British vs American English: Which One Is Actually the Original?

Everyone "knows" the British accent is the original English accent — but that's a myth. On the features people actually argue about, American English preserved the OLDER form, and British Received Pronunciation is the one that changed. So British vs American English: which one is actually the original? In this video we follow the English language from Shakespeare's 1600s across the Atlantic to colonial America, and show why the modern "posh" British accent is a surprisingly recent invention. We start with the hard "R" at the end of words like "car" and "hard." That sound was standard in Elizabethan England, and the Americans kept it. Every English accent was rhotic back then. Dropping the R ("cah," "hahd") was a later fashion, spread by London elocutionists and adopted by the upper classes from the late 1700s into the 1800s, around the time of the Industrial Revolution. So on this feature, it's the British accent that drifted, not the American one. Then we get into the words that tell the same story. "Fall" for the season isn't an Americanism at all. It comes from the old English phrase "the fall of the leaf," it was used in England well into the 1600s, and Americans kept it while England switched to the French-derived "autumn." "Gotten" is an old English form from Chaucer's era that Americans preserved and the British quietly dropped in favour of "got." Put it together and you get the real answer: neither accent is the frozen original. Both came from 1600s English and both drifted in different directions, but on these famous features, modern British Received Pronunciation — the BBC, "Queen's English" sound — has moved further from how English sounded 400 years ago. The prestigious accent everyone imagines is ancient is really a recent status marker. Which means when people say Americans "ruined" English, they've got it almost exactly backwards. Which accent do you think changed the most? Drop your answer in the comments, and tell us which one you'd want to hear Shakespeare performed in. CHAPTERS 0:00 The myth: which English is really the original? 1:15 Both accents come from 1600s English 2:40 The hard "R" Americans kept 4:30 How the British accent dropped its Rs 6:15 Why "posh" British is only about 200 years old 8:00 Fall vs autumn: the word England abandoned 10:00 "Gotten": the Chaucer-era word Americans saved 11:30 Did Shakespeare sound American? 13:00 The verdict: who actually changed the most? #BritishvsAmerican #EnglishAccent #Linguistics