If you had a conversation with a person in 1770 would they understand?

[MikeKardec]

I'm much more comfortable in the company of people who at least acknowledge their own failings. These days, we're witnessing many a racist who would tell you (and himself) that there isn't a hint of racism in him.

... and many people who betray through hypersensitivity where their minds go when their buttons are pushed. The question is, in those situations, who is the racist?

I believe that we will be better off as a society being happy with a 99%ish solution.

We have to accept a wide range of people and behavior rather than just looking at the surface that may justify a feel good vacation into outrage.

I may have said the following in another post, I know I wrote it somewhere not long ago. I have a friend, a man just barely old enough to be the father of someone my age, who was a State Dept Engineer with USAID and their contractors for nearly 50 years. He worked side by side with his construction crews all over the world, Africa, South America, South East Asia and Afghanistan. He slept in the same tents, ate the same food and was treated by the same doctors. His work probably saved and improved more lives in the third world than many charitable NGOs. Yet he spoke of the differences between people in the language of Southern California in the 1950s, identifying anyone and everyone by their race or ethnicity. Not using derogatory slang but still doing it in a way that would raise the hair of any younger person of heightened sensitivity.

I have spent some time with him in the field and noticed almost right away that his potentially controversial way of talking was also a reflection of many of the people he worked with in their native lands, his "clients" were VERY clear about the distinctions, racial or otherwise, between different tribes, nationalities or just variations of skin color. So it wasn't just an early 20th century American way of speaking it was something that existed in many places where difference have to be taken into account or the local culture makes note of them whether we (in all our enlightened glory) like it or not. If he's a "racist" as many on today's college campuses might call him because of the way he uses language I suspect the world may need more like him rather than less. I think his actions speak louder than his words.

Scrounging around I found another link on historical English dialect -- http://vaviper.blogspot.com/2017/03/how-far-back-in-time-could-you-go-and.html
I'm still not sure using fiction as a reference is all that accurate, different eras have had specific "entertainment styles" that existed mostly in fiction, theater or film and are not necessarily representative of the culture at large. Hollywood dialog in the Golden Era being one, the David Mamet/Sandy Meisner (an influential acting coach) repetition and double back style in the 1980s and '90s for another. I'm dead certain that many 19th century literary styles did not reflect actual speech at the time except when the speaker decided to take on a presentational "literary" affect. We see it today with the rise academic lingo, which at one time mostly existed in written form, in political and grievance speech. Does it exist as spoken language? Yep, but only in certain, specific, situations.

For what it's worth, a wonderful hoax from years ago -- http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/justin-cash/computer-arts_b_3083055.html and a more complete presentation of the issue -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism_Generator and the generator itself -- http://herbert.the-little-red-haired-girl.org/en/dada/

 

[tonyb]

... and many people who betray through hypersensitivity where their minds go when their buttons are pushed. The question is, in those situations, who is the racist? ...

Speaking of "buttons" and "hypersensitivity."

Touchy, touchy.

 

[Benny Holiday]

Very interest!ing! Partic the part about subject-predicate agreement not always being carefully observed -- that still shows up in Northeastern working-class speech.

Interesting too that some of those Colonial era words lingered on with their 18th Century meanings in New England into the 20th Century -- for example, "cop" used as a verb meaning "capture" was a favorite of newspaper headline writers well into my own lifetime: PICK SOX TO COP FLAG.

I like that Lizzie, like a bit of history still alive today.

 

[TimeWarpWife]

Or luxurious estates on top of the hill. The most morally degenerate man I ever knew was such, mingling with senators, congressmen, and other high-level politicians. He was a cocaine user, a serial adulterer, and a thief.

If the truth be told, many of the people he was mingling with were probably also drug users, serial adulterers, and thieves. I heard a psychiatrist being interviewed once, whose name I can't recall, but he was convinced that most politicians are psychopaths...I have to say that I tend to agree with him.

Btw, my family lived in a very nice single-wide trailer when my dad and step-mother first married in 1970. It was located up on a hill from where my dad worked. My dad worked as a guard at a state-run minimum security prison located out in the country. When I was a kid I loved to see people's reaction when I told them I lived on a convict camp. Actually the trailer was brand new and was larger than the house I'd been living in with my grandparents prior to my dad's remarriage. It was the first time in my life I had a bedroom to myself. I have fond memories of trailer living.

 

[BlueTrain]

Another interesting thread that slipped by me without comment. Let me just make up for it right now.

Concerning eugenics, it doesn't not seem to have died out with the end of WWII, nor was it confined to Germany. There were some surprisingly diverse groups that embraced the concept, all with the same end in mind, of course. In some cases it may have been racist and in other cases, merely unfairly applied, meaning it was only applied when they could get away with it. But I don't think the idea was around during our colonial period.

Kephart referred to those living in the Southern Appalachians, and I was one of them, as our contemporary ancestors. I thought that was a pretty good way of putting it, although he wrote that nearly a hundred years ago. It wouldn't be quite so accurate today. Barely a couple of generations ago (let's say around 1950), there were still people living back in the hills who had no telephone, no electricity, no running water and were still attending a one-room school, if they went. It was another fifteen years before that could no longer be said. I even met a man who delivered the mail (RFD) on horseback. A few people were still living in log houses (never referred to as a cabin--they weren't) built before the Civil War.

They did speak a certain dialect as does everyone still but it was completely intelligible to any English speaker, mostly. When Kephart wrote his book, he included some parts written in dialect, meaning to be read as the speaker would speak. One local person who reviewed what Kephart wrote said that he couldn't spell. But I don't think the spoken language would have change all that much, but that depends a little on where you are thinking of. German was widely spoken in some places in the 18th century in this country, for instance. Slang comes and goes but there was still the ordinary language. The language as it appeared in books during that period may sound a little stiff and twisted but ordinary language wouldn't have sounded the same, I think. But I can't think of an American books written before the Revolution.

I also don't think people may necessarily have been as isolated and uninformed as one might imagine, referring to those living either in the country or on the frontier, which at the time was along the Allegheny Front, more or less. They were always eager for news of the rest of the other colonies and the rest of the world. There were newspapers in the big cities and gossip made up for the lack of them anywhere else. There were always travelers visiting the distant settlements and homesteads. Preaches made the circuits and peddlers and tinkers made the rounds, too. And it was also a time of mass migrations, with many immigrants coming to America from Europe. And there was the slave trade.

It's difficult to understand social conditions of the day (and the first paragraph covered more than a lifetime) without living them and we are apt to make many false assumptions. It's easy to see they were different from the old country, of course, especially England, but other aspects may just be a good guess. And we really don't know what they sounded like when they spoke.

 

[Michael R.]

Benjamin Franklin in 1751 I think had concerns about the standardization of English , and its spelling , but not until after 1806 and Noah Webster's Dictionary did it even begin . There were large populations of German and French speaking communities in the US and the frontier .

I know from my childhood many people spelled words the way they pronounced them and spoke , and back then you could tell where a person was from by their accent and the words they used . Example : In TN there are 3 sections that are very distinct , east , middle , and west TN . From the Cumberland Plateau and near it east a person to this day will say you'ins (Southern Appalachian) , while in the west the word is y'all . Carpet Baggers use the phrase You All (many in 'high society' also), or You Guys , Yoose (pronounced : like goose) guys , or just plain you . Thats just one small example . Another example : Creek , Crick , stream , brook . (a good literary example would be "Huckleberry Fin" or "Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain)

I don't know about others , but as a child before starting school the way I thought the words were pronounced that I used were totally different than the actual word in spelling and pronunciation . And the way words were pronounced and slurred depending on region made each region of the country distinct . After TV came and eventually standardized their non-accent (basically Mid-Indiana) standards in pronunciation and announcing , and children began to be babysat by television and live in front of the idiot box dialects began to change everywhere and culture with it .

Even in the past fake accents usually never came close to the real thing , and anyone acquainted with an area could spot a phony plain as day .

In my grandfather's day many still used the word 'ought' for zero , example 19 ought 1 , for 1901 .

Its was fun if you were acquainted with the distinctions in speech from various parts of the country (even parts of each state) , you could easily figure out where a person was from , or grew up as recently as the 70s I know , maybe later . Just as in NYC there was the Brooklyn accent , etc. , Jersey , Boston , and their local variations , Maine , etc , for the NorthEasterners .

Language in this country has always been a blending . I'm sure we wouldn't even understand the vocal speech of someone from 1770 , except barely . Much like Old English and Modern English , maybe not as drastic , maybe so .

 

[BlueTrain]

Or like in .30-06?

I think accents are still as strong as ever and I also think people may be more aware of their accent and speech patterns than they used to be, although that is doubtful. The dictionary says (mine does, anyway) there are only three accents: basically Northern, Southern, and Appalachian. There was even a little map and the curious thing was the three regions all met at one point just about where I am sitting. No kidding.

It isn't that simple, of course. There are all sorts of interesting regional accents and variations in word usage. There is no reason to ever believe that it was ever constant. As the frontier moved west, the first thing people discovered was there were already Europeans living west of the Alleghenies, up and down the Mississippi and then, even further west, in California and the Southwest. So you are correct in that there was a constant blending of accents and even new ones.

Supposedly, there were pockets along the East Coast in the less visited areas where Jacobean English survived. I don't know what Jacobean or Elizabethan English actually sounded like but I have met people who sounded different from any other American accents I've heard. I didn't have any more difficulty understanding them (context helps) than I did my mother-in-law, who grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia.

I've pointed out before that people can alter their accents as well as word usage to suit the occasion. So they are aware of how they speak, if not necessarily being perfectly aware of what they sound like. I think that most of the time it is an unconscious shift in speaking and that practically everyone does it. To use an exaggerated example, you wouldn't talk the same way giving a speech at work, let's say, as you would talking to someone in the kitchen while you were having breakfast. I even believe people will sometimes stress their accent, such as it might be, for comic effect.

As far as fake accents go, it is possible that people might try to loose their native accent sometimes to avoid any negative connotation that it might carry. You can understand that some people will immediately dismiss or put down someone who has a countrified or especially Southern accent, at least if they weren't from the South or the country. But as far as imitating a foreign accent, that's another story. Actors are coached on accents. The rest of us probably don't need the help.

I believe we could easily understand ordinary speech in 1770. A friend's parents grew up in Pennsylvania where there were still German speakers. But the German speech came there a long time ago and generally from just one region. But it evolved in this country and the German back in the old country evolved, too. We are speaking of a two-hundred year period of time. This person said that in WWI, one of her relatives (father or uncle) who was over there during the war, could mostly understand the Germans. It may be like the difference in Spanish and Portuguese.

We have a robotic receptionist downstairs that gives a message to callers in the lobby and directs the visitor to contact the person they came to see by basically calling them. The machine has nine different language selections, including both Spanish and Portuguese as well as Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Dutch and--TWO English choices!

 

[LizzieMaine]

All stage and radio dialects were deliberately simplified -- when you learned to speak in an English accent for a radio or Broadway role, you didn't worry about whether it was a Yorkshire accent or a Liverpool accent, or a London Estuary accent, because your audience didn't know about these distinctions, and didn't care. The idea of using dialects in such cases was simply to quickly establish your character as a "type," without the need for time-wasting exposition. So there were only two English accents so far as American actors were concerned: Aristocratic, or "George Arliss" English -- a simplified version of Received Pronunciation -- and "Cockney" English, which was a simplified caricature of the real Cockney speech. "Oi, guv'nah!"

Same thing with other regional accents -- a radio actor doing a "Southern" accent didn't bother with learning Alabama, Appalachian, Virginia Piedmont, Creole, Yat, or Gullah -- she just drawled out "Waaaal, Ah do decla-ah!" and said "Y'all" a lot, and audiences -- even in the South -- accepted that as denoting "Southern." Suspension of disbelief, in other words.

 

[BlueTrain]

It probably wouldn't be worth the difference. The difference, I think, is not in everything but only in certain things. But when everything is put together, if you follow me, the whole package is different. But you are correct; only a local individual would even notice the difference--maybe. But even an American will recognize more accents of English than just the two you mention or at least I think they would. There's the English spoken in Scotland, Ireland, Australia and so on. I think most Americans could tell the difference and maybe even do a fair job of imitating some of it. The second English button on our receptionist machine is Australian. Each language has a different figure (there is a video screen) speaking each language and naturally they're all young women.

In real life, actors come from all those places you mention, so there will be a good chance of hearing an authentic accent on the screen, depending on how much dialogue there happens to be in the movie. And also in real life, not everyone in one place will even speak the same (or have the same accent) because there are more differences than just regional. One's accent can be "taught out" of your speech, although my wife points out that one can quickly and unconsciously slip back into one's natural vernacular. I rather like to think that those who live further up on the hill are going to talk a little differently. I suspect that difference was present in 1770.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In quite a few cases, radio performers with authentic accents had to learn the stereotypical versions of their accents in order to sound the way listeners expected their characters to sound -- this was especially true of African-American performers, some of whom had to go to dialect coaches to learn to speak in the expected "black" accent. The white southern actress Una Merkel was another example -- she grew up in the South and had a natural accent, but she had to learn to hoke it up in radio and movies to put across her comic characterization.

I did this myself when I was performing. I was raised with a natural Maine accent, but when I performed a "Maine" character on stage or radio, I had to exaggerate it to create the effect I wanted. "Real" accents are often too subtle in a performance setting.

 

[BlueTrain]

Oh, yes, that's exactly what I meant. Some people were especially good with accents, regardless of whether or not the accent was correct or authentic in the context. Someone once wondered why German officers in the movies always had British accents but I guess James Mason is to blame. (James Fox the desert mason, some comic put it). Sometimes the performer could be a surprise if they didn't know about it already. The voice of Beulah, the black maid or housekeeper on the radio show "Fibber McGee and Molly" was a white man. The old-timer on the show was voiced by the same man, I think, as Fibber McGee and Molly was done by the same person who did the little girl's voice.

Stage acting also calls for a certain kind of voice and speaking, I believe, that is a little unnatural in the first place. There is also the matter of a person's voice and to a limited degree, the accent, changing as they get older. Some actors in early talkies also had a peculiar way of speaking and that was also true of some public speakers in the 20s and 30s when they were giving a speech. It isn't exactly an accent but more of a way of speaking in public. People will speak differently when they're behind the podium but not quite the same way that was done at one time. It's really oratory, with or without any flowery language or an attempt at eloquence. And sometimes, it's called preaching.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I have said this before, but my favorite "regional character" of radio (and film) was Kenny Delmar's Senator Beauregard ("That's a joke, son!") Claghorn. What made him even funnier to me was when I found out that Delmar was actually born in Boston, died in Connecticut. His cartoon doppelganger, Foghorn Leghorn (voiced by Mel Blanc, of course) introduced a generation or two of kids to the genre.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There were two stories about how Delmar came up with that voice -- in one he claimed to have picked it up from a loudmouthed Texan he'd encountered while hitchhiking, and in the other, he's accused of lifting it from a comedy sheriff character on a popular West Coast radio show of the 1930s, "Blue Monday Jamboree." Given that "Blue Monday" was only heard in the West at a time when Delmar was working on stage and radio in New York and couid not have heard it, his own story is likely the truth. Besides, aren't all Texans like that? (That's a joke, son.)

The confusion comes from the claim by the Warner Bros. writer who came up with Foghorn Leghorn -- Warren Foster, I think -- who denied swiping the voice from Delmar, claiming *he,* Foster, got it from the "Blue Monday" character. This was a pretty unlikely story given that Blue Monday had been off the air for years by 1946, and Claghorn was a national craze at the time, but studio lawyers must be placated. Warners had never shown any particular scruples against parodying popular radio characters before, as Joe Penner, Red Skelton, Lou Costello, and Jerry Colonna could have attested, but this particular story has been repeated so often it's acquired the ring of truth.

As for "Allen's Alley" characters, it's a tossup for me between Titus Moody and Mrs. Nussbaum. Parker Fennelly lived about fifteen miles from where I grew up, and although I never met him, I knew dozens of old men who acted and sounded very much like Mr. Moody. And Minnie Pious, who played Mrs. Nussbaum, has always been one of my heroines -- not just because she was the greatest female dialectician ever to work in radio, but because she also survived the blacklist with her dignity intact.

 

[BlueTrain]

There are many movies and radio shows from the Golden Age I've never seen or heard (yet), including those with Claghorn. But I saw enough of one to remember one line in particular. Apparently his movies were basically situation comedies. He is sitting on the back steps talking to his dog, telling him his troubles. "All your troubles are canine. All of mine are asinine."

Some regional accents are frequently misinterpreted, although it may be a case of them being stressed or over-acted. But Southerners or "hillbillies" do not necessarily speak slowly and conversely, Northerners do not necessarily speak fast. Everyone knows proper English but some will only use it as a last resort. And not everyone in Florida has a New York accent, although that doesn't really come out in the movies so much.

The most interesting regional accent I've heard recently was that heard on "Ice Road Truckers."

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

British actor Robert Newton, born in Dorset, used an exaggeration of his native West Country accent to portray Long John Silver in the 1950 Disney version of "Treasure Island." The result was so striking that it became the stereotypical "pirate accent"and people to this day think pirates actually talked that way.

 

[EngProf]

I have said this before, but my favorite "regional character" of radio (and film) was Kenny Delmar's Senator Beauregard ("That's a joke, son!") Claghorn. What made him even funnier to me was when I found out that Delmar was actually born in Boston, died in Connecticut. His cartoon doppelganger, Foghorn Leghorn (voiced by Mel Blanc, of course) introduced a generation or two of kids to the genre.

Part of the reason you thought he was funny may be because you are from Chicago. As a born Southerner, Claghorn's voice was annoying and sounded like someone from Boston who was faking (or trying to fake) a Southern accent.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Part of the reason you thought he was funny may be because you are from Chicago. As a born Southerner, Claghorn's voice was annoying and sounded like someone from Boston who was faking (or trying to fake) a Southern accent.

Heard a similar comment from a Louisiana friend regarding "Cajun Chef," Justin Wilson.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Part of the reason you thought he was funny may be because you are from Chicago. As a born Southerner, Claghorn's voice was annoying and sounded like someone from Boston who was faking (or trying to fake) a Southern accent.

People faking a stereotypical accent or persona for comedic effect, especially when exaggerating the less than intelligent parts, is highly offensive to me. Larry the Cable Guy is a perfect example. To me, he's no different than a white actor performing in black face.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In radio, of course, not all accents were intended to be comic -- but all were, invariably, stereotyped. Use of such characters was a common and necessary shortcut for establishing character types without having to go into lengthy exposition, especially when the character involved did not play a significant role in the plot -- and this was especially true in things like daily serial programs where you only had ten minutes of air time per episode. There was simply no room for any kind of nuance in the presentation of minor characters when you had to move the plot forward and maintain consistency in the characterization of your leads with such constraints. A "Yessah! Thankee suh!" voice from the side as the main characters exited a train conveyed immediately to the listener the image of a Pullman porter receiving a tip, without having to go into any further detail, because the listeners had come to reflexively accept that exact voice, accurately or not, as depicting a Pullman porter. Such stereotyped dialects, as distasteful as they seem today, were a vital part of efficient radio writing.

Such characterizations declined with the arrival of television, not just because of the increasing sensitivity of the times, but because they were no longer needed. When you could actually see the railroad porter, there was no need to emphasize him thru the use of dialect.

As for the good Senator, I submit that his accent was not the funniest thing about him, it was that he was a parody of a certain sort of extreme, stereotypical Southern chauvinism, and specifically that of such Southern political figures of the late 1940s as Theodore Bilbo, Eugene Talmadge, and Strom Thurmond. Claghorn was such an extreme Dixiecrat that "Ah won't even take a drink of wawtuh unless it's in a Dixie cup!"

Many of Fred Allen's characters were intended as parodies of entertainment stereotypes -- his famous detective character One Long Pan seems like a hideous Asian caricature to listeners today, but he was actually intended as an extreme parody of "famous Oriental detective" characters like Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto -- he was even sued by the widow of Chan's creator because she really didn't appreciate the joke.

The Allen character who never really worked -- and even Allen himself knew it -- was Ajax Cassidy, a parody of the stereotypical drunken shanty-Irish brawler, and therefore of Allen's own father. But nobody especially liked him, The Ancient Order of Hibernians complained, and Allen tried to get rid of Cassidy by replacing him with "Sergei Stroganoff, the New York correspondent for Pravda." Unfortunately a real man named Sergei Stroganoff complained and the character had to be liquidated. You can see what Allen was up against.

 

[BlueTrain]

Well, the only people in real life (where I spent only part of my time) who have exaggerated a stereotypical accent were relatives who were exaggerating their own accent and I do that myself. I hope no one is offended.

I think I mentioned that one used to see accented English in books, mostly adolescent adventure and mystery books, that would quickly give you a mental image of the speaker. One has to admit without a shred of guilt or outrage that people not only really spoke that way but still do. If you think otherwise, you have simply led a sheltered life. Please understand that I'm not implying that's a Bad Thing.

So, anyway, if we could in fact understand an American colonist in 1770, which I have no doubt that we would, would we find common things to talk about? I doubt we would talk about sports, nor about entertainment figures but we could talk about politics, wars in Europe (including the one we just finished with here) and the frontier and so on. Some of us might even talk about the latest fashions from Paris.