The British Used to Sound Like We Did

If we traveled in time to America at its founding, we would be as thrown by how people sounded as by the absence of electricity, highways and bottled water. And realizing how the way we speak has changed since then gives us a clue to how Americans might speak in the future.

You might think that early Americans sounded like Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, and that the American accent developed after independence. It was probably the other way around. Up until the early 1800s, you couldn’t tell whether a person was British or American from their accents. When naval officers tried to free sailors who had been shanghaied into service in the War of 1812, they said they couldn’t tell for sure who was American or British by the way........

© The New York Times