What is the difference between British and American accent?
British English has 12 vowel and diphthong sounds, while American English eliminates the odd ones. The short ‘a’ in words such as cup is replaced by the sound ‘schwa’ or /ə/ which is the neutral vowel. This ‘a’ is pronounced as the ‘i’ in animal. The sound /ɒ/ which can be found in words such as ‘what’ or ‘box’.
Why does the American accent sound different from British?
The “American English” we know and use today in an American accent first started out as an “England English” accent. According to a linguist at the Smithsonian, Americans began putting their own spin on English pronunciations just one generation after the colonists started arriving in the New World.
What is the closest accent to British?
R.P. The accent of the Home Counties area (the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex) is closest to what people call Queen’s English, also known as Received Pronunciation (R.P.) or Standard English.
What is the most beautiful accent?
the British accent
According to a recent poll in the Independent, the British accent has been chosen as being the most attractive accent in the world, beating the French accent which was once know as the loveliest accent.
Why did America lose their British accent?
The first is isolation; early colonists had only sporadic contact with the mother country. The second is exposure to other languages, and the colonists came into contact with Native American languages, mariners’ Indian English pidgin and other settlers, who spoke Dutch, Swedish, French and Spanish.
What is the most neutral English accent?
General American
Furthermore, General American is often used when teaching English as a second language in schools worldwide (especially in Asia). It is the most commonly used English accent in the world today, and some linguists have argued that General American will eventually become the global neutral English accent.