent slip from what I've seen, even when his characters got angry (such as the famous "GET OUT!" scene in His Girl Friday, which has become a meme on the Internet). You'd have a very hard time thinking he wasn't born here. I was shocked to learn he was British.

[@vincentgoupil180]

Since Grant was British, as most actors were, he was dumbing down his accent for the American audiences. Sort of a condescending attitude. Otherwise it would sound like trying to understand an episode of "Monty Python".

[@Robboooo28]

Don't know if I'm imagining it, but he actually sounds a bit Bristolian in that clip to be fair, I'm not noticing that much difference.

[@timelordtardis]

@@Robboooo28 Well done for picking that up. He was born and grew up in Bristol!

[@catherinebutler4819]

One odd thing is that, as a Bristolian, Cary Grant would have grown up speaking with a rhotic accent, which he may have tried to lose to be an actor in the UK, then regain when he went to the States, then lose again for the mid-Atlantic accent. Meanwhile, the actor who played Darth Vader, David Prowse, another Bristolian, was deemed unsuitable for the voice role in part *because* his rhotic accent made him sound like a farmer. And finally, Christian Bale (Welsh) was instructed to use a mid-Atlantic accent as recently as 2004 for the English dub of Howl's Moving Castle - where he plays a character who in the book (but not the Ghibli film) is canonically Welsh.

[@steffensgary]

The funniest thing is, the mid atlantic accent is actually insanely close to the Rhode Island accent.

[@ananonynoussauce7616]

Odd, I thought it was a non Rhodic accent

[@zeinab9222]

doesnt really sound like it to me, besides the non rhoticity (eastern ct here)

[@steffensgary]

@@zeinab9222 rhode islanders drop the Rs.

[@zeinab9222]

@@steffensgary yeah i know

[@heriruiz340]

@@hexagod1313 why wouldn’t he?

[@clashwithkeen]

As someone from the US south I always thought the mid-atlantic accent sounded like someone smashed together fake southern and boston accents. Mostly to do with the R's.

[@michaelmcchesney6645]

It's not really surprising that Cary Grant sounds kinda British because Archibald Leach, aka Cary Grant, was born in Bristol, U.K.

[@animeyahallo3887]

Wendover Productions: The logistics of going to the cinema to watch old movies.

[@pompshuffle562]

@homie got everything wrong Shut

[@KokoroKatsura]

A N I M E N I M E

[@alyssad990]

3:40 *Boston has entawed the chat*

[@United-Nations]

I hear Boston is a place where people pretend to be Irish

[@ginjaninja4699]

As a Brit I can confirm that that accent is still very American

[@thomashosking385]

Sounded American to me as well. Now I'm wondering if the narrator had an American or transatlantic accent.

[@davidmizak4642]

I want to thank you for the amazing information you provide to your viewers. This is fascinating material. I appreciate all of your efforts. Many thanks!

[@ImTHECarlos98]

As a young immigrant in Canada, I’ve ALWAYS WONDERED WHY TF THEY SOUNDED SO DIFFERENT. I wasn’t sure if it was just me or not. When I imagine the 1900s I still imagine people speaking like that vs how we speak now. Cannot believe that EVERYONE was just trained to speak the same way.

[@hedgehog3180]

It's actually a really common phenomenon that the upper class of a society will adopt a particular accent or an entirely different language to distinguish themselves from the rest of society. If you look through Europe historically for example you'll find that most kings and queens didn't actually speak their local language but instead spoke French or German, this only really started to change in the late 18th and 19th century.

[@greedyfirstalgorithmlast26]

BUT THERE WAS NO SUCH THING as mid-atlantic accent because mid-atlantic is oceans and No Body Lives in the Mid Atlantic. Take your Globe of the World, then follow the mid-atlantic ocean from New York to Liverpool. NOTICE there is NO HABITATION at any point. mid-atlantic accent is a logical fallacy. Did these people live in Submarines?

[@ImTHECarlos98]

@@hedgehog3180 So you’re saying some people actually spoke like that to exude wealth back then?

[@u3u36]

@@ImTHECarlos98 I think this was a common thing worldwide.

[@Tobi-ln9xr]

1:25 that’s the flag of the UK, not England.

[@mutttaaaz9165]

2:08 He sees the world like alien in Hollywood movies He one of them

[@athanasius_lim]

Here in Singapore, we have Singlish(hybrid word of Singapore and English), our local dialect of English which is popular in our country but sometimes the government will say "speak proper English" and point at British English because Singapore is a former British colony

[@marimar3161]

Singlish is hideous. It sounds like kids in an ESL class trying their best to communicate in English but failing

[@maryocecilyo3372]

It's more likely code-switching

[@FishSnackems]

3:10 "But seeing as you don't know what a glottal stop even is, we should move on" jan Misali time

[@falkelh]

Uh-oh

[@dontforgetyoursunscreen]

I know what a glotal stop it is like a pause and the symbol on the international phonetic alphabet looks like this ? but no dot

[@falkelh]

@@dontforgetyoursunscreen yes. It where you close your glottis to temporarily stop sounds coming out. It's the sound that you make when you say "uh-oh" or "bri'ish"

[@texaspatriot2038]

Dude this is one of my favorite channels ever, I'm a Jeopardy champion cause of yall

[@pompshuffle562]

@homie got everything wrong Shut

[@nukesrus2663]

@homie got everything wrong the

[@notfunny007]

@homie got everything wrong fuck

[@n1tr0us.]

@homie got everything wrong up

[@BrilliantDesignOnline]

Soo you are a cesspool of knowledge?

[@WillScarlet16]

My grandmother grew up in Connecticut and she spoke exactly like that all her life - "Hullo luvvy."

[@onbearfeet]

Lol. This video solved an old mystery for me! I have a light transatlantic accent that comes and goes according to my mood--shows up more when I'm nervous or trying very hard to be precise. "White" becomes "hwite", "aunt" becomes "ahnt", sometimes my Rs go missing at the ends of words, etc. I never attended a fancy boarding school, I've lived my entire life on the US West Coast, and I regularly get asked whether I spent my childhood in Britain or Canada or Boston or anywhere but my native California. My family isn't rich, never has been, but most of us have that funny, slightly posh way of speaking--what I call the "PBS accent". I joke that my dad and brothers sound like Frasier Crane. It's baffled me for years. Is it all the British media we consumed as kids? Our Army-brat dad moving all over the world? The fact that two of us performed Shakespeare when we were young? Too many old movies? This video finally made it click. My dad's parents were Depression-era farm kids who barely got a high-school education, but grandpa was a finance officer in the US Army and grandma became a journalist who specialized in talking to hard-to-access people at high levels. They both needed to sound posher than they were, so their working accent came out of a book (or old movies) and they used their natural accents at home. By the time the grandkids came along, everyone was switching into at least some transatlantic whenever they wanted to be taken seriously, because that's what the elders did. I'll bet I could find a copy of "Speak With Distinction" if I went through grandma's books right now. They actually made this ridiculous accent a thing. 😂 Oh, well, at least now I have an answer when people ask me where my accent is from. An imaginary island in the middle of the Atlantic... Wait, does this make me Atlantean?! CAN I TALK TO FISH?! Sam, I need a follow-up video stat!

[@evelynwilson1566]

I'm a wee bit the same. The part of Scotland where I live really has two accents, because lots of people from Glasgow moved to this area. Even with that people still think I sound posh, but I come from a long line of policemen, miners and domestic servants. However my Gran had a better job, she was a Lady's Maid. Looking back, I realise that she spoke very clearly and sounded a bit 'posh'. I think she must have trained herself to speak that way. My Mum also speaks very clearly and had the added factor of spending her early years in England then having to move to a new place, and be understood. I also worked as a tour guide for a long time, and had to slow down and clarify my natural speech pattern. It's amazing how we attribute so much to accent, yet it really changes very easily and not always for the reasons people think. It really only remains static if everyone stays in the same area, and doesn't have any sort of outside influence. My Mother always says that as a child she was teased at school in England for sounding 'Scottish' and then when she moved back here her classmates said she sounded 'English'🤣

[@cleoldbagtraallsorts3380]

Aunt is pronounced ahnt by all English people, that isn't made up.

[@tumblingrosesstudio]

*waiting to find out if you can speak to fish*

[@XeiDaMoKaFE]

how's no one talking about 1:35 I'm dying 🤣🤣

[@sciencerscientifico310]

While the transatlantic accent was rarely used in everyday life, it does have similarities to accents which were and still are to an extent. The closest "real" accent to Transatlantic English is the old timey Boston Brahman English, which was completely non-rhotic and had other features like the 'broad A' in words like "bath" and the Ts not converted into Ds.

[@ecamilo762]

I live in Massachusetts, not far from Boston, and indeed many old people, specially the well educated, speak something very close to “Transatlantic English”. I kind of love it! . For me it gives them a very New England identity!

[@tomwofford5552]

The upper class east of the Mississippi River has been non-rhotic since the mid-1800s, probably a bit earlier, from Mobile to Richmond to Mainline Philly to Old New York to the Boston brahmins. The people who codified non-rhotic speech as a standard for theatre and then film didn't invent it, and nobody learned it in prep school, they learned non-rhotic speech at home, then refined it at prep school. It's still quite common in much of the country, I heard someone with a non-rhotic Southern accent yesterday. Mid-Atlantic is only peculiar because of the shift in the 1950s to the General American accent on television, which is also artificial but used (or approximated) more widely because Americans hear more TV speech than they do their own local accent.

[@MSK-jd5fi]

This was fascinating. I had never heard about the origin of the mid Atlantic accent. I’m from Connecticut, so I’ve always been confused about Katherine Hepburn’s accent as I knew she grew up not far down the coast from me. No one around here has that accent. So now I know

[@David-di5bo]

I want to see the video on why all American historical films and shows use British accents. It would sound extremely weird to see a movie set in ancient Rome or Greece with the characters speaking with a modern American accent, instead of a (modern) British accent. American viewers would reject it, we just expect historical films to sound British so they always do. But...why? If the story is set in ancient Greece it's already "fake" that they are speaking English at all. Why would we consider it "more" fake to have American accents rather than British accents? There's some psychological quirk there.

[@ptrknvk]

I guess that Americans just want to hear a different accent, so they psychologically feel that this movie is not from the world they're used to.

[@NoodleFlames]

We are not ok with seeing people that sound like us brutally oppress others, that is a role for the british

[@jaretos]

Danila Kiselev This actually makes sense

[@Ryan48219]

America was a British colony, and figures like George Washington would have had a British accent - or the British accent of his time, anyway. Having said that, the British accent at that time was likely a lot closer to modern North American English accents than modern British accents so it's still inaccurate

[@theXEN0KID]

Brits sound better, obviously! XD (jk) Slava Ukraine :D

[@johnneumann7273]

Sam: "The real backbone of Half as Interesting is the Stock Footage" Me just listening to the videos in the background: "Nah it's the writers"

[@greedyfirstalgorithmlast26]

John Von Neumann you invented Game Theory that was really Smart! BUT THERE WAS NO SUCH THING as mid-atlantic accent because mid-atlantic is oceans and No Body Lives in the Mid Atlantic. Take your Globe of the World, then follow the mid-atlantic ocean from New York to Liverpool. NOTICE there is NO HABITATION at any point. mid-atlantic accent is a logical fallacy. Did these people live in Submarines?

[@greedyfirstalgorithmlast26]

Indeed, this is exactly what Nash equilibrium predicts. Nash’s theory applies to any game with any number of decision makers, whereas John von Neumann’s 1928 Minimax Theorem applies only to “zero-sum” games with two players. Nash equilibrium also allows for the possibility that decision makers follow randomised strategies. Allowing for randomisation is important for the mathematics of game theory because it guarantees that every (finite) game has a Nash equilibrium. Randomisation is also important in practice in commonly played games such as Two-up, Rock-Paper-Scissors, poker and tennis. We all know from our own experience how to play Rock-Paper-Scissors against a sophisticated opponent: play each action with equal probability, independently of the actions and outcomes in past plays. Indeed, this is exactly what Nash equilibrium predicts. Nash’s theory applies to any game with any number of decision makers, whereas John von Neumann’s 1928 Minimax Theorem applies only to “zero-sum” games with two players.

[@iw9472]

As a Modern Languages student, this is truly fascinating!! I will share it with my Phonetics and Linguistics teacher! Thank you!!

[@muratpolar5281]

Cary Grant's origins: Archibald Alec Leach, January 18, 1904, Bristol, England

[@TheGrinningSkull]

2:13 I like how the England map is actually England and not lumping in the rest of the UK.

[@Ghiaman1334]

1:13 'Vaguely British' is an overstatement of their accuracy. Pretty sure no-one in this country would listen to that clip and think 'maybe they're trying to sound British'

[@Great_Olaf5]

As an American, can confirm, does not sound vaguely British to me. It sounds vaguely like New Yorker more than British.

[@carsonm7292]

Yea, the male character sounds vaguely New York and the female character sounds vaguely southern, at least to me.

[@cloudkitt]

I think it mostly refers to it's non-rhotic-ness. But yeah there are American accents that are like that too.

[@tessjuel]

Listen to early 20th C. BBC news broadcasts. The way the readers speak there does resemble trasnatlantic (or possibly transatlantic) more than modern English does. It's possible it's partly because they too were dreaming of a tropical island in the middle of the ocean of course but it's also because a language changes over time. It only takes a decade or two to notice significant differences and this was almost a century ago.

[@rabidfurify]

​@@tessjuel In a similar way to the phenomenon described in this video, BBC broadcasters used to all speak with the same accent (which is similarly associated with wealth and expensive schooling) and are not a good source of what normal people sounded like at the time.

[@IxionGames]

"Considering you don't know what a glottal stop is-" Assuming I don't have a theatre degree. Rude, sir.

[@doomwangus2080]

I didn’t even remember subscribing to this and swore it was just a watchmojo clone but the video actually has content and I am shocked

[@improveist]

Same here.

[@pompshuffle562]

@you know this Shut

[@LastBastion]

3:01 oh, that's why Stewie say hwip cream

[@ZaquWasTaken]

i was legit thinking about that too lmao

[@donnaveitpolanski4154]

Thanks for this, I always wondered! There was a Grace Kelly documentary where they spoke about how her family mocked her out for the way she spoke in movies. Now I know why!

[@BerzinskyRules]

The Trans-Atlantic Accent is more or less the accent used when you study voice or sing in a choir--whether in US high schools or churches. It is the accent (more or less) of singers of American standards from Barbara Streisand to Elle Fitzgerald to Sinatra. It still is, IMO, the accent of proper American REGION-LESS diction. It is clear and easy to understand to this day--and I use many of the principles when public speaking or on KZbin (Beardbrand Alliance).

[@Hailey_Paige_1937]

Yep!! I’m a voice student and a Music Ed Major. The Transatlantic accent seems to fit the singing diction-I never really thought of it that way. 😂

[@mjrc123]

1:18 Oh yes, I do love the “Trasnatlantic” accent. (But then again, I am a Brit…)

[@TheGrinningSkull]

5:35 "Every one knows that the real backbone of Half as Interesting is hard work of the writers.. wait that's not supposed to say that" XD

[@emmaythegray]

Thank you, this has been vexing me for ages (though not enough to research myself).

[@toddburgess6792]

I've wondered that forever! Thanks for the research.

[@joebaumgart1146]

I'm also fluent is Philadelphia ASL. Some signs are actually so different that an ASL interpreter needs to be specially trained in it to understand what's being said.

[@Great_Olaf5]

This is what happens when you get enough people speaking a language. It inevitably changes. The only languages which don't change are dead or unborn.

[@joebaumgart1146]

@@Great_Olaf5 this is why I think Black and White Philadelphia English should be taught in Philadelphia area schools instead of telling those native speakers they're wrong.

[@Great_Olaf5]

@@joebaumgart1146 Telling them they're wrong is definitely wrong. Trying to actually reach the local dialects however, is a logistical nightmare. Because none of them are right or wrong, they just are. To teach the local dialects in every school, you'd then either be forced to only hire teachers who grew up in the area, which is unfair, or to teach the teachers the local dialect, which is expensive, and problematic in the opposite direction. Dialects are fractally granular, as you narrow your focus, you don't find clear boundaries between them, you just keep finding smaller and smaller subdivisions, right down to personal dialects, referred to by linguists as idiolects (the unique way that an individual speaks). For example, I belong to the region under the influence of the northern cities vowel shift, and have never had so much as a race of it in my accent, nor has anyone I've known personally, had that confirmed by a very disappointed ohonologist and everything, if I'd been going to a school offering local dialect English classes, I'd have grown up thinking the way I talked was wrong just because it didn't match up with the way it was taught in schools, exactly the problem we want to avoid.

[@whatsbehindu]

I’ve always wondered this and thought I was the only one that noticed it. But I feel like old people in America in general have a different accent from young people.

[@ethanstump]

That's true across all nationalities. Accents change across time as well as place, so even in the same village, someone from the 1940s is going to sound different from some someone born in the 1990s.l, whether that's in Sweden, Kenya or Ecuador.

[@United-Nations]

Cuz the Internet is making people sound the same I swear to god

[@United-Nations]

And de television

[@artawhirler]

Great video! Thanks!

[@vertigq5126]

I knew about the accent, but I had no idea of the history behind it! Thanks for the explanation of the rise and fall. Keep it up and God bless you! :)

[@AnkhX100]

Damn, this is the earliest I've been to a video. Literally in the first minute, but good job! 😆

[@pompshuffle562]

@homie got everything wrong shut

[@Raaaaaaaaaaandy]

Now do one on why British musicians sing "American"

[@jasperbarnes4544]

I've noticed this too.

[@blackbroadwayandbeyond]

In addition to providing consistent clarity, the Mid-Atlantic accent also helped some people overcome various speech impediments. Imitation and repetition, especially a different way of speaking that emphasizes specific pronunciation, can be extremely helpful for those who struggle with speech.

[@jackesioto]

I could definitely see why certain speech impediments would be minimized by using the TransAtlantic accent. The one that comes to mind right now is rhotaicism, or the inability to correctly pronounce ''R''. The fact that the Trans Atlantic accent is completely non-rhotic would hide some of the conversion of R to W.

[@HenryZhoupokemon]

I’m no linguist but I feel glottal stops are actually super important when talking about accents Like “button” vs “buh-in”

[@Croz89]

I find the mid-atlantic accent can sound a bit like a less nasally southern US accent.

[@United-Nations]

That is bonkers

[@patrickbrand1319]

Southern accent comes from English settlers so there's definitely a connection there. It has a drawl to it

[@thunderbird1921]

@@patrickbrand1319 I've heard the "cockney" accent, which appears to have the higher pitched drawl, but is still definitely British. Perhaps over time the Southern accent simply dropped the remaining "elegant" part and went all out drawl.

[@ihavetowait90daystochangem67]

The way there talking probably has something to do with them not seeing any colour except black, white and grey

[@pompshuffle562]

@homie got everything wrong Shut

[@glowingfatedie]

In the FDR clip you can hear a wrinkle of some versions of the supposedly non-rhotic accent. The second time he says "feah", the R that got removed from the end of "fear" got tacked on to the beginning of "itself." Boston is usually pointed to as an example of this kind of extra-rhoticity. "The only thing we have to fea' is, fea' ritself."

[@keith536]

Cary Grant is actually British. He sounded more "American" than she did.

[@rob6850]

I love this channel because each video is half as interesting as the one before.

[@nitehawk86]

wait...

[@Synthetica9]

holy shit the first video must be mega interesting if this retains even a smatter of interrestingness

[@Line49Design]

@@Synthetica9 'Smatter for you..you mean to say 'smattering'

[@rob6850]

@@Synthetica9 yep, you get to a million interesting if you go 21 videos back

[@inyrui]

I've never disliked a comment before but I think I'll start now

[@Senumunu]

This video is filled with miss information. The accent disappeared bcs the demographics changed. Most of the classic actors are either british or europeans that learned english in New York. (like Katherine Hepburn)

[@Patswans938]

Katherine Hepburn was from a rich family in New England and went to boarding school. She spoke with her native accent.

[@WDKimball]

My Grandparents, great Aunts and Uncles, Proper Bostonians born in the 1890s and 1900s, all spoke with a very English accent. They were always correcting my pronunciation in the 1950s and 60s.

[@waynemartinmartin4128]

My Great grandmother was from Boston and spoke with that very same accent. We though nothing of it.

[@rillloudmother]

many people spoke a softened version of this on the phone for business through the 1990s [including folks born after the 1960s]. during the 1990s it began to completely vanish when corporate call centers began to move to more remote areas of the USA. In the 2000s corporate call centers moved offshore and verbal business communication was replaced with email.

[@vasmir84]

Something curious is that in latin american versions of movies we have what wee call "acento nuetro" (neutral accent) beacause although the dub for movies are mostly made in mexico, they are used in almost all latin american countries (Perú, Bolivia, Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, etc). There are exceptions like sherk, which used a lot of mexican slang, but it is mostly a somewhat artifical way of speaking that you sometimes even see little kids that spend a lot of time watching cartoons use, although it usually wears off when they grow up.

[@SuicideBunny6]

I’m not a native English speaker, but used to the RP British accent though. The clips you mentioned sounded pretty American to me. Aside from the inconsistent dropped r’s and no glottal stops (in ‘bedder’ - ‘better’) it’s the vowels that make it sound all American to me 😅

[@NutchapolSal]

god damn the graphics animations in the thesaurus part is smooth

[@Brained05]

One of the interesting things is that an accent is perceived differently by different people, depending on the accent they grew up listening to. To me a mid Atlantic accent does not sound non-rhotic while a British accent does.

[@dstinnettmusic]

This knowledge had cursed me with having to rethink the version of the past I had in my head where everyone sounded vaguely like British JFK

[@micayahritchie7158]

Thing is though old American and Old British accents would naturally sound closer together than modern ones so if you find some American speech sounding recognisably British to you then it's likely constructed because modern British things wouldn't have existed at the time of divergence. As a matter of fact just forty or so years ago most of the UK still pronounced their rs and not doing it was mostly a thing in the south east

[@DaimyoD0]

5:28 Dude, everyone called you out on that "phenome" "phoneme" thing lol. Not just one guy nitpicking. You said it like half a dozen times in the video lol. I love your videos, and I learn something new almost every time, but I'm I've gotta hold you to it, that one was silly. 😂

[@theneonbop]

I was just wondering about this a couple of weeks ago.

[@thekingsdaughter4233]

It's been a while since I learned that that's what it is. English is not my first language, and I LOVE this "Transatlantic" accent. 😊 I would love to be able to talk like that!! So crisp and clear; makes me think of freshly ironed shirts (I suppose I'm weird...). I noticed recently that German actors from about the same era sounded different, too. Their pronunciation was much more clear and precise. Maybe it _was_ to make sure they would be understood even with poor sound quality. 😉

[@ConradSpoke]

This entire thesis is trash. No one invented this accent. It pre-dates Tilly and Skinner by decades.

[@dragos240alt]

"What's a glottal stop?" Notice how some british accents drop the t like in... the word british as "bri'ish", or even glottal stop as "glo'al stop". Not too hard to explain.

[@cipshadow]

Did anyone else realise that the shot of the kid smoking the cigar at 3:42 is from the opening credits to Succession?

[@Sh-ws5jd]

3:30 the R in 'fear itself' would be pronounced in the accent as 'itself' begins with a vowel

[@The_JLav]

You're alienating the portion of your audience that DOES know what a glottal stop is 😭

[@lavasharkandboygirl9716]

My grandfather was a news presenter in New Zealand in the fifties, he still talks like this now. It’s incredibly strange hearing him describe his “fabulous trip down to the market for a gallon of milk” on a FaceTime call

[@WHR0306]

Mary Tyler Moore used to speak with a slight Mid-Atlantic accent early on in the Dick Van Dyke Show. She actually talked about this in a later interview saying she was mimicking some of her favorite old movie stars. There are some episodes where if you listen you'll notice it.

[@jamesbaker7112]

"Are you terribly cross, dolling?" "Dolling, don't let's quarrel!"

[@davidrenton]

i think Cary Grant has a reason to sound British with him being erm British. Watch some of his earlier movies (early,mid 1930s) he sounds very British

[@InvagPrune]

In the first clip they showed i found that he sounded more British than his counterpart anyway, even if they did both speak transatlantic

[@smithryansmith]

Yeah, pretty stupid to use a Brit in showing how Americans sound "british"

[@hallieboy]

@@smithryansmith I bet they didn't even know that...sloppy research

[@SilentAttackTV]

blud really just read the wikipedia article

[@sammencia7945]

This worked its way into the midwest in the 50s. My mother had this aspirational accent not too dissimilar to the transatlantic accent.

[@CajunA79]

I honestly love the way they talk in old movies !

[@adamandsteve13]

I really like this accent, I wish Americans and brits would talk like this 😂