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7/16/2025, 5:56:07 PM
>>715615339
>American accents are actually closer to old English than modern English.
That's a "truth" with a lot of caveats to it. And yet it's repeated so often that I'm starting to think that it's some unironic propaganda or something.
Because the truth of that "truth" is that yes, American accents are closer to "old English" than modern English, if we're talking about a very narrow period of time of old but not quite that old English accents from specific regions and certainly not all parts of England or greater Britain.
If you go back a thousand years then old English genuinely doesn't even sound like English anymore and you'll start to understand why English is said to be a Germanic language. Because genuinely old English starts resembling languages such as Icelandic and German and a modern English speaker, be they a Brit or American, would be unlikely to understand the old English at all.
And the King's English of Britain, to this day, does indeed resemble old English more so than American English does.
But you're right that American English does indeed resemble a type of English that was not uncommon at the time settlers started to settle in the new world from England.
Like do you think Beowulf's old West Saxon, resembles modern American or modern English dialects more?
>American accents are actually closer to old English than modern English.
That's a "truth" with a lot of caveats to it. And yet it's repeated so often that I'm starting to think that it's some unironic propaganda or something.
Because the truth of that "truth" is that yes, American accents are closer to "old English" than modern English, if we're talking about a very narrow period of time of old but not quite that old English accents from specific regions and certainly not all parts of England or greater Britain.
If you go back a thousand years then old English genuinely doesn't even sound like English anymore and you'll start to understand why English is said to be a Germanic language. Because genuinely old English starts resembling languages such as Icelandic and German and a modern English speaker, be they a Brit or American, would be unlikely to understand the old English at all.
And the King's English of Britain, to this day, does indeed resemble old English more so than American English does.
But you're right that American English does indeed resemble a type of English that was not uncommon at the time settlers started to settle in the new world from England.
Like do you think Beowulf's old West Saxon, resembles modern American or modern English dialects more?
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