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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

As I recall from an article in Time a while back, the Southern American accent is the most authentic representative of the pre-revolutionary war accent. The Northern American accent has been changed more by waves of immigrants (especially those coming in the 1890-1920).

I've heard that the French-Canadian accent is closer to pre-Revolutionary French as well.

It seems that those areas with the least upheavals are where language stays the most constant.

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Canadian French is actually close to what is (or was, at least until shortly after WWII) spoken in Normandy. Our soldiers were better able to communicate with the locals on D-Day than even the Free French.

"Standard" French was once just the local dialect of Isle-de-France, a small region including Paris, but "French", even in France today, is but a loose collection of mutually-comprehensible dialects. Canadian French has its own little quirks, though, in that it had to create its own vocabulary not only for the uniquely North American flora, fauna and landscape, but also for new items of technology that emerged while we were almost without communication with France. F'rinstance, to the French ear, a French Canadian would seem to indicate that he had just created a park (in the public gardens sense) out of his tank (armoured and armed military vehicle) rather than that he'd just parked his car.

>>> but "French", even in France today, is but a loose collection of mutually-comprehensible dialects.

That's simply not the case. A lot of effort has been made by the French Republic to spread the standard french language (mandatory school with class in french, even for kids speaking regional dialects). Nowadays, there are still local expressions and idioms, but the vocabulary is quite homogeneous.

I recall from an article in Time a while back, the Southern American accent is the most authentic representative of the pre-revolutionary war accent.

It may very well be that Time reported that, as I have read that statement in various places, but I have also read disagreements with that statement.

http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/more/886/

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=380983

http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/lochist/periodica...

http://books.google.com/books?id=ia5tHVtQPn8C&pg=PA126&#...

It's actually rather unlikely that any current dialect of American English has any strict correspondence to the various dialects that were spoken in America at the time of the Revolution.

I wouldn't describe the American South as having had few upheavals. It's actually had more than most places in the United States. Though, I would agree that it's had fewer lninguistic influences than other regions of the country.

show me the fuckin receipts. fewer linguistic influences? between the french, dutch, spanish, portuguese, central african, west african, native americans, and british there are very few places in the world that have such of an unique stew of languages. safire died but the knowledge of american language did not die with him. upheavels? thats another post. but lets refrain from throwing around ignorant barbs and passing them as facts.

angry poster is angry...

immigration into the south is much less than the east/west coast, populations are still lower, less immigration, less languages, less influence?

Not to mention being influenced by French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, West African and native languages is hardly unique amongst the world's former colonies.

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