Popular Music... This seems to have a mid Atlantic accent; I've heard. Where when singing, people find it harder sometimes to tell where a person is from.
In Croydon once. Yeah, I've met people from all over, but yeah I have. But... I didn't write the rules on South England being considered a typical British accent.
Nope - American and Brits in that period sounded the same (unless the American's were Spanish/French or German settlers) but they didn't sound as Americans do now .. its more a case of the Americans sounding British than vice versa because that's where they came from, but British in that period didn't sound as it does now. Shakespeare probably did speak standard English since he was a playwright moving in posh circles, but it wouldn't have been spoken my most of the population in his time
Actually standard English was based on the accent of the east midlands as that's where most of the wealthy merchant class came from in the 14th and 15th century - the real aristocracy at that time mostly spoke French or latin
His English was strongly rhotic, though. There are letters between him and other playwrights of the time where he extolls how much he disliked the non-rhotic speech of actors in some areas performing his work. He demanded that they pronounce the R thoroughly, as Americans do, and as the Irish do. But you are utterly correct in that his speech would be as strange to you as it would be to me since you and I both exist 400 years separated from his day. The rhotic R is just one small facet of a huge spectrum of phonemes that can and have changed over time.
Let's agree we hear Lloyd Grossman with different ears. I hear why he can be mistaken for British, as a mater of fact, when I found out he wasn't British, his American accent stuck out to me like a sore thumb, and - I admit my own findings are mine; I based them on what I got from film & TV, from actors testimony about Boston in the end/last night, and running gags that involved 'British sounding' but to me, I see what I thought was a relaxed and privileged New England accent and, I guess you see an American immersed in the UK and... Hmm... IDK, let's agree to disagree about Lloyd Grossman and I'd love for this community to kindly invite him for a Q&A and I'd see if he, if you guys want to lol, see if Lloyd Grossman himself could login as a special guess here for a Q&A and book him through his agent (and hope he says yes) and get a quote and see if I could afford it, and slip in this question about his accent - extreme I admit, but, not impossible; I'm going to digress from Lloyd Grossman (which I get is a digression itself from Puritan talk so actually helps in the fact of ruling this accent out now for the Puritans) - ; We are limited by three things. They are our imagination, our budget and reality. NOW... Poetic License doesn't need reality, or even budget... but... Assuming you were hiring - for argument's sake, and you had the money and were casting/directing people to play Puritans - and you 'directed' them to sound like Lloyd Grossman, that would fail because it's posh and puritans were too early to sound posh, no? - So... Yeah, what did they sound like? Like, when some singer sings English and you don't know if it's British or American sometimes because it's singing, like that? 'Accentless, more organic/natural/tapped into the heart/brain more form of English that removes the accent taught by RP that the puritans never had.
There's a show I like by someone who wrote for The Simpsons set in New England but it's filmed in Georgia, and I'm the nerd who see's it's Georgia but... I'm a London man right, I probably shouldn't recognise Georgia when I see it since that's not common knowledge in my culture, but, it's set in New England, in your region but not your state, called Stan Against Evil, I forget what state exactly it's set in, tbh, but, it's filmed in Georgia. Love your avatar. They have a puritan setting too, but, they cast an Irish guy and he spoke with his own accent. I just found out last night from two YouTube channels people in England sounded more American back then, somehow. - Talk about a strong accusation lmao, I am so curious about this.
So people in Boston, MA evolved their accent from people who sounded like Noody Holder? I wonder how old Cockney is now.
you need to ditch this obsession that the English sounded American - that's never been true. At the time Americans and English sounded the same but that's because neither accent was the same as it is today Its like say a bunch of people from England set up a colony on mars today .... today "Martians" and English would sound the same ... in a couple of hundred years time that wouldn't be true
When seeking this 'dialect of the ancestors' the closest I have come to finding my 'holy grail' are the audio recordings from St Helena and Tristan. Also the National Geographic album of sea shanties on the Youtube are very evocative. For English accents of 100 years ago there is the recently discovered archive of POWs in Germany, WW1. Most striking is that all the young men, regardless of region, say fether - for father - very touching. ... Bobby, get reading about Pilgrim Fathers and mid-atlantic accents and such. You'll find it fascinating. It's all out there to find.
