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Americans born in 1835 would have spoken with accents quite different from modern American English, reflecting a linguistic landscape still heavily influenced by regional British dialects and ongoing sound changes.
Speech in 1835 was considerably more formal than today’s American English. People were more likely to use complete sentences, avoid contractions in formal settings, and employ a richer vocabulary of polite formulas and courtesies. The pace was slower, with clearer articulation – partly due to the influence of oratory as a major form of entertainment and political engagement. Public speaking skills were highly valued, and this influenced everyday conversation patterns.
The Great Divide
Perhaps most importantly, Americans born in 1835 lived through a period when regional accents were becoming more, not less, distinct. Unlike today’s trend toward dialect leveling due to mass media, the mid-19th century saw increasing regional isolation that allowed local speech patterns to intensify. A Georgian plantation owner, a Vermont.
This generation’s speech was heavily influenced by the Second Great Awakening, which spread particular religious vocabularies and speaking styles across regions. The rise of public education was beginning to standardize certain pronunciations, while the explosion of newspapers and pamphlets created shared written standards that influenced spoken norms. Immigration from Ireland and Germany was introducing new sounds and speech patterns, particularly in growing cities.
Most notably, they would have pronounced their R’s much more consistently than many Americans today, as the “dropping” of R sounds (non-rhoticity) that characterizes modern Boston, New York, and Southern accents was just beginning to spread from prestigious East Coast cities. Their vowel sounds would have been markedly different too – the “cot-caught” merger that makes these words sound identical to most modern Americans hadn’t yet occurred, and the “father-bother” merger was still in progress. Regional variations were already pronounced: New Englanders were beginning to adopt the non-rhotic speech patterns of upper-class Britain, Southerners were developing their distinctive drawl influenced by Scots-Irish settlement patterns, and Western settlers were creating new dialect mixtures. The overall pace of speech was likely slower and more formal than today, with clearer articulation of individual syllables and less of the relaxed, contracted speech we associate with modern American English. Interestingly, an 1835-born American’s accent would probably sound more “British” to modern ears than contemporary American speech, yet it would also contain distinctly American innovations that were already setting it apart from the mother country – representing a fascinating snapshot of American English in transition during the antebellum period.
#accents #americanaccents #oldschool
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ab5nv4Suc
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I have a Patreon page!
https://www.patreon.com/c/themetatron
It’s wild how the American accent developed.
Revolver or Wheel Gun describe pistols with multiple rounds vs. single shot.
The "Plains" stretch on for hundreds of miles.
amazing!!!!!
6:33 "In the '70s", he means the 1870s, so we've abrieviated years for a long time.
With AI, we could reproduce this speech pattern as spoken by Western US settlers and cowboys at the time and use that to voice characters in an RDR-like game.
My great grandparents were all born in the 1800's. I have no memory of two who died when I was young, but of the others I have fond memories. I spent a great deal of time listening to them. They all tended to have the same cadence, and word choice, as this gentleman. Regional accents as well. I feel fortunate to have learned from their experiences, and older bits of wisdom. Like never buy rabbit without the feet, because they will sell you a cat (I would love to know what misadventure originally caused that advice!) I image quite a few of your older viewers have similar memories. "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. " – Roy Batty, Blade Runner (1982)
to think when he said the 70s he's talking about 1870s lol
At around 2 minutes or so I noticed how the interviewer drew out/spoke the O in photograph and old a little longer than we do now. It almost sounded Swedish. As in how the sterotypical Swedish accent is used in saying "Minnesoota." 😊
Indeed is still common in the south. ‘deed it is.
My grandmother who was born in 1907 in the South used a lot of euphemisms to downplay things, like an emotional brreakdown was a nervous dustup
You marveled at and repeated the way the presenter and interviewer pronounced the words „to you“ at the end of a sentence. Have you noticed that‘s almost the exact same way the late Queen Elizabeth II pronounced those words in her early speeches?🙃
Im from the Midwest and descended from Germans that came in the mid too late 1800s. Ive always wondered what they sounded like. Especially the first and second generations after they had been speaking english for a little while. My mother told me my greqt grandfather had a really interesting accent and was hard to understand sometimes. He would go back and forth between speaking english and speaking German. Lol
People like my parents in there 80's & 90's, we're still using horses a lot when they were kids. My grandparents used them for field work. My dad rode his pony to school and could hunt with a rifle from horseback. My mom was in a one room school house and used an outhouse at school and home.
My grandfather was born 1878, hundred years before I was born. 1800s are not that far away from some of us.
I've been watching old What's My Line shows on YouTube. The panel sounded what I would call eloquent, compared to today's talk! My mom and aunt from Kansas originally had a very soft accent. Funny, it's like time travel.
@metatronacademy Just a quick clarification for anyone watching—“pistol” and “revolver” aren’t interchangeable terms. A revolver uses a rotating cylinder to hold rounds, typically 5–6, and is manually, single or double-action operated, depending on the model. A pistol refers to a semi-automatic handgun that uses a magazine and slide mechanism to chamber rounds into a single chamber.
The distinction became doctrinal in the late 19th century, especially after the invention of the Salvator-Dormus in 1891—the first patented semi-automatic pistol. Once semi-autos entered military and law enforcement use, the terminology split for good.
So, while all revolvers are handguns, not all handguns are pistols. Precision matters—especially in legacy and doctrine.
My great grandparents were children during the times the old man is referencing. They spoke quite similarly. It's quite wonderful to listen to. Very nostalgic. Thanks for the video!
The interviewer had that 1940's 1950's radio announcer voice, very clear and very easy to understand, something that radio and television announcers still have to this day. I notice the same thing with newscasters in Thailand, they speak in an almost robotic voice compared to the locals, so everyone can understand them no matter what local accent they have.
This is the first time I've heard someone refer to the 1870's as "the 70's." Both men do it in this recording. I love that because it makes them sound so relatable to the way we speak now. I always want to know how real people from the past actually spoke in their day-to-day lives. I don't think most letters or recordings are reliable because I think people tended to be more formal during those exercises because they were much more of a rarity and therefore a special event. But this interview actually sounds much closer to the way that an interview would sound today, minus the Transatlantic/Mid-Atlantic affect. Also, there are still real cowboys who actually do that for their work both in the US and Mexico. If you live in cattle country, you will see them.
The man describing game being shy likely was referring to scarcity between one trail or another. A rough mountain trail may not be as plentiful as forested valleys or plains.
Wild animals in the woods are generally always shy in a behavioral context.
So many buffalo they had to stop the train and wait all day for the heard to pass. Now I know why they had to thin them out. Not to mention the horrific dieses that must have hit such large herds of grazing animals.
I use the word "indeed", but usually alone, like concurring or agreeing. Or sometimes after giving a compliment. "That's very fine, indeed."
I live in Utah, lived here my whole life. And so have my fathers for five generations.
The first handguns used in what became the USA were flintlock pistols and then cap locks. Smith and wesson did offer some small caliber rimfire revolvers during the Civil War. They held a patent that prevented others from offering revolvers that fired metallic cartridge loading from the rear. But everyone made cap and ball revolvers.
Sam Colt did not market any revolvers prior to the 1830's; these were used with success by the Texas Rangers against the Comanche. He then went Bankrupt. The company got restarted by purchases of the US Government by the new Walker Colt about 10 years later that were used in the Mexican-American War that ended up with Mexico losing half of it territory including California.
Most cowboy films tend be inaccurate historically when it comes to the weapons that are used. The .45 colt revolver firing the longer .45 colt metallic center fire cartridge was adopted by the US Military in 1873 for example. The weapons used are well known to gun interested people. A well made S&W revolver is a marvel of workmanship, but these days I carry a glock. Many of the larger revolvers used in the USA in the famous 'Western' time period were cap and ball or converted civil war cap and ball revolvers shooting special rimfire and some center fire rounds that were fired in the conversions. The original load used in the .45 army loads were very powerful using 40 grains of black powder was america's most powerful cartridge load until the 1930's when until finally the .357 Magnum by smith and wesson offered it in their heavy N frame revolvers.
So when did the American accent we know nowadays develop? I am totally confused.
I have no problem understanding the speech of the man from the 1840s. Sometimes even now there are people that sound like that. Metatron living in New York you are not as exposed to american speech as for someone that grew up in the interior of the country and that now lives in Florida.
Much of the opinion of what people thought of the 'west' was manufactured by novels, cowboy movies and radio programs. Most of the violence and gun fighting took place in the south west and even a little more east into Oklahoma and maybe even parts of Arkansas. There was a lot more violence east of the Mississippi. My great grand parents would have been contemporaries of the interview gentleman. Two of them were buried outside of Fairview, Montana in the 1920s. The only stories of violence that came down to me was a story that I believe was in New York or somewhere in the east of some branch of the family hiding in the woods from some sort of trouble with the indians until troops came in and restored peace. I never got the full story.
Today minority gang bangers with switches on their Gocks and also ARs in an active weekend probably fire more shots than were ever fired in the cowboy west.
It's not that long ago – My great grandfather was born in 1836.
I'm the grandson of a Civil War veteran .
Grandpa also volunteered for World War 1 at 88 years old , ran Moonshine for Al Capone and a few other ummm enterprises.
P. S. I never heard any of my Uncle's swear in front of a woman other than Oh Hell , Damn and Bitch but only when talking about dogs or playing Hearts 😂
I rescued a tape recording of my mother interviewing a cousin born in the 1860s about life in the Dakota Territories in the 1870s. One grew up the be a physician and he was a country doc on the prairies. Tyler had a drawl, but it was a bit of a formal drawl. I had it converted to a CD. I have another recording of my mom talking to my paternal grandparents who were born in the USA in a German enclave in southern Illinois. They spoke with noticeable German accents.
I am 70 years old, raised in Ohio. I find the interviewers accent pleasing and perfectly normal, easy to understand. The interviewee is difficult to understand, mostly because he mumbles.
12:00 I think we still use “revolver” and “pistol” to describe different types of firearms for the most part. I don’t generally hear “pistol” used for revolvers, and I’ve never heard “revolver” for a semiautomatic.
Compare this old gentleman's accent to the late Will Geer's accent. Quite similar.
That which you learned in the 70s 😂
The 1870s that is.