The magistrate said "Merry", the defendant said "Mary"

[Charles Doyle]

I'm reminded of the common assumption among actors (especially Americans?) that "authentic" Shakespearean language can be performed on the stage by the imitating of present-day "prestige" British speech.

The opposite assumption obtains with costuming; dress the characters very differently from modern people, and they can pass for Elizabethan.

Charlie



---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2010 21:32:36 -0400
>From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> (on behalf of Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>)>

>OK, good to know.  So it's actually more the British accents (like
>that of King George) that are off rather than the New England ones.
>I wonder if there mightn't have been other salient differences
>between the dialects of Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston at the
>time of the Revolution, though.  I was under the impression that the
>differences in (what would turn into) U.S. regional accents were
>already distinguished by 1800, based on different settlement patterns
>of those regions.
>
>LH
>
>>
>>On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 5:31 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>Many Brits assume that "Maryland" is pronounced as though it were two
>>>>>words  "Mary Land", with successive SQUARE, happY and TRAP vowels
>>>>>(with the last syllable having secondary stress).  Since Brits havecx
>>>>>split Mary/marry/merry, this sounds very different from the actual
>>>>>pronunciation to be heard from Maryland natives.
>>  >>>
>>>>Did Brits (and Americans who pronounce two or all of these differently)
>>>>split the sound, or did people who pronounce them all the same merge them?
>>>>
>>>  Reminds me: I've been watching the video series of "John Adams"
>>>  originally from HBO (based on McCullough's biography) and while I've
>>>  been enjoying it, I've also been bothered by the apparent working
>>>  assumption that all the Americans, from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania
>>>  to Georgia spoke "American", quite distinct in their pronunciation
>>>  from the British.  I'd have thought they might have tried a bit
>>>  harder to represent New Englanders as speaking a bit more like the
>>>  British, or at least like 20th century New Englanders (well,
>>>  actually, Laura Linney as Abigail Adams isn't too far off in that
>>>  respect), the southerners like, well, southerners, and only the
>>>  Pennsylvanians (and neighbors) speaking rhotically.  Is my guess
>>>  about what Americans would have sounded like in the 1770s-1790s that
>>>  far off?  Would Washington and Jefferson really have sounded pretty
>>>  much like Adams, and ditto Hamilton?  Maybe they just thought it was
>>>  easier both for the actors and for the viewers who were supposed to
>>>  tell the good (American) guys from the bad Brits.
>>>
>>>  LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org