popisfizzy Says:
Sep 11, 2009 - Erm, no, British English has changed just as much as every other language in the world. Hell, even the Queen's accent has changed throughout her life. The RP accent of the Victorian era was closer to a modern American Southern accent than RP today, and it's believed that modern American English is closer to the English of the first English settlers than the English spoken in England today.
dan892k7 Says:
Sep 11, 2009 - watch?v=I9jgkYjYQ3Y There's another one where he basically says that apart from London and the surrounding areas, where the public schools manufactured the 'posh' accent to compete with the romance countries linguistically in the 1800s, all the accents of Britain have stayed relatively the same over the last 600 years, with only slight changes. In bigger towns and cities it has become more RP, but if you leave the towns - villages sound as they did in Elizabethan days. Dan
dan892k7 Says:
Sep 11, 2009 - The American southern accent thing is a total myth. The only common factor is the rhotic 'R', but that is found in British villages up and down the country. The American accent - watch?v=gZNjxHyJAAk&feature=related That's right, and to be honest it's obvious when you listen, the American accent is SO much like the northern Irish accent! Just listen to it! Stop this silly myth that hicks in South Carolina speak like Shakespeare, it's RUBBISH! It's bastardised Scots/Irish. Dan
dan892k7 Says:
Sep 11, 2009 - It wasn't changed to autumn, they were both used, but autumn became standard in England, whereas fall became standard in the US. In some places in the UK though people do say fall - mainly countryside places in the midlands, cornwall, devon, east anglia, and yorkshire.
popisfizzy Says:
Sep 11, 2009 - Uh... I think you completely misunderstood what I was saying. Accents are very unstable, and change multiple times over a single century. Victorian-era accents would sound incredibly different from Shakespeare's English (which was still undergoing the great vowel shift). Plus, just like there's no single British accent, there's not single American accent. Some are influenced by Scottish and Irish, but most aren't. Please learn things about language before you try and discuss it.
dan892k7 Says:
Sep 11, 2009 - I think I understood very well what you were saying actually, and apart from the RP accent and its counterparts, which were manufactured, most the other accents in Britain have retained their original sounds. If you go to a small village or town near where Shakespeare lived, you will hear the kind of accent he had. Just because the vowel shift happened in London and the surrounding areas doesn't mean it happened everywhere. In fact it's an absurd idea :-p Dan
popisfizzy Says:
Sep 11, 2009 - An absurd idea is steadfastly believing that an accent remains stable over four hundred years when individual elements making up an accent are extremely prone to change, and will often change many times over a century, let alone four centuries. You will *not* hear the accent Shakespeare had because it has disappeared. This is evidenced in the fact that there are rhymes in his plays that do not rhyme in modern English dialects and accents.
dan892k7 Says:
Sep 12, 2009 - No, that's the thing, modern English speakers from small villages, such as Kingham, near where Shakespeare was from, still make those words rhyme! Do you still think that the American accent is closer? All I'm saying is - even if you don't agree that the accents are still around, that the American accent is certainly NOT closer than the accents of England (with the exception of RP). Because that really is absurd! Did you watch the videos I sent? Dan
popisfizzy Says:
Sep 12, 2009 - Yes, and nowhere in those videos does it say that the accents have remained unchanged, except for one man who is obviously not a trained linguist given his remarks. All that is said is that some features have remained, but there are many, many features that make up a single accent or dialect. On top of that, I was referring to specific groups of accents (such as the New England accents) which are the ones most likely to be closer to English accents.
popisfizzy Says:
Sep 12, 2009 - And furthermore, you probably don't have a very good grasp of American geography, given that the Appalachians are hardly indicative of American at large. That's specifically Pennsylvania and several Southern states.
captainkpeanuts Says:
Sep 19, 2009 - hahaha I freaking love Bill Bailey! this joke is awesome
Georgeous129 Says:
Sep 26, 2009 - ...threw them into a ditch of shite, they all agreed 'what a brilliant night'! Bill Bailey = genius
ArmandKarlsen Says:
Oct 6, 2009 - Their hands all with vomit greased, the donkey... was not pleased
kickasscorm Says:
Oct 10, 2009 - the man just keeps gettin better in my estimation! :)
adsh9382 Says:
Oct 11, 2009 - Amazing - love him
PsychoRage666 Says:
Oct 14, 2009 - What the hell are you even talking about, have you ever even been to england?
popisfizzy Says:
Oct 14, 2009 - What are you talking about? What relevance does it whether I've been to England? That doesn't allow me to compare to the accent Shakespeare had, or the accent a hundred years ago, nor is it relevant. Accents, dialects, and language change dramatically. This is a fact of language.
ska2808 Says:
Oct 17, 2009 - "yet Dick Emery was not yet born so such comparison ... cannot be drawn"
dd7aa Says:
Oct 25, 2009 - makes me laugh every time
ShadowMoses83 Says:
Oct 28, 2009 - You guys are fags....who cares....seriously
JOZZ145 Says:
Oct 31, 2009 - One of Britains best comedians!
KelzRoze Says:
Nov 1, 2009 - that was amazing
bookworm266 Says:
Nov 6, 2009 - "'Cos we're divided by a common language, aren't we Neil? And a f*cking great big ocean, thank Christ" - Al Murray, Pub Landlord
fifimsp Says:
Nov 8, 2009 - That was fucking amazing! Wish we produced comedians like this in America.
popisfizzy Says:
Sep 11, 2009 - Old English was no longer spoken when the Americas were first discovered, and by the time they were colonized by the English, Middle English was already on its way out. As well, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of how language works. Both British English and American English as valid forms of English, neither less or more proper than the other. Language just changes. It's natural, and why we speak Modern English and not Old English.