Merry Andrew wrote:Don't forget, Chai, that the makeup of the colonial stock, so to speak, was not all that homogeneous. Those who settled Virginia were primarily of Cavalier stock. Their accents would have been somewhat different from the Puritans who settled New England. New York and New Jersey were originally Dutch colonies, not English, and I suspect that after the Brits acquired those territories, intermarriage and other social contact with the Hollanders would have affected their speech patterns. Maryland started as a Roman Catholic colony. Most of the Catholics left in England after Henry VIII's reformation were apt to be more posh than the largely rural Puritans.
THAT is facinating. I had not thought of it that way. It would be fun to have a time machine and go back to listen.
Actually, the town I grew up in is named Brielle. Named so by someone from the Netherlands(?) who thought it looked like the Brielle back home.
Apparantly pronounced differently than the original. We pronounced it BREE-L, I think it was a girls name too.
NIMH - how is it pronounced?
I hear talk here of American accents vs. British, Canadian, Aussie, South African. But, just like in those countries, there are SO many different American accents.
No one would ever confuse someone from Alabama from a person from Wisconsin.
Just like in London, people in different parts of New York sound very different, i.e. born in Manhatten, vs. born in the Bronx.\
I prefer Southern accents, and there are quite a few different ones there also. Georgia is not like Louisianna, is not like Texas, is not like Arkansas. Yet happily Lord Elpus, they all have Southern Bells.
