Why Do Americans and Brits Speak Differently? |
The American “r” in “car” preserves an older British pronunciation.
Widespread r-dropping arose after many colonists had already left Britain.
Sometimes a once-stigmatized feature can turn into a fashionable one.
Australian and New Zealand English reflect a later stage of British sound change.
When in New York or Boston, it’s hard not to notice the speech of true locals - the classic r-dropping heard in “New Yawk” or at “Hahvahd Yahd.” But, since most Americans pronounce all their ‘r’s, we more often associate r-dropping with British English, especially its more “proper” varieties like the “Queen’s English.”
Despite a tendency to think of how Americans talk as sounding less fancy and less old-fashioned than British speech, the “r” sound we hear so often on American lips in words like "car" or "yard” is actually the older and originally more prestigious form. Even Shakespeare would have used it, despite how his characters speak in modern performances of his plays.
If we traveled back to 16th century Britain, we would hear speakers pronouncing the “r” in words like “car,” “heart,” and “girl” much like most modern Americans do.
It’s not until the late 17th century, long after the first British colonists landed on American shores, that dropping “r” really started to gain ground in England – and even later before it was equated with posh speech rather than imprecise pronunciation.
At first, r-dropping (also known as non-rhoticity) was limited to only certain words, for example those where “r” comes between a vowel and “s” (as in words like arse, curse, or burst). This probably happened because of vowel changes and the fact that it made syllables a bit easier to say, especially in fast speech.
It is from this very early form of r-dropping that we get r-less versions like “ass” developing from "arse," “cuss” from "curse," and “bust” from "burst," all of which we still use today. Over time – and importantly after many colonists had already resettled in the New World - the pattern expanded in England, eventually affecting pretty much all “r” sounds when they came after vowels, so that Brits began pronouncing words like "car" and "never" more like “cah” and “nevah.”
In the New World, though, colonists did not follow this more expansive r-dropping pattern, and Americans were left with just a few “r”-dropped words, like “ass,” “cuss,” and “bust,” they had picked up early.
But what about areas like New York and Boston and parts of the South where the more expansive r-dropping did make its way into speech?
Even those areas did not start dropping “r” until it became very widespread back in London. It was then that the elite in American port cities like New York, Boston, and Charleston picked up on what they heard as a fancy new pronunciation model.
But not everyone takes kindly to language change. Even as “r” dropping spread throughout England in the 17th and 18th centuries, grammarians and elocutionists often commented on the vulgarity of such reductions and associated them with inferior speech – much like we still resist linguistic innovations such dropping ‘t’ in words like plenty (“plenny”) or internet (“innernet”) today.
Only in the 19th century did r-less pronunciation become strongly associated with “better” speakers and become a new model of prestige both in England and abroad.
Onward to Australia and New Zealand
Because much of the migration to North America happened before r-less speech became widely fashionable across Southern Britain, most colonists were r-pronouncing (or rhotic) speakers: These r’s were passed down through the generations, so that “r” pronunciation became the dominant norm in American English even as “r” dropping gained favor in England.
Eventually, “r” dropping lost its prestige even in non-rhotic strongholds like New York City and Boston, and nowadays it’s more common for Americans to make fun of dropped “r” than to admire it. Meanwhile, back across the pond, Brits have been known to mock Americans for their uncouth “r”’s.
By contrast, Australia and New Zealand were settled by British English speakers much later, during a period when non-rhotic speech had become far more widespread and socially influential.
As a result, the English varieties that took root there were shaped more heavily by those later prestige norms, which helps explain why r-dropping became the dominant pattern in both places.
In other words, if North America largely reflects an earlier stage in the spread of non-rhoticity, Australia and New Zealand reflect a later one.
By the time of the revolution, early Americans were happy to preserve a pronunciation that set them apart from Brits, just as they were to invent new American spellings like “color” and “tire” to free them from British “colour” and “tyre.” Linguistic independence is a strong symbol of political and cultural independence.
And that is one of the key lessons of this story: sound change is natural in all languages, but the particular changes that spread - and the meanings people attach to them - are strongly shaped by our social histories.
Fridland, Valerie. (2026). Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents. New York, NY: Viking.
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