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I grew up in Italy with American mother and went to a British school. In the US I am told I have a British accent in in the UK I am told I have an american one. Would this no be a mid-atlantic accent come by naturally, as opposed to an affectation? I know many other TCKs with similar accents. Pearl2525 ( talk) 14:55, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Grace Kelly? PurpleChez ( talk) 18:43, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
This is a paragraph from an older version of this article, shouldn't we reinstate some of the names of notable people which are no longer included? Some of them seem eligible while others don't.
With the evolution of talkies in the late 1920s, voice was first heard in motion pictures. It was then that the majority of audiences first heard Hollywood actors speaking predominantly in Mid-Atlantic English. Some had been raised with it, many adopted it starting out in the theatre, and others simply affected it to help their careers. Among those from Hollywood's Golden Era of the 1930s associated with the accent are British-born Cary Grant,[3] and Americans Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Joan Crawford and Irene Dunne.
British expatriates John Houseman, Henry Daniell, Anthony Hopkins, Elizabeth Taylor, Camilla Luddington, and Angela Cartwright exemplified the accent,[citation needed] as did Americans Eleanor Parker, Grace Kelly, Jane Wyatt, Eartha Kitt, Agnes Moorehead, Patrick McGoohan, William Daniels, Vincent Price, Clifton Webb, John McGiver, Jonathan Harris, Roscoe Lee Browne,[4] and Richard Chamberlain, and Canadians Christopher Plummer, John Vernon, Norma Shearer, and Lorne Greene.
Orson Welles notably spoke in a mid-Atlantic accent in the 1941 film Citizen Kane, as did many of his co-stars, such as Joseph Cotten.[citation needed]
Figures outside the entertainment industry known for speaking Mid-Atlantic English include William F. Buckley, Jr.,[5] Gore Vidal, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Plimpton,[6][7] Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Wallis Simpson, Norman Mailer,[8] Diana Vreeland,[9] Maria Callas, Cornelius Vanderbilt IV,[10] and Brad Friedel.[11] The monologuist Ruth Draper's recorded "The Italian Lesson" gives an example of this East Coast American upper class diction of the 1940s.
I can tell for sure that Grace Kelly spoke with a Mid-Atlantic accent both in To catch a Thief and Dial M for Murder. Agnes Moorehead used the accent on-stage, notably as Endora in Bewitched, but also off-stage as is the case with Clifton Webb. I think they should be reinstated, even though a printed reference can't be found. The matter becomes more difficult for Crawford, for instance, who didn't use the accent for Baby Jane, but did she use it in some other film? Also Fairbanks Jr seemed to be losing it later in life, some of the rs at the end of words making a come back (compare the two interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbbUJvE4OQw, you can hear the accent clearly as he recites Kipling but also in his casual conversation; and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt5avAEDE7c). Elizabeth Taylor used it for Cleopatra but never seemed to use it in real life, at least from the 1970s onward, you can tell from her many interviews and the same goes for Jane Wyatt. Should we reinstate some of them, citing some films where they can be heard using the accent, or should we just leave them out? Hopkins is British and was too old to be a case comparable to Cary Grant, so it's only right he was dropped out of the list. Furthermore, can someone find some reference for some of them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.48.29.175 ( talk) 11:27, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Would it be frivolous to discuss how this type of accent has, more recently, been used as a parody or as part of a charicature of affected status? I'm thinking, for instance, of a character from Family Guy with the jutting jaw and an almost incomprehensible ivy league accent... And on The Simpsons--it was perhaps Sideshow Bob's first starring role--when Bob went to prison he was greeted by someone in That Accent asking him to join the prison rowing team "against the Harvard Alums." PurpleChez ( talk) 14:13, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
So they can either experience it or try to pick it up for themselves
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/243064/ An airplane tour of San Francisco
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ZUneyU7Vo President McKinley
Timothy Perseus Wordsworthe ( talk) 18:39, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
This article cannot make up its mind whether Mid-Atlantic English is an accent or a dialect, two very different things - it seems to think it is both sometimes - and is woolly about whether it is alive or dead. I am not qualified to do it, but someone needs to rewrite this article, clarifying these points. I have rewritten clumsy passages here and there to make them read better, but have limited my edits to that. -- P123cat1 ( talk) 13:55, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: No consensus to move after over two weeks and a relisting. I will make sure disambiguation hat notes are in place to handle any confusion. Cúchullain t/ c 14:51, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Mid-Atlantic accent →
Transatlantic accent – "Mid-Atlantic accent" is obviously one common name for this variety of English, but it is too easily conflated with
Mid-Atlantic American English, which the academic literature most commonly (and so confusingly, relative to this page) calls the "Mid-Atlantic dialect". Even more to the point, "Transatlantic accent" gets 47,300 Google hits, while "Mid(-)atlantic accent", with or without a hyphen, gets only 15,900 hits. The name "Transatlantic accent" is clear, prevalent, and unambiguous.
Wolfdog (
talk) 12:58, 5 December 2015 (UTC) Relisted.
Jenks24 (
talk)
12:57, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
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Hello - I do not agree that the mid-atlantic accent is always consciously acquired. Before I moved from the American Midwest to England at the age of 29, the letter "t" was soft, more like a "d" sound. I hadn't known that about myself but gradually I amended my speech to make myself better understood. A perfect example would be that sometimes people thought I was saying "kiddies" instead of "kitties." Ten years on, my speech is as neutral as possible, partly by conditioning but mostly that I'm picking things up from the English people around me. To say consciously acquired would be to suggest that I wanted to talk this way. So, I did read somewhere this is common for people who have lived in at least two different Anglophone countries for a long period of time. As soon as I find it, I'm deleting the phrase from this entry.
Thanks for reading and kind regards.
MicheleFloyd (
talk)
20:13, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
Are you really trying to claim that no one ever grew up hearing this spoken in their homes and learned it naturally? What if one is a grandparent that already "acquired" it--Does that mean that one's children and grandchildren have to consciously re-acquire it with each generation even if they grew up hearing it every day? That seems a bit absurd. 2606:A000:8948:A100:8DB7:F8B6:2A4B:4A2 ( talk) 04:11, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
At (admittedly) quick glance, this page can easily merge with a few other articles that all appear to discuss cultivated (i.e. artificial or learned) accents of American English associated generally with theatre, wealth, and/or higher education in the early 1900s (all now moribund), and all involving a quite similar pronunciation system that blends perceived American and British speech features. I'd like to go through these various pages' references in the next few days and determine whether the sources in fact show any real connections. I'm wondering whether these relatively small (and not super citation-laden) articles could simply be combined, each having sections on a single page. As these articles currently stand, their similarities seem stronger than than their distinctions. Do others share my sentiments? Wolfdog ( talk) 02:24, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
I hate to slap an 'internationalise' tag on this, but the term, mid or trans Atlantic was just as much used in UK as in the US. The term in the UK, especially of people in broadcasting or entertainment, was used to describe a sometimes seemingly conscious adoption of US sounds, intonation etc., though people with 'a foot in each camp', appeared to come by it more naturally. Just as mid-Atl might have sounded 'classier' to US listeners, the UK form sounded livelier to UK ears than RP.
The article at the moment seems pretty cruel to US users, while I am sure this accent is unlike any US regional accent (and of course unlike any British one), was it not the accent of a conscious social elite, probably absorbed in nursery, private school and club. It is still the case today in the UK that the aristocacry, inc some royals, speak in an accent of their own making, which wouldn't get them a job reading the weather. Just out of interest would Jackie Kennedy have been considered as being a mid-Atl speaker? Pincrete ( talk) 20:13, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
@ Pincrete: Interesting observations. Do you know of any sources that confirm this UK perspective? Certainly the UK royal accent is more RP than Mid-Atlantic, right? I can't imagine the queen being described as using more conscious US features in her speech than the average English citizen. As for Jackie Kennedy, the article indeed cites a source that describes her accent as mid-Atlantic. Wolfdog ( talk) 17:22, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
The article as written seems to be mixing some concepts, or at least not clarifying them. There is an implication that if an American speaks with a non-rhotic accent, then it is a Mid-Atlantic accent. This is, of course, wholly false. Many of the regional accents that developed across the eastern seaboard and nearly the entire south (east of Texas) during the later 19th century were non-rhotic. And despite the regression over the course of the 20th century to rhotic accents, non-rhotic accents persist in many areas, particularly the Northeastern seaboard. But all of these are distinct from the artificially developed Mid-Atlantic accent (though one could argue this artificial accent probably influenced some of the native accents to a degree).
- MC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.34.43 ( talk) 23:04, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not moved. Consensus is that there is no problem with the current page, it follows common usage, and a hatnote can lead people to the article on the mid-Atlantic region of America. — Amakuru ( talk) 22:06, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
Mid-Atlantic accent →
Transatlantic accent – I'm interested in a fuller discussion on this topic. I acknowledge that both names are somewhat common, but "Transatlantic accent" gets 86,300 Google hits, while "Mid-Atlantic accent" gets only 16,800 hits. Even if this were not true, we are advised that when there are multiple common names and "
the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others". My major concern is that someone coming upon "Mid-Atlantic accent" could be easily be confused, looking for what Wikipedia fully calls
Mid-Atlantic American English. I feel a hatnote alone is not helpful. (The hatnote currently reads "For the mid-Atlantic dialect of American English, see..." which for lay readers and linguists alike hardly clarifies the two ideas. Both are arguably "dialects of American English".)
Within the USA, the term "Mid-Atlantic" generally refers to a section of the country on the Eastern Coast about halfway between the North and South: the Mid-Atlantic states. Both articles, by the way, have strong national ties to the USA, so there is good reason to keep this possibility for misinterpretation in mind. To mean specifically "across the Atlantic Ocean", the term "Transatlantic" is clearer and already prevalent; this is how the word is already used in both proper names and common phrases like Transatlantic Pictures, Transatlantic Records, Transatlantic crossing, Transatlantic flight, Transatlantic relations, etc. etc. Transatlantic accent as a term is now even backed by some of the sources currently on the WP page. Wolfdog ( talk) 21:03, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
Some of that isn't sourced. Should it stay on the page? Themoonx ( talk) 10:09, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
The sound files used for the "Pronuncation of T" section is not mid-Atlantic. That's just a standard US accent. Why is it being used for that section? Zekkertx ( talk) 13:04, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
I will state that I don't know a thing about the trans-Atlantic accent. So, I am confused. Currently, the article says that in this accent, "cot" and "cloth" have the same vowels; i.e. there is no lot–cloth split. However, at the time that trans-Atlantic English was developed, the lot–cloth split was a feature of Received Pronunciation. I can't find a source to support either side. Could anybody verify? Thank you. LakeKayak ( talk) 03:50, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
I can explain the use [oʊ] instead of [əʊ]. At the time, the British /oʊ/ was actually pronounced as [oʊ]. The fronted /oʊ/ is a phenomenon that occurred in the 20th century.
Also, to my knowledge, the General American vowel in "caught" is traditionally a higher vowel, closer to [ɔː] than [ɒ]. However, it seems that you and I may come from two different areas of the country which made lead to different areas of the country, which may lead to different understandings of "General American." LakeKayak ( talk) 16:48, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
@ XSAMPA: If the two vowels were not distinguished from each other, why are they regarded as separate lexical sets? The section "from-rum distinction" reads the following:
Also, "Ah, short o and aw vowels" reads as follows:
Can you please clarify? Thank you. LakeKayak ( talk) 15:14, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
@ Mr KEBAB: I have no objection to mentioning the absence of the lot-cloth split. However, we could possibly change some instances where "cloth" appears to "cot". For example, the following could be change:
Do you object? LakeKayak ( talk) 16:11, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
It's true that some Northeasterners and Southerners realized the CLOTH vowel as something else, but accents close to General American (Western, Canadian, and Northern) have realize /ɔ/ as [ɑ] or [ɒ]. On the other hand the "cot" vowel is realized as:
If someone from those areas read the article, and saw that the "cloth" vowel is used for "cot" ['kʰɒt], cloth ['kʰlɒθ], watch ['wɒt͡ʃ], was ['wɒz], and ['noʊbɒdɪ] most would be thinking of the correct vowel: [ɒ]. But a Midwesterner seeing that the "cot" vowel is used for "watch" would mispronounce it in their head as ['wɑt͡ʃ], or even worse as ['wat͡ʃ]. A Westerner or Canadian would of course be indifferent to "cot", "cloth" because both are pronounced sometimes as [ɑ] and sometimes as [ɒ] ("watch" especially would be more often than not pronounced with [ɒ] by a Westerner.) So in my opinion, it's much better to use the CLOTH example rather than the COT example. And it's just as correct, since in Mid-Atlantic
It's true that in some American accents, the "cloth" vowel is pronounced differently such as Southern and NYC but those accents are very far away from General American. Also note that phonemically the CLOTH/CAUGHT vowel is transcribed as /ɔ(:)/ for American English, but phonetically it is not pronounced like that. The old article (see https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Mid-Atlantic_accent&oldid=748202470 ) was clearer in my opinion, but people complained that it was being compared to too many other accents, so I had to removed those sections. It was as follows:
Like Received Pronunciation and the Boston accent, Mid-Atlantic English distinguishes the vowels in the words bother and father.
West | GA | North | Boston | Mid-Atlantic [1] | RP | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
bother | [ɑ~ɒ] | [ɑ] | [ɑ~a] | [ɒ] | ||
father | [a:] | [ɑ:] |
Mid-Atlantic distinguishes the vowels in "cot" and "caught", and merges the "cloth" set with "cot", rather than "caught" [1]. This is the same as in contemporary RP [2]. Most American dialects that distinguish the vowels in cot and caught, on the other hand use the "caught" vowel for the "cloth" set. Approximately half of all Americans can neither produce nor perceive a distinction between these vowels [3].
West | GA1 | North | Boston | Mid-Atlantic [1] | RP | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
cot | [ɑ~ɒ] | [ɑ] | [ɑ~a] | [ɒ] | [ɒ] | |
cloth | [ɒ] | [ɒ~ɑ] | [ɒ] | [ɒ~ɔː]2 | ||
caught | [ɔː] |
1 GA here refers to conservative General American speakers who do not have the cot-caught merger or any chain vowel shifts. 2[ɔː] is only used by speakers of conservative varieties of Received Pronunciation such as Queen Elizabeth. Most modern day RP speakers use [ɒ]. contribs) 02:29, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
References
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: date and year (
link)
and not
@ XSAMPA: I can't hear the difference between the two audio files except for vowel length. Also, to my knowledge, the term "General American" is vague. Speakers of "General American" can still vary in phonological features. Also, I don't really know of [ɒ] is used in General American as the vowel in "cloth." For one, [ɒ] is not a stable vowel. In RP, /ɒ/ can be pronounced as high as [ɔ̝ː]. LakeKayak ( talk) 13:50, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
@ XSAMPA: As an American myself, I use the pronunciation [ɔ] for "thought" all the time. What part of the country are you from? I am a little curious. LakeKayak ( talk) 13:53, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
@ Mr KEBAB: I am sorry. Brain fart. I confused two different pages and my knowledge on the tacks is still vague. Thanks for the help. LakeKayak ( talk) 15:06, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
@ XSAMPA:No, I don't use the "father" vowel. I pronounce the "short o" as [ä], a separate vowel altogether. LakeKayak ( talk) 01:12, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Where should information about the "Classical American accent" (Fletcher) or "Western Standard" (Skinner) be put? Lots of the examples of a "Mid-Atlantic" accent are actually the Classical American accent, such as Fraiser or "The Guiding Light". The "Classical American accent" is a rhotic or partially rhotic variety and sounds more American than the Mid-Atlantic/Eastern standard accent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by XSAMPA ( talk • contribs) 23:17, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Why does this page, but virtually no other dialect page, have section after section of phonological explanation? Why does every split or merger merit its own section? Can't this all be compiled neatly under a single "Phonology" section? I'm also wondering why so much careful attention has been given to phonology (which is great, of course), and yet still no one can add a single citation here that shows the British perspective on the term "Mid-Atlantic accent", though Britons ensure me that the phrase is used in their own country to mean a British accent with American features. Wolfdog ( talk) 12:56, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
@ XSAMPA: Is there a reason the "look" section instated? I am left confused, not seeing the need for the section. LakeKayak ( talk) 21:13, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
I have decided to remove the section for the following reasons:
This would exclude vowel differences before /l/, which is mentioned in the section "Distinctions before l" anyway.
That's all. LakeKayak ( talk) 22:40, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
I feel that this page seems to be too much of a guide on how to speak the Transatlantic accent, and that therefore the page may be losing its neutral point of view. In order to mimic the structure used on the other dialect pages, in essence, I am going have to redo the entire "Phonology section". LakeKayak ( talk) 01:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not Moved per Commonname. Three RMs in slightly over a year suggests that this one should be left alone unless overwhelming evidence to the contrary surfaces. Mike Cline ( talk) 13:08, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
Mid-Atlantic accent →
Transatlantic accent – The "Mid-Atlantic" is typically used to refer to
Mid-Atlantic American English. As the name "Mid-Atlantic" can mean two things, the name is ambiguous. Therefore, I think it is best that the name be used for neither accent and that the name "Mid-Atlantic accent" link to a disambiguous page. Thank you.
LakeKayak (
talk)
01:52, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
:::Sorry but what do you mean by "this accent and
Mid-Atlantic American English", I'm not sure what the difference is?
Zarcadia (
talk)
21:48, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
*Oppose, Mid-Atlantic is more wildly used than Transatlantic. Just researching and searching articles you will see that as well.
Reb1981 (
talk)
01:51, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
@ AjaxSmack: The section in the Atlas of North American English where Mid-Atlantic American English is discussed is entitled "The Mid-Atlantic states". This name comes from that the " Mid-Atlantic States" is the name of the region where this accent/dialect is spoken. Therefore, naturally to call this accent a "Mid-Atlantic accent" makes the most sense because it is native to the "Mid-Atlantic states". It should not be regarded as an original name used by Labov, Ash, and Boberg. LakeKayak ( talk) 23:19, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
@ AjaxSmack: I see no reason for you to shout. This is uncivil. Labov et al. refer to the section as "Mid-Atlantic". They don't use the term "accent", "dialect region", or anything. I can't see how it is originally research to call Mid-Atlantic American English, a Mid-Atlantic accent. The accent of New York City is a New York accent. The accent of Boston is a Boston accent. The accent of the South is a Southern accent. So, therefore, by this convention, the accent of the Mid-Atlantic States would be a Mid-Atlantic accent.
Shifting matters entirely, where are you from? This may be the result of our difference in opinions. I myself am from New Jersey. LakeKayak ( talk) 20:25, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
According to every dictionary the term transatlantic is an adjective and not a proper noun even when included with accent, as LakeKayak has stated. Just as prior example that I included on a revert. Webster states, crossing or extending across the Atlantic Ocean, example: a transatlantic cable. You can not use example as Mother Jones, which is a name and title of a person. Refer to https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transatlantic. Reb1981 ( talk) 21:41, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
I have evidence, now. [11]. p. 104. "Names of languages and dialects, races, and people are always capitalized." LakeKayak ( talk) 20:58, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
@ Eggishorn: We resolved the issue. The agreement was that both "Mid-Atlantic" and "Transatlantic" be capitalized consistently. Also, try to avoid saying that something "is clearly" something. It can be taken the wrong way too easily. LakeKayak ( talk) 22:03, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
@ XSAMPA: Just so that we're on the same page, it seems that /juː/ is not recognized on the RP page (or any other dialect) as a separate phoneme. As RP, in particular, has a strong resistant to yod-dropping, if /juː/ were to be recognized as a separate phoneme on any dialect page, it would be RP. Therefore, it seems that the sound is realized as /j/ followed by /uː/. With this in mind, I don't think that /juː/ should be instated as a diphthong of the Transatlantic accent. LakeKayak ( talk) 02:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
@ Mr KEBAB: I only used the word "phoneme" because the word "phoneme" was used on other dialect pages like New York English and General American. I only request for consistency from page to page. If the word in "phoneme" should not be used here, then we probably should change the word "phoneme" on the other pages. Either way, it's your call. LakeKayak ( talk) 20:59, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
That was quick. Thank you. LakeKayak ( talk) 21:15, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
Does anyone know, beyond original research, the reason for the decline of the Mid-Atlantic accent? Scholars seem to agree that it declined sharply after WWII, but do they also have any strong theories about why? I can think of many sensible theories off the top of my head for this postwar change (aversion to British sounds, embracing of more "middle-America" patriotism, resistance to upper-class norms, etc.), but does anyone know what the scholarly research actually has to say? Wolfdog ( talk) 13:36, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
I recently made a couple of edits which Wolfdog asked to be discussed. The first was removing some plagiarism, changing
to
Obviously the quote cannot be included without explicit attribution. In this case I see no reason to include a quote at all, hence my edit. Wolfdog did not explain a reason for re-introducing the plagiarism (so I have removed that part again since it is a serious violation).
The other edit was changing the lead sentence from
to
The original version using a phrase like "consciously acquired" seems a tad confusing for a lead sentence. This phrasing is fine for later in the article but for somebody unfamiliar with the topic reading the article for the first time one would probably have to read that a few times to understand what was meant. Additionally, the lead did not provide any insight as to who used this accent which made it a somewhat incomplete lead sentence. Wolfdog seems to dislike my choice of the word style. I am OK with choosing another word but I am unclear as to why that required reverting the whole thing.
-- MC 141.131.2.3 ( talk) 16:41, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Can't agree that this accent is always consciously acquired. If a child's parents and peers spoke this way, of course the child would do the same unconsciously. Are we really to believe that everyone had to consciously learn the accent with each succeeding generation even if their grandparents and parents had already done so, and they had been hearing it spoken in their own home from earliest infancy? 2606:A000:8948:A100:8DB7:F8B6:2A4B:4A2 ( talk) 04:07, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
The article hints at but does not clearly expound the difference between these patterns of speech as affected and as natural. Is there any chance that perhaps we could have a special section about its conscious acquisition, and then one about its natural occurrence? Many thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iohannes Grammaticus ( talk • contribs) 10:20, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
Obviously one can unconsciously inherit an "affected" accent from one's family and peers. The fact that its origin is artificial does not preclude this accent's being "naturally" passed down to succeeding generations. 2606:A000:8948:A100:8DB7:F8B6:2A4B:4A2 ( talk) 04:00, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
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This note has to do with two aspects of the claim that Grover Cleveland is from Central New York.
First, Grover Cleveland moved to Central New York at about 13 years of age. He was born in Caldwell, New Jersey (about 15 miles due west of Manhattan). The age is significant because accents are often set by the age of 13. They can and do change but typically not. Therefore, unless the editor had something in mind wrt talking about Central NY, it would probably make sense to say that he was from Caldwell, New Jersey.
Second, Caldwell, New Jersey may have played a significant role with his accent. I don't know of historical data but during the 20th century residents of New Jersey's Ramapo Ridge (which includes Caldwell) had an accent that could read as mid-Atlantic. For example, this region pronounces words like Florida with an "ah" sound before the "r" (flahridda). In addition, this region pronounces words like cot and caught differently. Mary, merry, and marry are also distinct. Many US speakers of English collapse the pronunciation of these sets of words and others like them. I would imagine that Grover Cleveland could easily have spoken with a similar accent.
It may be worth pointing out that some recent work (Coye's Dialect Boundaries in New Jersey, American Speech, 2009) suggests that younger people in this region may be collapsing pronunciation like the rest of the country. However, the sample size was small and arranged by county boundaries rather than established dialect boundaries. This same article does cover some of the dialect variants in pronunciation.
I'll add one more thing. There are at least two meanings for "Mid-Atlantic accent". There is that notion of an accent somewhere between the received pronunciations in the US and the UK but there is also the notion of a set of accents found in the mid-Atlantic region of the US.
Richard Beckwith RichardBeckwith ( talk) 15:55, 18 April 2018 (UTC) [1]
References
As touched upon a few times above, the lack of the British perspective on this term is a significant deficiency but I think the lack of reference material is down to the definition being broader and simpler in British English, to the point there is not much to say about it. In respect to refs there probably isn't much to add to these dictionary definitions: said of an accent, etc: peppered with a mixture of British and N American characteristics, characterized by a blend of British and American styles, elements, etc, mixing British and American features, especially words and ways of speaking a mid-Atlantic accent and mid-Atlantic accent a way of speaking that uses a mixture of American and British English sounds and words.
In contrast to this article's (American) definition, in British usage it is not necessarily, though may be, consciously acquired and may blend any of the two forms of accent, standard or otherwise. In fact, the usage of RP in the blend would seem pretty unlikely, outside of Sloaney types. Again, as above, the term tends to be used of singing accents adopted by British musicians or of the accents acquired by Brits living in or spending substantial time in America, thus a blend of their own accent with an American one or an outright attempt at impersonation of the latter.
Per the example sentences at the Oxford dictionary above, the term is often prefixed to "twang"; not something that would seem descriptive of the examples given in the article.
I'd suggest that the initial paragraph note that what is currently there is the American definition, note the simpler British definition, per the refs, and in regard to the latter, we can probably only leave it at that as there is little else to say. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 20:43, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
In that case I'd suggest:
"A Mid-Atlantic accent is one which features a mixture of American and British words or sounds. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] In North America, this term, or Transatlantic accent, [7] [8] [9] is applied to a consciously..." or "may be applied to" if that is considered more accurate. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 18:51, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
References
Queen
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).1. Having watched probably thousands of movies from the 30s and early 40s, I've often noticed a double standard concerning gender and the M-A accent. Full-blooded linguistic "Americanism" was much more readily heard (and presumably accepted) from male characters, and when "cultivation" was required from a man, the studios often simply hired a British actor like Ronald Colman, Flynn (Tasmanian I know, but an Englishman as perceived by the American public), Olivier, Leslie Howard, Claude Rains, George Brent, C. Aubrey Smith, Herbert Marshall etc. I suppose that even in the 30s the public felt that "cultivation" was a rather effeminate quality to be found in an American man, and so we find most of the very biggest American male stars of the 30s and early 40s DID NOT use the M-A accent--Gable, Cagney, Bogart, Cooper, Tracy, Stewart--and those top box office men that did use it tended to use a milder form (e.g. Robert Taylor) than the women. Conversely we find that almost all of the biggest female stars of the same period did indeed use the M-A accent to some degree--Davis, Crawford, Colbert, Shearer, Loy etc. Are there exceptions? Most certainly, but you can't have exceptions without a pattern. In a man, an "everyday American" accent could be seen as straightforward, rugged, virile, down to earth. In a woman, the same accent was considered boorish, unladylike, and fit for the gutter (think Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Blondell). A male character with such an accent might be the hero of a grand adventure, as indeed Gable was in picture after picture; whereas a woman with same accent would probably be a streetwalker, barmaid, or trashy chorus girl.
The more movies I see from this period, the more I notice how gendered the M-A accent was. It was a way to signal to audiences that an American woman was a "lady" despite her unfortunate nationality, and therefore worthy of respect, courtesy, and sympathy that ordinary American women didn't merit. On the other hand a man could be a linguistic boor and "get away with it" (or even be applauded for his boorishness as a charming rogue) much more easily--what else is new? Perhaps this issue of gender discrepancies--with further research and sourcing of course--could merit a sentence or two in the article.
2. It seems to me that the movie actors listed should typify this accent in its strongest form. Those who cite Tyrone Power as having used M-A are perhaps insufficiently familiar with the range of speech patterns and accents present in the movies of that vintage. By the elocutionary standards of the 1930s and 40s Tyrone Power did not use a markedly M-A accent, although his speech might be considered mildly cultivated to today's ear. He consistently pronounces his r's at the ends of words, and thereby fails the shibboleth of M-A. Vincent Price's M-A accent was likewise quite mild most of the time.
Orson Welles is a much better example (perhaps the quintessential one, along with John Barrymore), as are William Powell, Fredric March, Warner Baxter, and Warren William. Among women I'd point to Claudette Colbert as perhaps the most famous textbook example besides Bette Davis; also Rosalind Russell, Kay Francis (despite her speech impediment) Paulette Goddard, Margaret Sullavan (an aristocratic southern accent but clearly approximated to M-A), Irene Dunne (likewise a southern accent with cultivated M-A theatricality), Miriam Hopkins (another southerner), the De Havilland sisters (British-Americans), Margaret Lindsay (textbook example), Carole Lombard (her M-A comes and goes depending on the "elevation" of the scene). Mind you, some of these actors who lived into later decades did begin to modify their speech slightly as M-A became less fashionable after WW II. In Fredric March's early roles he practically impersonates John Barrymore, whereas in old age his accent had lost much of its English theatricality.
3. The theory that the Mid-Atlantic accent has something to do with primitive recording technology is bunk. The desire of educated Americans to sound like English gentlemen (or some approximation thereof) is a cultural phenomenon that goes back long before any recording technology. In the 19th century the greatest compliment a Bostonian could receive while travelling abroad was to be taken for an Englishman. From 'Misinforming a Nation' 1917: The American actor, in order to gain distinction, apes the dress, customs, intonation and accent of Englishmen. His great ambition is to be mistaken for a Londoner. This pose, however, is not all snobbery: it is the outcome of an earnest desire to appear superior; and so long has England insisted upon her superiority that many Americans have come to adopt it as a cultural fetish. T. S. Eliot anyone?
4. It's equally ridiculous to write that this accent was most fashionable in the 30s and 40s. Yes, it was more frequently recorded then, but that's because talkies had only just been invented, which is how most modern persons come across this accent. If anything it had never been LESS popular. Anglophile accents had been (very) slowly going out of style since WW I.
5. Finally, I'd emphasize that the Mid-Atlantic accent never aimed at sounding "British" (whatever that means) or even "English", but something much more specific: the upper classes of London and the classically trained actors of the London stage. These are the only "British" accents concerned with this phenomenon. 2606:A000:8948:A100:C47A:B67B:A8D0:E7ED ( talk) 06:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
What about persons who grew up hearing this accent because their parents or grandparents consciously "acquired" it generations back? If this is what one hears spoken in one's childhood home, then there's nothing "consciously acquired" about it. The article seems to assume that every family's linguistic memory was wiped with each new generation and that the Mid-Atlantic accent had to be relearnt from the ground up. It would have us believe that, for some arbitrary reason, the Mid-Atlantic accent absolutely cannot be passed from one generation to the next, even if every member of the family spoke in this manner. The fact that the Mid-Atlantic accent has artificial and affected origins need not mean that everyone using it is necessarily affecting it. 2606:A000:8948:A100:8DB7:F8B6:2A4B:4A2 ( talk) 05:08, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: No consensus. The present title follows common usage and a hatnote can provide sufficient disambiguation. ( non-admin closure) Cwmhiraeth ( talk) 13:34, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Mid-Atlantic accent → Transatlantic accent – The vast majority of the sources refer to the accent primarily as the "Transatlantic accent". This is unsurprising, as "transatlantic", meaning across or concerning both sides of the Atlantic, makes far more sense than "Mid-Atlantic" and is far less ambiguous. As the term "Mid-Atlantic", at least in North America, is used more frequently to refer to the Mid-Atlantic United States, the current title creates unnecessary confusion, especially considering that there already exists an American English accent and dialect in the Mid-Atlantic United States referred to as the " Mid-Atlantic dialect". Thankfully, "Transatlantic accent" exists as a synonymous and far more prevalently used nomenclature for the accent discussed in this article and should be used as the primary title of the article. Madreterra ( talk) 14:23, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
Ironically, it seems as though one of the editors that voted "oppose" in the above page move proposal actually thought that this was an article about the Mid-Atlantic American dialect, noting that he "once heard this accent referred to as the Delawarean Accent". This is clearly a reference to the Mid-Atlantic American accent, and this editor's understandable confusion only further demonstrates the need to re-titled this page by moving it from the unnecessarily confusing "Mid-Atlantic accent" to the more commonly sourced "Transatlantic accent." It is laughably ludicrous that a page move proposed in part to avoid confusion over a similarly named dialect was thwarted because editors voting "oppose" are themselves confused and believe this article is referring to Mid-Atlantic American English. You see what I mean, right? Ultimately, however, the proposal was also based on the sources, the majority of which refer to the "Transatlantic accent." Madreterra ( talk) 19:01, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
I've heard the term "transatlantic accent" all my life. To suggest that its existence constitutes anything other than "established information" is silly. Anyone who has ever read about old movies or stage history for more than fifteen minutes will have come across discussions of the transatlantic accent. I have never heard anyone say mid-Atlantic accent without meaning the transatlantic accent. In my experience they are synonyms, and it would be absurd to use mid-Atlantic accent (in the singular) to mean anything else since no single accent clearly predominates in the mid-Atlantic states, that region having dozens of widely diverging dialects that scarcely resemble each other at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2606:A000:8948:A100:A0DA:E028:6EC2:385D ( talk) 06:41, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
I have skimmed through the article and it seems to be comprehensively written. It could use a map showing where the Midatlandic dialectbis spoken. Spannerjam ( talk) 11:20, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
The whole article seems to lionize the unsubstantiated thesis by Dudley Knight (who was a vocal coach and NOT a linguist) as the voice of God without any critical assessment. Are we to believe that William Tilly traveled back in time to the 1830's-40's to teach presidents Cleveland and McKinley his Mid-Atlantic speech? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.158.24.144 ( talk) 19:02, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
According to the article, this accent is a mixture of both American and British characteristics. However, almost all the features listed in the Phonology section are featues from RP. Where are the American characteristics? It feels like the article is written from the American perspective and focused on features that are not American. I'd like to read more about the American characteristics. Betty ( talk) 00:23, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
I was wondering if anyone could provide any vowel diagrams for the Mid-Atlantic diphthongs please ? I couldn't find any.
Thanks :) YanisBourgeois ( talk) 23:44, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
I read this article yesterday, and I didn't understand whether this accent was chiefly British or American. I read the chapter in Robert MacNeil's book, and, according to Robert MacNeil, this accent was "the British pattern".
I read the description of MacNeil, and I cannot but agree with him. In a word, gentlemen, do you have an opportunity to write about the Britishness of the above-mentioned accent in the article? Роман Сергеевич Сидоров ( talk) 11:38, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
I read the article which deals with this accent, and, accordingly, I didn't understand whether this accent was chiefly British or American. Listening to Katherine Hepburn convinced me that this accent was predominantly British, to say nothing of Billie Burke. I'm a novice in phonetics, so could you help me with answering this question? Роман Сергеевич Сидоров ( talk) 07:48, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
chiefly British or American. It sounds wannabe-British (or perhaps upper-class old-timey Northeastern American) to American ears and utterly American to British ears. Wolfdog ( talk) 22:21, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
I suggest that the Wikipedians should describe and discuss Kate Hepburn's English in a scientific and dispassionate spirit. First of all, I'm interested in the Mid-Atlantic accent, and, accordingly, I must ask the chief editors and creators of this article whether it's possible to find the transcripts of Philadelphia Story and stuff. As a reader, I suggest that the public of English Wikipedia should improve this article, for the description of this accent is sure to be rather incomplete, in my estimation. Роман Сергеевич Сидоров ( talk) 13:03, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
Hi YanisBourgeois, can you please explain where you're deciding upon the notation use for FDR's vowels. You refer to the Urban (2021) source and I think specifically the chart on p. 238. But how are you inferring the [ɐ] offlglide or the rhoticity of NURSE? (His NURSE certainly is non-rhotic in the phrase "assERT my FIRM belief" from the Fear Itself speech.) Thanks. Wolfdog ( talk) 14:30, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
In Good American Speech by M. P. McLean, is described as low front unrouded [a] with a certain degree of variation as far as the length is concerned : "Its length varies but it's usually about half long, perhaps because it's usually followed by of voiced consonnant. It is rarely, if ever, fuuly long." It's also asserted that it can take the PALM value : Every sound that contains the sound a may be pronounced with the vowel ɑ(ː) as well" YanisBourgeois ( talk) 11:53, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
@ YanisBourgeois: Reiterated from my edit summaries in opposition to your recent reverts: You're including a term, "Classical American," that is otherwise defined nowhere else in the text. I don't see the good of this. What does the term mean exactly and why do you feel it should be included? Wolfdog ( talk) 01:17, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Also, why have you chosen to use the sole symbol /ɒ/ to represent the Mid-Atlantic CLOTH and LOT vowels, when we have already established in the prose and both /ɒ/ and /ɔ/ are options for CLOTH specifically? Wolfdog ( talk) 01:21, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
The entry on the Canadian counterpart of Mid-Atlantic English, namely Canadian English § Canadian dainty, describes it as a sociolect. So, my question is, can Mid-Atlantic English also be described as such? If it is (the use of it by the entertainment industry potentially makes this questionable), I'd like to add a wlink to 'sociolect' in the lede of this article.
Thoughts? Tfdavisatsnetnet ( talk) 22:44, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
This article is mentioned as containing incorrect information by Geoff Lindsey, one of the leading scholars on phonetic variation in English, in a video which dropped yesterday. We probably need to add his point of view and correct this. Even though this video is not peer-reviewed content, it is expert opinion. Boynamedsue ( talk) 06:28, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Tillyand his disciples was (prior to @ Wolfdog:'s edits) probably very excessive, and there is still a lot there. I've tweaked the lead to avoid suggestions that the accent was always consciously-learned, but I think more work is needed there. We also have the problem that there was an "American Theatrical Standard" which was more British than the Mid-Atlantic accent which someone like Kathryn Hepburn used. This article is mixing the two up, I think. Boynamedsue ( talk) 08:38, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Specifically, it blended features from both prestigious coastal Northeastern American English and from Received Pronunciation, the standard speech of England.As I understand it, the accent is in effect "the prestige dialect of Northeastern American English" so it can't also be a blend with RP? Boynamedsue ( talk) 08:49, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Lindsey's recent video, IMO, is both excellent at pointing out some nuances but, at the same time, overlooks other nuances. It's not that the WP article is deeply inaccurate but that MANY content-creators have slightly misrepresented and simplified info from our article. Myself and others have endeavored to use credible sources here, such as the Knight source, which seems to be this topic's main scholarly source of info. As Boynamedsue points out, I did in fact make a couple changes based on Lindsey's video: Tyrone Power spoke with a rhotic accent, so I deleted his name from the page. Let's take another point Lindsey asserts: Katharine Hepburn developed her accent before she entered the film industry in the 1930s, and Skinner only published her famous book in 1942, so any claims that people like Hepburn were learning this accent in the 1930s or 1920s is false. While that's true for Skinner, Margaret McLean (and likely many other forgotten coaches) were indeed working in those earlier decades; McLean published her book in 1928, and I've since edited the page to reflect that. This keeps the "World English influence in Hollywood" argument on the table. (Also, Hepburn self-admittedly learned her speech style at her Pennsylvania college and why would a New England accent be taught there? This seems to contradict Lindsey's basic thesis. It's also quite the jump for me, as a native Connecticuter who's studied its historical dialects, to believe Hepburn's accent on-screen is a natural New England OR Pennsylvania one.)
The main argument of this page is not that Tilly and the gang invented this accent (since a variety of roughly RP-inspired accents were used by earlier Americans like President McKinley and the Roosevelts), but that they codified a fairly phonetically consistent version for the first time, which got big in the the acting world probably as early as the 1920s, declining in the mid-20th century.
Although Lindsey is right to attack the idea of a straightup "fake accent", there is indeed a kind of "respectable and briefly-trendy but contrived accent" drilled into wealthy people of this time (again, yes, predating Hollywood) which people from that era (including Hepburn in Lindsey's own video) readily admit to in interviews. FDR does not speak with the natural features known to be used by New Yorkers in his era any more than Hepburn speaks with natural Connecticut features from her era. Is it possible that FDR and Hepburn are both using an upper-class Northeastern accent? Absolutely. But that alone doesn't assure it is a naturally acquired accent.
Since this is getting a bit long, I will give two specific speakers to consider: Aurelia Plath versus her daughter Sylvia Plath, both from money in Eastern Massachusetts, and so a very easy comparison to make... yet they have two different accents. Aurelia has the Boston Brahmin accent (presumably more natural/local among the New England elite) with unrounded LOT, fronted START, a flap for intervocalic /t/, [ɛə] for BATH, and a GenAm-style THOUGHT of the type [ɒ~ɔə]. Sylvia, on the other hand, shows RP influences in all these same features, suggesting a more acquired-later-in-life Transatlantic accent: rounded LOT, backed START, a sometimes plosive [t] for intervocalic /t/, [a] (the "intermediate A" as I think Skinner calls it) for BATH, and an RP-style THOUGHT of the type [ɔː~oː]. You might even expect the older woman to have the more RP-like sound, but this just isn't the case. Wolfdog ( talk) 14:25, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.We could argue about WP:DUE, as this is not peer-reviewed, but reliability is not an issue. Boynamedsue ( talk) 16:31, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Noah Webster writing in the 1820's was somewhat suspicious of people who dropped their /r/'s after vowels. Webster was not so keen on British English generally, and changed the spelling in his dictionaries, honor instead of honour, center instead of centre.
Hans Kurath started gathering data for the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States in 1933, and published the Handbook of Linguistic Geography of New England in 1939. The sociolinguist William Labov's thesis was completed in 1966, and released as a book, The Social Stratification of English in New York City. He compared his own observations that young upper middle class New Yorkers were no longer dropping their /r/'s after vowels in careful speech with Kurath's data which he wrote shows all New Yorkers dropped their /r/'s after vowels pre-war. Labov offhandedly suggested that WWII resulted in a "radical shift in the relative power and status of Britain and the US" as one part of the explanation as to why New Yorkers were starting to say /r/.
I have to say that just because a speaker drops their /r/'s doesn't necessarily mean that they have a British accent. These New Yorkers who say /boid/ for "bird" don't sound particularly British.
Robert Hobbs came out with a book called Teach Yourself Transatlantic in 1986, mentioned by Knight.
In 2006, Labov, Ash and Bobert used the word "Mid-Atlantic" to refer to the Middle Atlantic States, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware.
Robert MacNeil was a newscaster for PBS. He interviewed Labov in the "Do You Speak American?" TV specials. Dongord ( talk) 21:14, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
@ Dongord: I will respectfully ask you to stop editing the page at this point and to instead engage with a discussion with me here until we can get some disagreements sorted out. I also ask that you please stick to the topics at hand to avoid the discussion becoming too huge and unwieldy. I've reverted all your recent edits for the following reasons: some of your syntax is overly informal or contains typos like "not pronouncing your R's" or "as the year went by" or "McKean" (rather than McLean). Please point me to the source (and page, if relevant) saying that Tilly taught only summer sessions at Columbia; that may be true, but a source is needed. You are also steamrolling my edits/reverts without explanations as to why, so that we are verging on an WP:EDITWAR. At this time, please discuss any other changes you want to implement here before enacting them. Thank you. Wolfdog ( talk) 19:04, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
please stick to the topics at hand to avoid the discussion becoming too huge and unwieldy; 2)
Please point me to the source (and page, if relevant) saying that Tilly taught only summer sessions at Columbia; and 3)
please discuss any other changes you want to implement here. Most importantly, be transparent about the sources you're basing your info on. Wolfdog ( talk) 12:14, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
This video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xoDsZFwF-c) downplays Tilly's role in Hollywood Accent, giving audios that predate him as evidence. Kdammers ( talk) 21:04, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
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Should certain relevant content here on the page "Mid-Atlantic accent" 1) be moved/split off to this section on Elite Northeastern American English (or perhaps even an entirely new page Elite Northeastern American English); or, 2) should we go in the other direction and totally merge from the aforementioned section over to "Mid-Atlantic accent"? Wolfdog ( talk) 17:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
British linguist Geoff Lindsey has recently dropped a YouTube video that has blown up this talk page (see the previous three sections above). Lindsey claims that the Mid-Atlantic accent once employed by certain famous actors a) is not "contrived" or "consciously learned" (or, the word in his video title, "fake") in an attempted emulation of British RP as so often described in the media, and instead b) is, in fact, basically the same thing as a naturally-acquired upper-class Northeastern U.S. accent whose heyday existed about a century ago. I've studied about this for years and the confidence of Lindsey's claims shocked me. After reacquainting myself with the admittedly scanty scholarship on the topic over the last few days, I'm content that the following reliable sources do not agree with Lindsey. (His confusion though is quite understandable; there's a lot of minutiae to unpack.) With regard to a), sources that I list below contend that this is in fact an accent actively learned and taught in elocution classes rather than a native accent. As for b), sources also contend that there are in actuality two distinct accents (the learned classroom accent versus the natural regional sociolect), with general agreement that the two are indeed quite phonetically similar but not the same.
Here is an overview of the relevant sources (the Wikipedia page has others too, but these seem to be the most reliable):
Lindsey also makes other claims that these sources would regard as contentious, but back to my Request for Comment. Does it make more sense to split along the lines of the two accents (one theatre-based Mid-Atlantic accent page and one Elite Northeastern accent page/section); or, to simply merge everything here into one "Mid-Atlantic accent" because the two accents are so commonly (if somewhat mistakenly) equated? Wolfdog ( talk) 17:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
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I grew up in Italy with American mother and went to a British school. In the US I am told I have a British accent in in the UK I am told I have an american one. Would this no be a mid-atlantic accent come by naturally, as opposed to an affectation? I know many other TCKs with similar accents. Pearl2525 ( talk) 14:55, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Grace Kelly? PurpleChez ( talk) 18:43, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
This is a paragraph from an older version of this article, shouldn't we reinstate some of the names of notable people which are no longer included? Some of them seem eligible while others don't.
With the evolution of talkies in the late 1920s, voice was first heard in motion pictures. It was then that the majority of audiences first heard Hollywood actors speaking predominantly in Mid-Atlantic English. Some had been raised with it, many adopted it starting out in the theatre, and others simply affected it to help their careers. Among those from Hollywood's Golden Era of the 1930s associated with the accent are British-born Cary Grant,[3] and Americans Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Joan Crawford and Irene Dunne.
British expatriates John Houseman, Henry Daniell, Anthony Hopkins, Elizabeth Taylor, Camilla Luddington, and Angela Cartwright exemplified the accent,[citation needed] as did Americans Eleanor Parker, Grace Kelly, Jane Wyatt, Eartha Kitt, Agnes Moorehead, Patrick McGoohan, William Daniels, Vincent Price, Clifton Webb, John McGiver, Jonathan Harris, Roscoe Lee Browne,[4] and Richard Chamberlain, and Canadians Christopher Plummer, John Vernon, Norma Shearer, and Lorne Greene.
Orson Welles notably spoke in a mid-Atlantic accent in the 1941 film Citizen Kane, as did many of his co-stars, such as Joseph Cotten.[citation needed]
Figures outside the entertainment industry known for speaking Mid-Atlantic English include William F. Buckley, Jr.,[5] Gore Vidal, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Plimpton,[6][7] Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Wallis Simpson, Norman Mailer,[8] Diana Vreeland,[9] Maria Callas, Cornelius Vanderbilt IV,[10] and Brad Friedel.[11] The monologuist Ruth Draper's recorded "The Italian Lesson" gives an example of this East Coast American upper class diction of the 1940s.
I can tell for sure that Grace Kelly spoke with a Mid-Atlantic accent both in To catch a Thief and Dial M for Murder. Agnes Moorehead used the accent on-stage, notably as Endora in Bewitched, but also off-stage as is the case with Clifton Webb. I think they should be reinstated, even though a printed reference can't be found. The matter becomes more difficult for Crawford, for instance, who didn't use the accent for Baby Jane, but did she use it in some other film? Also Fairbanks Jr seemed to be losing it later in life, some of the rs at the end of words making a come back (compare the two interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbbUJvE4OQw, you can hear the accent clearly as he recites Kipling but also in his casual conversation; and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt5avAEDE7c). Elizabeth Taylor used it for Cleopatra but never seemed to use it in real life, at least from the 1970s onward, you can tell from her many interviews and the same goes for Jane Wyatt. Should we reinstate some of them, citing some films where they can be heard using the accent, or should we just leave them out? Hopkins is British and was too old to be a case comparable to Cary Grant, so it's only right he was dropped out of the list. Furthermore, can someone find some reference for some of them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.48.29.175 ( talk) 11:27, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Would it be frivolous to discuss how this type of accent has, more recently, been used as a parody or as part of a charicature of affected status? I'm thinking, for instance, of a character from Family Guy with the jutting jaw and an almost incomprehensible ivy league accent... And on The Simpsons--it was perhaps Sideshow Bob's first starring role--when Bob went to prison he was greeted by someone in That Accent asking him to join the prison rowing team "against the Harvard Alums." PurpleChez ( talk) 14:13, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
So they can either experience it or try to pick it up for themselves
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/243064/ An airplane tour of San Francisco
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ZUneyU7Vo President McKinley
Timothy Perseus Wordsworthe ( talk) 18:39, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
This article cannot make up its mind whether Mid-Atlantic English is an accent or a dialect, two very different things - it seems to think it is both sometimes - and is woolly about whether it is alive or dead. I am not qualified to do it, but someone needs to rewrite this article, clarifying these points. I have rewritten clumsy passages here and there to make them read better, but have limited my edits to that. -- P123cat1 ( talk) 13:55, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: No consensus to move after over two weeks and a relisting. I will make sure disambiguation hat notes are in place to handle any confusion. Cúchullain t/ c 14:51, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Mid-Atlantic accent →
Transatlantic accent – "Mid-Atlantic accent" is obviously one common name for this variety of English, but it is too easily conflated with
Mid-Atlantic American English, which the academic literature most commonly (and so confusingly, relative to this page) calls the "Mid-Atlantic dialect". Even more to the point, "Transatlantic accent" gets 47,300 Google hits, while "Mid(-)atlantic accent", with or without a hyphen, gets only 15,900 hits. The name "Transatlantic accent" is clear, prevalent, and unambiguous.
Wolfdog (
talk) 12:58, 5 December 2015 (UTC) Relisted.
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Hello - I do not agree that the mid-atlantic accent is always consciously acquired. Before I moved from the American Midwest to England at the age of 29, the letter "t" was soft, more like a "d" sound. I hadn't known that about myself but gradually I amended my speech to make myself better understood. A perfect example would be that sometimes people thought I was saying "kiddies" instead of "kitties." Ten years on, my speech is as neutral as possible, partly by conditioning but mostly that I'm picking things up from the English people around me. To say consciously acquired would be to suggest that I wanted to talk this way. So, I did read somewhere this is common for people who have lived in at least two different Anglophone countries for a long period of time. As soon as I find it, I'm deleting the phrase from this entry.
Thanks for reading and kind regards.
MicheleFloyd (
talk)
20:13, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
Are you really trying to claim that no one ever grew up hearing this spoken in their homes and learned it naturally? What if one is a grandparent that already "acquired" it--Does that mean that one's children and grandchildren have to consciously re-acquire it with each generation even if they grew up hearing it every day? That seems a bit absurd. 2606:A000:8948:A100:8DB7:F8B6:2A4B:4A2 ( talk) 04:11, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
At (admittedly) quick glance, this page can easily merge with a few other articles that all appear to discuss cultivated (i.e. artificial or learned) accents of American English associated generally with theatre, wealth, and/or higher education in the early 1900s (all now moribund), and all involving a quite similar pronunciation system that blends perceived American and British speech features. I'd like to go through these various pages' references in the next few days and determine whether the sources in fact show any real connections. I'm wondering whether these relatively small (and not super citation-laden) articles could simply be combined, each having sections on a single page. As these articles currently stand, their similarities seem stronger than than their distinctions. Do others share my sentiments? Wolfdog ( talk) 02:24, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
I hate to slap an 'internationalise' tag on this, but the term, mid or trans Atlantic was just as much used in UK as in the US. The term in the UK, especially of people in broadcasting or entertainment, was used to describe a sometimes seemingly conscious adoption of US sounds, intonation etc., though people with 'a foot in each camp', appeared to come by it more naturally. Just as mid-Atl might have sounded 'classier' to US listeners, the UK form sounded livelier to UK ears than RP.
The article at the moment seems pretty cruel to US users, while I am sure this accent is unlike any US regional accent (and of course unlike any British one), was it not the accent of a conscious social elite, probably absorbed in nursery, private school and club. It is still the case today in the UK that the aristocacry, inc some royals, speak in an accent of their own making, which wouldn't get them a job reading the weather. Just out of interest would Jackie Kennedy have been considered as being a mid-Atl speaker? Pincrete ( talk) 20:13, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
@ Pincrete: Interesting observations. Do you know of any sources that confirm this UK perspective? Certainly the UK royal accent is more RP than Mid-Atlantic, right? I can't imagine the queen being described as using more conscious US features in her speech than the average English citizen. As for Jackie Kennedy, the article indeed cites a source that describes her accent as mid-Atlantic. Wolfdog ( talk) 17:22, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
The article as written seems to be mixing some concepts, or at least not clarifying them. There is an implication that if an American speaks with a non-rhotic accent, then it is a Mid-Atlantic accent. This is, of course, wholly false. Many of the regional accents that developed across the eastern seaboard and nearly the entire south (east of Texas) during the later 19th century were non-rhotic. And despite the regression over the course of the 20th century to rhotic accents, non-rhotic accents persist in many areas, particularly the Northeastern seaboard. But all of these are distinct from the artificially developed Mid-Atlantic accent (though one could argue this artificial accent probably influenced some of the native accents to a degree).
- MC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.34.43 ( talk) 23:04, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not moved. Consensus is that there is no problem with the current page, it follows common usage, and a hatnote can lead people to the article on the mid-Atlantic region of America. — Amakuru ( talk) 22:06, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
Mid-Atlantic accent →
Transatlantic accent – I'm interested in a fuller discussion on this topic. I acknowledge that both names are somewhat common, but "Transatlantic accent" gets 86,300 Google hits, while "Mid-Atlantic accent" gets only 16,800 hits. Even if this were not true, we are advised that when there are multiple common names and "
the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others". My major concern is that someone coming upon "Mid-Atlantic accent" could be easily be confused, looking for what Wikipedia fully calls
Mid-Atlantic American English. I feel a hatnote alone is not helpful. (The hatnote currently reads "For the mid-Atlantic dialect of American English, see..." which for lay readers and linguists alike hardly clarifies the two ideas. Both are arguably "dialects of American English".)
Within the USA, the term "Mid-Atlantic" generally refers to a section of the country on the Eastern Coast about halfway between the North and South: the Mid-Atlantic states. Both articles, by the way, have strong national ties to the USA, so there is good reason to keep this possibility for misinterpretation in mind. To mean specifically "across the Atlantic Ocean", the term "Transatlantic" is clearer and already prevalent; this is how the word is already used in both proper names and common phrases like Transatlantic Pictures, Transatlantic Records, Transatlantic crossing, Transatlantic flight, Transatlantic relations, etc. etc. Transatlantic accent as a term is now even backed by some of the sources currently on the WP page. Wolfdog ( talk) 21:03, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
Some of that isn't sourced. Should it stay on the page? Themoonx ( talk) 10:09, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
The sound files used for the "Pronuncation of T" section is not mid-Atlantic. That's just a standard US accent. Why is it being used for that section? Zekkertx ( talk) 13:04, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
I will state that I don't know a thing about the trans-Atlantic accent. So, I am confused. Currently, the article says that in this accent, "cot" and "cloth" have the same vowels; i.e. there is no lot–cloth split. However, at the time that trans-Atlantic English was developed, the lot–cloth split was a feature of Received Pronunciation. I can't find a source to support either side. Could anybody verify? Thank you. LakeKayak ( talk) 03:50, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
I can explain the use [oʊ] instead of [əʊ]. At the time, the British /oʊ/ was actually pronounced as [oʊ]. The fronted /oʊ/ is a phenomenon that occurred in the 20th century.
Also, to my knowledge, the General American vowel in "caught" is traditionally a higher vowel, closer to [ɔː] than [ɒ]. However, it seems that you and I may come from two different areas of the country which made lead to different areas of the country, which may lead to different understandings of "General American." LakeKayak ( talk) 16:48, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
@ XSAMPA: If the two vowels were not distinguished from each other, why are they regarded as separate lexical sets? The section "from-rum distinction" reads the following:
Also, "Ah, short o and aw vowels" reads as follows:
Can you please clarify? Thank you. LakeKayak ( talk) 15:14, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
@ Mr KEBAB: I have no objection to mentioning the absence of the lot-cloth split. However, we could possibly change some instances where "cloth" appears to "cot". For example, the following could be change:
Do you object? LakeKayak ( talk) 16:11, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
It's true that some Northeasterners and Southerners realized the CLOTH vowel as something else, but accents close to General American (Western, Canadian, and Northern) have realize /ɔ/ as [ɑ] or [ɒ]. On the other hand the "cot" vowel is realized as:
If someone from those areas read the article, and saw that the "cloth" vowel is used for "cot" ['kʰɒt], cloth ['kʰlɒθ], watch ['wɒt͡ʃ], was ['wɒz], and ['noʊbɒdɪ] most would be thinking of the correct vowel: [ɒ]. But a Midwesterner seeing that the "cot" vowel is used for "watch" would mispronounce it in their head as ['wɑt͡ʃ], or even worse as ['wat͡ʃ]. A Westerner or Canadian would of course be indifferent to "cot", "cloth" because both are pronounced sometimes as [ɑ] and sometimes as [ɒ] ("watch" especially would be more often than not pronounced with [ɒ] by a Westerner.) So in my opinion, it's much better to use the CLOTH example rather than the COT example. And it's just as correct, since in Mid-Atlantic
It's true that in some American accents, the "cloth" vowel is pronounced differently such as Southern and NYC but those accents are very far away from General American. Also note that phonemically the CLOTH/CAUGHT vowel is transcribed as /ɔ(:)/ for American English, but phonetically it is not pronounced like that. The old article (see https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Mid-Atlantic_accent&oldid=748202470 ) was clearer in my opinion, but people complained that it was being compared to too many other accents, so I had to removed those sections. It was as follows:
Like Received Pronunciation and the Boston accent, Mid-Atlantic English distinguishes the vowels in the words bother and father.
West | GA | North | Boston | Mid-Atlantic [1] | RP | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
bother | [ɑ~ɒ] | [ɑ] | [ɑ~a] | [ɒ] | ||
father | [a:] | [ɑ:] |
Mid-Atlantic distinguishes the vowels in "cot" and "caught", and merges the "cloth" set with "cot", rather than "caught" [1]. This is the same as in contemporary RP [2]. Most American dialects that distinguish the vowels in cot and caught, on the other hand use the "caught" vowel for the "cloth" set. Approximately half of all Americans can neither produce nor perceive a distinction between these vowels [3].
West | GA1 | North | Boston | Mid-Atlantic [1] | RP | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
cot | [ɑ~ɒ] | [ɑ] | [ɑ~a] | [ɒ] | [ɒ] | |
cloth | [ɒ] | [ɒ~ɑ] | [ɒ] | [ɒ~ɔː]2 | ||
caught | [ɔː] |
1 GA here refers to conservative General American speakers who do not have the cot-caught merger or any chain vowel shifts. 2[ɔː] is only used by speakers of conservative varieties of Received Pronunciation such as Queen Elizabeth. Most modern day RP speakers use [ɒ]. contribs) 02:29, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
References
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: date and year (
link)
and not
@ XSAMPA: I can't hear the difference between the two audio files except for vowel length. Also, to my knowledge, the term "General American" is vague. Speakers of "General American" can still vary in phonological features. Also, I don't really know of [ɒ] is used in General American as the vowel in "cloth." For one, [ɒ] is not a stable vowel. In RP, /ɒ/ can be pronounced as high as [ɔ̝ː]. LakeKayak ( talk) 13:50, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
@ XSAMPA: As an American myself, I use the pronunciation [ɔ] for "thought" all the time. What part of the country are you from? I am a little curious. LakeKayak ( talk) 13:53, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
@ Mr KEBAB: I am sorry. Brain fart. I confused two different pages and my knowledge on the tacks is still vague. Thanks for the help. LakeKayak ( talk) 15:06, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
@ XSAMPA:No, I don't use the "father" vowel. I pronounce the "short o" as [ä], a separate vowel altogether. LakeKayak ( talk) 01:12, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Where should information about the "Classical American accent" (Fletcher) or "Western Standard" (Skinner) be put? Lots of the examples of a "Mid-Atlantic" accent are actually the Classical American accent, such as Fraiser or "The Guiding Light". The "Classical American accent" is a rhotic or partially rhotic variety and sounds more American than the Mid-Atlantic/Eastern standard accent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by XSAMPA ( talk • contribs) 23:17, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Why does this page, but virtually no other dialect page, have section after section of phonological explanation? Why does every split or merger merit its own section? Can't this all be compiled neatly under a single "Phonology" section? I'm also wondering why so much careful attention has been given to phonology (which is great, of course), and yet still no one can add a single citation here that shows the British perspective on the term "Mid-Atlantic accent", though Britons ensure me that the phrase is used in their own country to mean a British accent with American features. Wolfdog ( talk) 12:56, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
@ XSAMPA: Is there a reason the "look" section instated? I am left confused, not seeing the need for the section. LakeKayak ( talk) 21:13, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
I have decided to remove the section for the following reasons:
This would exclude vowel differences before /l/, which is mentioned in the section "Distinctions before l" anyway.
That's all. LakeKayak ( talk) 22:40, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
I feel that this page seems to be too much of a guide on how to speak the Transatlantic accent, and that therefore the page may be losing its neutral point of view. In order to mimic the structure used on the other dialect pages, in essence, I am going have to redo the entire "Phonology section". LakeKayak ( talk) 01:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not Moved per Commonname. Three RMs in slightly over a year suggests that this one should be left alone unless overwhelming evidence to the contrary surfaces. Mike Cline ( talk) 13:08, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
Mid-Atlantic accent →
Transatlantic accent – The "Mid-Atlantic" is typically used to refer to
Mid-Atlantic American English. As the name "Mid-Atlantic" can mean two things, the name is ambiguous. Therefore, I think it is best that the name be used for neither accent and that the name "Mid-Atlantic accent" link to a disambiguous page. Thank you.
LakeKayak (
talk)
01:52, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
:::Sorry but what do you mean by "this accent and
Mid-Atlantic American English", I'm not sure what the difference is?
Zarcadia (
talk)
21:48, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
*Oppose, Mid-Atlantic is more wildly used than Transatlantic. Just researching and searching articles you will see that as well.
Reb1981 (
talk)
01:51, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
@ AjaxSmack: The section in the Atlas of North American English where Mid-Atlantic American English is discussed is entitled "The Mid-Atlantic states". This name comes from that the " Mid-Atlantic States" is the name of the region where this accent/dialect is spoken. Therefore, naturally to call this accent a "Mid-Atlantic accent" makes the most sense because it is native to the "Mid-Atlantic states". It should not be regarded as an original name used by Labov, Ash, and Boberg. LakeKayak ( talk) 23:19, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
@ AjaxSmack: I see no reason for you to shout. This is uncivil. Labov et al. refer to the section as "Mid-Atlantic". They don't use the term "accent", "dialect region", or anything. I can't see how it is originally research to call Mid-Atlantic American English, a Mid-Atlantic accent. The accent of New York City is a New York accent. The accent of Boston is a Boston accent. The accent of the South is a Southern accent. So, therefore, by this convention, the accent of the Mid-Atlantic States would be a Mid-Atlantic accent.
Shifting matters entirely, where are you from? This may be the result of our difference in opinions. I myself am from New Jersey. LakeKayak ( talk) 20:25, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
According to every dictionary the term transatlantic is an adjective and not a proper noun even when included with accent, as LakeKayak has stated. Just as prior example that I included on a revert. Webster states, crossing or extending across the Atlantic Ocean, example: a transatlantic cable. You can not use example as Mother Jones, which is a name and title of a person. Refer to https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transatlantic. Reb1981 ( talk) 21:41, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
I have evidence, now. [11]. p. 104. "Names of languages and dialects, races, and people are always capitalized." LakeKayak ( talk) 20:58, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
@ Eggishorn: We resolved the issue. The agreement was that both "Mid-Atlantic" and "Transatlantic" be capitalized consistently. Also, try to avoid saying that something "is clearly" something. It can be taken the wrong way too easily. LakeKayak ( talk) 22:03, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
@ XSAMPA: Just so that we're on the same page, it seems that /juː/ is not recognized on the RP page (or any other dialect) as a separate phoneme. As RP, in particular, has a strong resistant to yod-dropping, if /juː/ were to be recognized as a separate phoneme on any dialect page, it would be RP. Therefore, it seems that the sound is realized as /j/ followed by /uː/. With this in mind, I don't think that /juː/ should be instated as a diphthong of the Transatlantic accent. LakeKayak ( talk) 02:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
@ Mr KEBAB: I only used the word "phoneme" because the word "phoneme" was used on other dialect pages like New York English and General American. I only request for consistency from page to page. If the word in "phoneme" should not be used here, then we probably should change the word "phoneme" on the other pages. Either way, it's your call. LakeKayak ( talk) 20:59, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
That was quick. Thank you. LakeKayak ( talk) 21:15, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
Does anyone know, beyond original research, the reason for the decline of the Mid-Atlantic accent? Scholars seem to agree that it declined sharply after WWII, but do they also have any strong theories about why? I can think of many sensible theories off the top of my head for this postwar change (aversion to British sounds, embracing of more "middle-America" patriotism, resistance to upper-class norms, etc.), but does anyone know what the scholarly research actually has to say? Wolfdog ( talk) 13:36, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
I recently made a couple of edits which Wolfdog asked to be discussed. The first was removing some plagiarism, changing
to
Obviously the quote cannot be included without explicit attribution. In this case I see no reason to include a quote at all, hence my edit. Wolfdog did not explain a reason for re-introducing the plagiarism (so I have removed that part again since it is a serious violation).
The other edit was changing the lead sentence from
to
The original version using a phrase like "consciously acquired" seems a tad confusing for a lead sentence. This phrasing is fine for later in the article but for somebody unfamiliar with the topic reading the article for the first time one would probably have to read that a few times to understand what was meant. Additionally, the lead did not provide any insight as to who used this accent which made it a somewhat incomplete lead sentence. Wolfdog seems to dislike my choice of the word style. I am OK with choosing another word but I am unclear as to why that required reverting the whole thing.
-- MC 141.131.2.3 ( talk) 16:41, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Can't agree that this accent is always consciously acquired. If a child's parents and peers spoke this way, of course the child would do the same unconsciously. Are we really to believe that everyone had to consciously learn the accent with each succeeding generation even if their grandparents and parents had already done so, and they had been hearing it spoken in their own home from earliest infancy? 2606:A000:8948:A100:8DB7:F8B6:2A4B:4A2 ( talk) 04:07, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
The article hints at but does not clearly expound the difference between these patterns of speech as affected and as natural. Is there any chance that perhaps we could have a special section about its conscious acquisition, and then one about its natural occurrence? Many thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iohannes Grammaticus ( talk • contribs) 10:20, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
Obviously one can unconsciously inherit an "affected" accent from one's family and peers. The fact that its origin is artificial does not preclude this accent's being "naturally" passed down to succeeding generations. 2606:A000:8948:A100:8DB7:F8B6:2A4B:4A2 ( talk) 04:00, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
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This note has to do with two aspects of the claim that Grover Cleveland is from Central New York.
First, Grover Cleveland moved to Central New York at about 13 years of age. He was born in Caldwell, New Jersey (about 15 miles due west of Manhattan). The age is significant because accents are often set by the age of 13. They can and do change but typically not. Therefore, unless the editor had something in mind wrt talking about Central NY, it would probably make sense to say that he was from Caldwell, New Jersey.
Second, Caldwell, New Jersey may have played a significant role with his accent. I don't know of historical data but during the 20th century residents of New Jersey's Ramapo Ridge (which includes Caldwell) had an accent that could read as mid-Atlantic. For example, this region pronounces words like Florida with an "ah" sound before the "r" (flahridda). In addition, this region pronounces words like cot and caught differently. Mary, merry, and marry are also distinct. Many US speakers of English collapse the pronunciation of these sets of words and others like them. I would imagine that Grover Cleveland could easily have spoken with a similar accent.
It may be worth pointing out that some recent work (Coye's Dialect Boundaries in New Jersey, American Speech, 2009) suggests that younger people in this region may be collapsing pronunciation like the rest of the country. However, the sample size was small and arranged by county boundaries rather than established dialect boundaries. This same article does cover some of the dialect variants in pronunciation.
I'll add one more thing. There are at least two meanings for "Mid-Atlantic accent". There is that notion of an accent somewhere between the received pronunciations in the US and the UK but there is also the notion of a set of accents found in the mid-Atlantic region of the US.
Richard Beckwith RichardBeckwith ( talk) 15:55, 18 April 2018 (UTC) [1]
References
As touched upon a few times above, the lack of the British perspective on this term is a significant deficiency but I think the lack of reference material is down to the definition being broader and simpler in British English, to the point there is not much to say about it. In respect to refs there probably isn't much to add to these dictionary definitions: said of an accent, etc: peppered with a mixture of British and N American characteristics, characterized by a blend of British and American styles, elements, etc, mixing British and American features, especially words and ways of speaking a mid-Atlantic accent and mid-Atlantic accent a way of speaking that uses a mixture of American and British English sounds and words.
In contrast to this article's (American) definition, in British usage it is not necessarily, though may be, consciously acquired and may blend any of the two forms of accent, standard or otherwise. In fact, the usage of RP in the blend would seem pretty unlikely, outside of Sloaney types. Again, as above, the term tends to be used of singing accents adopted by British musicians or of the accents acquired by Brits living in or spending substantial time in America, thus a blend of their own accent with an American one or an outright attempt at impersonation of the latter.
Per the example sentences at the Oxford dictionary above, the term is often prefixed to "twang"; not something that would seem descriptive of the examples given in the article.
I'd suggest that the initial paragraph note that what is currently there is the American definition, note the simpler British definition, per the refs, and in regard to the latter, we can probably only leave it at that as there is little else to say. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 20:43, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
In that case I'd suggest:
"A Mid-Atlantic accent is one which features a mixture of American and British words or sounds. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] In North America, this term, or Transatlantic accent, [7] [8] [9] is applied to a consciously..." or "may be applied to" if that is considered more accurate. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 18:51, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
References
Queen
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).1. Having watched probably thousands of movies from the 30s and early 40s, I've often noticed a double standard concerning gender and the M-A accent. Full-blooded linguistic "Americanism" was much more readily heard (and presumably accepted) from male characters, and when "cultivation" was required from a man, the studios often simply hired a British actor like Ronald Colman, Flynn (Tasmanian I know, but an Englishman as perceived by the American public), Olivier, Leslie Howard, Claude Rains, George Brent, C. Aubrey Smith, Herbert Marshall etc. I suppose that even in the 30s the public felt that "cultivation" was a rather effeminate quality to be found in an American man, and so we find most of the very biggest American male stars of the 30s and early 40s DID NOT use the M-A accent--Gable, Cagney, Bogart, Cooper, Tracy, Stewart--and those top box office men that did use it tended to use a milder form (e.g. Robert Taylor) than the women. Conversely we find that almost all of the biggest female stars of the same period did indeed use the M-A accent to some degree--Davis, Crawford, Colbert, Shearer, Loy etc. Are there exceptions? Most certainly, but you can't have exceptions without a pattern. In a man, an "everyday American" accent could be seen as straightforward, rugged, virile, down to earth. In a woman, the same accent was considered boorish, unladylike, and fit for the gutter (think Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Blondell). A male character with such an accent might be the hero of a grand adventure, as indeed Gable was in picture after picture; whereas a woman with same accent would probably be a streetwalker, barmaid, or trashy chorus girl.
The more movies I see from this period, the more I notice how gendered the M-A accent was. It was a way to signal to audiences that an American woman was a "lady" despite her unfortunate nationality, and therefore worthy of respect, courtesy, and sympathy that ordinary American women didn't merit. On the other hand a man could be a linguistic boor and "get away with it" (or even be applauded for his boorishness as a charming rogue) much more easily--what else is new? Perhaps this issue of gender discrepancies--with further research and sourcing of course--could merit a sentence or two in the article.
2. It seems to me that the movie actors listed should typify this accent in its strongest form. Those who cite Tyrone Power as having used M-A are perhaps insufficiently familiar with the range of speech patterns and accents present in the movies of that vintage. By the elocutionary standards of the 1930s and 40s Tyrone Power did not use a markedly M-A accent, although his speech might be considered mildly cultivated to today's ear. He consistently pronounces his r's at the ends of words, and thereby fails the shibboleth of M-A. Vincent Price's M-A accent was likewise quite mild most of the time.
Orson Welles is a much better example (perhaps the quintessential one, along with John Barrymore), as are William Powell, Fredric March, Warner Baxter, and Warren William. Among women I'd point to Claudette Colbert as perhaps the most famous textbook example besides Bette Davis; also Rosalind Russell, Kay Francis (despite her speech impediment) Paulette Goddard, Margaret Sullavan (an aristocratic southern accent but clearly approximated to M-A), Irene Dunne (likewise a southern accent with cultivated M-A theatricality), Miriam Hopkins (another southerner), the De Havilland sisters (British-Americans), Margaret Lindsay (textbook example), Carole Lombard (her M-A comes and goes depending on the "elevation" of the scene). Mind you, some of these actors who lived into later decades did begin to modify their speech slightly as M-A became less fashionable after WW II. In Fredric March's early roles he practically impersonates John Barrymore, whereas in old age his accent had lost much of its English theatricality.
3. The theory that the Mid-Atlantic accent has something to do with primitive recording technology is bunk. The desire of educated Americans to sound like English gentlemen (or some approximation thereof) is a cultural phenomenon that goes back long before any recording technology. In the 19th century the greatest compliment a Bostonian could receive while travelling abroad was to be taken for an Englishman. From 'Misinforming a Nation' 1917: The American actor, in order to gain distinction, apes the dress, customs, intonation and accent of Englishmen. His great ambition is to be mistaken for a Londoner. This pose, however, is not all snobbery: it is the outcome of an earnest desire to appear superior; and so long has England insisted upon her superiority that many Americans have come to adopt it as a cultural fetish. T. S. Eliot anyone?
4. It's equally ridiculous to write that this accent was most fashionable in the 30s and 40s. Yes, it was more frequently recorded then, but that's because talkies had only just been invented, which is how most modern persons come across this accent. If anything it had never been LESS popular. Anglophile accents had been (very) slowly going out of style since WW I.
5. Finally, I'd emphasize that the Mid-Atlantic accent never aimed at sounding "British" (whatever that means) or even "English", but something much more specific: the upper classes of London and the classically trained actors of the London stage. These are the only "British" accents concerned with this phenomenon. 2606:A000:8948:A100:C47A:B67B:A8D0:E7ED ( talk) 06:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
What about persons who grew up hearing this accent because their parents or grandparents consciously "acquired" it generations back? If this is what one hears spoken in one's childhood home, then there's nothing "consciously acquired" about it. The article seems to assume that every family's linguistic memory was wiped with each new generation and that the Mid-Atlantic accent had to be relearnt from the ground up. It would have us believe that, for some arbitrary reason, the Mid-Atlantic accent absolutely cannot be passed from one generation to the next, even if every member of the family spoke in this manner. The fact that the Mid-Atlantic accent has artificial and affected origins need not mean that everyone using it is necessarily affecting it. 2606:A000:8948:A100:8DB7:F8B6:2A4B:4A2 ( talk) 05:08, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: No consensus. The present title follows common usage and a hatnote can provide sufficient disambiguation. ( non-admin closure) Cwmhiraeth ( talk) 13:34, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Mid-Atlantic accent → Transatlantic accent – The vast majority of the sources refer to the accent primarily as the "Transatlantic accent". This is unsurprising, as "transatlantic", meaning across or concerning both sides of the Atlantic, makes far more sense than "Mid-Atlantic" and is far less ambiguous. As the term "Mid-Atlantic", at least in North America, is used more frequently to refer to the Mid-Atlantic United States, the current title creates unnecessary confusion, especially considering that there already exists an American English accent and dialect in the Mid-Atlantic United States referred to as the " Mid-Atlantic dialect". Thankfully, "Transatlantic accent" exists as a synonymous and far more prevalently used nomenclature for the accent discussed in this article and should be used as the primary title of the article. Madreterra ( talk) 14:23, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
Ironically, it seems as though one of the editors that voted "oppose" in the above page move proposal actually thought that this was an article about the Mid-Atlantic American dialect, noting that he "once heard this accent referred to as the Delawarean Accent". This is clearly a reference to the Mid-Atlantic American accent, and this editor's understandable confusion only further demonstrates the need to re-titled this page by moving it from the unnecessarily confusing "Mid-Atlantic accent" to the more commonly sourced "Transatlantic accent." It is laughably ludicrous that a page move proposed in part to avoid confusion over a similarly named dialect was thwarted because editors voting "oppose" are themselves confused and believe this article is referring to Mid-Atlantic American English. You see what I mean, right? Ultimately, however, the proposal was also based on the sources, the majority of which refer to the "Transatlantic accent." Madreterra ( talk) 19:01, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
I've heard the term "transatlantic accent" all my life. To suggest that its existence constitutes anything other than "established information" is silly. Anyone who has ever read about old movies or stage history for more than fifteen minutes will have come across discussions of the transatlantic accent. I have never heard anyone say mid-Atlantic accent without meaning the transatlantic accent. In my experience they are synonyms, and it would be absurd to use mid-Atlantic accent (in the singular) to mean anything else since no single accent clearly predominates in the mid-Atlantic states, that region having dozens of widely diverging dialects that scarcely resemble each other at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2606:A000:8948:A100:A0DA:E028:6EC2:385D ( talk) 06:41, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
I have skimmed through the article and it seems to be comprehensively written. It could use a map showing where the Midatlandic dialectbis spoken. Spannerjam ( talk) 11:20, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
The whole article seems to lionize the unsubstantiated thesis by Dudley Knight (who was a vocal coach and NOT a linguist) as the voice of God without any critical assessment. Are we to believe that William Tilly traveled back in time to the 1830's-40's to teach presidents Cleveland and McKinley his Mid-Atlantic speech? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.158.24.144 ( talk) 19:02, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
According to the article, this accent is a mixture of both American and British characteristics. However, almost all the features listed in the Phonology section are featues from RP. Where are the American characteristics? It feels like the article is written from the American perspective and focused on features that are not American. I'd like to read more about the American characteristics. Betty ( talk) 00:23, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
I was wondering if anyone could provide any vowel diagrams for the Mid-Atlantic diphthongs please ? I couldn't find any.
Thanks :) YanisBourgeois ( talk) 23:44, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
I read this article yesterday, and I didn't understand whether this accent was chiefly British or American. I read the chapter in Robert MacNeil's book, and, according to Robert MacNeil, this accent was "the British pattern".
I read the description of MacNeil, and I cannot but agree with him. In a word, gentlemen, do you have an opportunity to write about the Britishness of the above-mentioned accent in the article? Роман Сергеевич Сидоров ( talk) 11:38, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
I read the article which deals with this accent, and, accordingly, I didn't understand whether this accent was chiefly British or American. Listening to Katherine Hepburn convinced me that this accent was predominantly British, to say nothing of Billie Burke. I'm a novice in phonetics, so could you help me with answering this question? Роман Сергеевич Сидоров ( talk) 07:48, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
chiefly British or American. It sounds wannabe-British (or perhaps upper-class old-timey Northeastern American) to American ears and utterly American to British ears. Wolfdog ( talk) 22:21, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
I suggest that the Wikipedians should describe and discuss Kate Hepburn's English in a scientific and dispassionate spirit. First of all, I'm interested in the Mid-Atlantic accent, and, accordingly, I must ask the chief editors and creators of this article whether it's possible to find the transcripts of Philadelphia Story and stuff. As a reader, I suggest that the public of English Wikipedia should improve this article, for the description of this accent is sure to be rather incomplete, in my estimation. Роман Сергеевич Сидоров ( talk) 13:03, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
Hi YanisBourgeois, can you please explain where you're deciding upon the notation use for FDR's vowels. You refer to the Urban (2021) source and I think specifically the chart on p. 238. But how are you inferring the [ɐ] offlglide or the rhoticity of NURSE? (His NURSE certainly is non-rhotic in the phrase "assERT my FIRM belief" from the Fear Itself speech.) Thanks. Wolfdog ( talk) 14:30, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
In Good American Speech by M. P. McLean, is described as low front unrouded [a] with a certain degree of variation as far as the length is concerned : "Its length varies but it's usually about half long, perhaps because it's usually followed by of voiced consonnant. It is rarely, if ever, fuuly long." It's also asserted that it can take the PALM value : Every sound that contains the sound a may be pronounced with the vowel ɑ(ː) as well" YanisBourgeois ( talk) 11:53, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
@ YanisBourgeois: Reiterated from my edit summaries in opposition to your recent reverts: You're including a term, "Classical American," that is otherwise defined nowhere else in the text. I don't see the good of this. What does the term mean exactly and why do you feel it should be included? Wolfdog ( talk) 01:17, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Also, why have you chosen to use the sole symbol /ɒ/ to represent the Mid-Atlantic CLOTH and LOT vowels, when we have already established in the prose and both /ɒ/ and /ɔ/ are options for CLOTH specifically? Wolfdog ( talk) 01:21, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
The entry on the Canadian counterpart of Mid-Atlantic English, namely Canadian English § Canadian dainty, describes it as a sociolect. So, my question is, can Mid-Atlantic English also be described as such? If it is (the use of it by the entertainment industry potentially makes this questionable), I'd like to add a wlink to 'sociolect' in the lede of this article.
Thoughts? Tfdavisatsnetnet ( talk) 22:44, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
This article is mentioned as containing incorrect information by Geoff Lindsey, one of the leading scholars on phonetic variation in English, in a video which dropped yesterday. We probably need to add his point of view and correct this. Even though this video is not peer-reviewed content, it is expert opinion. Boynamedsue ( talk) 06:28, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Tillyand his disciples was (prior to @ Wolfdog:'s edits) probably very excessive, and there is still a lot there. I've tweaked the lead to avoid suggestions that the accent was always consciously-learned, but I think more work is needed there. We also have the problem that there was an "American Theatrical Standard" which was more British than the Mid-Atlantic accent which someone like Kathryn Hepburn used. This article is mixing the two up, I think. Boynamedsue ( talk) 08:38, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Specifically, it blended features from both prestigious coastal Northeastern American English and from Received Pronunciation, the standard speech of England.As I understand it, the accent is in effect "the prestige dialect of Northeastern American English" so it can't also be a blend with RP? Boynamedsue ( talk) 08:49, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Lindsey's recent video, IMO, is both excellent at pointing out some nuances but, at the same time, overlooks other nuances. It's not that the WP article is deeply inaccurate but that MANY content-creators have slightly misrepresented and simplified info from our article. Myself and others have endeavored to use credible sources here, such as the Knight source, which seems to be this topic's main scholarly source of info. As Boynamedsue points out, I did in fact make a couple changes based on Lindsey's video: Tyrone Power spoke with a rhotic accent, so I deleted his name from the page. Let's take another point Lindsey asserts: Katharine Hepburn developed her accent before she entered the film industry in the 1930s, and Skinner only published her famous book in 1942, so any claims that people like Hepburn were learning this accent in the 1930s or 1920s is false. While that's true for Skinner, Margaret McLean (and likely many other forgotten coaches) were indeed working in those earlier decades; McLean published her book in 1928, and I've since edited the page to reflect that. This keeps the "World English influence in Hollywood" argument on the table. (Also, Hepburn self-admittedly learned her speech style at her Pennsylvania college and why would a New England accent be taught there? This seems to contradict Lindsey's basic thesis. It's also quite the jump for me, as a native Connecticuter who's studied its historical dialects, to believe Hepburn's accent on-screen is a natural New England OR Pennsylvania one.)
The main argument of this page is not that Tilly and the gang invented this accent (since a variety of roughly RP-inspired accents were used by earlier Americans like President McKinley and the Roosevelts), but that they codified a fairly phonetically consistent version for the first time, which got big in the the acting world probably as early as the 1920s, declining in the mid-20th century.
Although Lindsey is right to attack the idea of a straightup "fake accent", there is indeed a kind of "respectable and briefly-trendy but contrived accent" drilled into wealthy people of this time (again, yes, predating Hollywood) which people from that era (including Hepburn in Lindsey's own video) readily admit to in interviews. FDR does not speak with the natural features known to be used by New Yorkers in his era any more than Hepburn speaks with natural Connecticut features from her era. Is it possible that FDR and Hepburn are both using an upper-class Northeastern accent? Absolutely. But that alone doesn't assure it is a naturally acquired accent.
Since this is getting a bit long, I will give two specific speakers to consider: Aurelia Plath versus her daughter Sylvia Plath, both from money in Eastern Massachusetts, and so a very easy comparison to make... yet they have two different accents. Aurelia has the Boston Brahmin accent (presumably more natural/local among the New England elite) with unrounded LOT, fronted START, a flap for intervocalic /t/, [ɛə] for BATH, and a GenAm-style THOUGHT of the type [ɒ~ɔə]. Sylvia, on the other hand, shows RP influences in all these same features, suggesting a more acquired-later-in-life Transatlantic accent: rounded LOT, backed START, a sometimes plosive [t] for intervocalic /t/, [a] (the "intermediate A" as I think Skinner calls it) for BATH, and an RP-style THOUGHT of the type [ɔː~oː]. You might even expect the older woman to have the more RP-like sound, but this just isn't the case. Wolfdog ( talk) 14:25, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.We could argue about WP:DUE, as this is not peer-reviewed, but reliability is not an issue. Boynamedsue ( talk) 16:31, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Noah Webster writing in the 1820's was somewhat suspicious of people who dropped their /r/'s after vowels. Webster was not so keen on British English generally, and changed the spelling in his dictionaries, honor instead of honour, center instead of centre.
Hans Kurath started gathering data for the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States in 1933, and published the Handbook of Linguistic Geography of New England in 1939. The sociolinguist William Labov's thesis was completed in 1966, and released as a book, The Social Stratification of English in New York City. He compared his own observations that young upper middle class New Yorkers were no longer dropping their /r/'s after vowels in careful speech with Kurath's data which he wrote shows all New Yorkers dropped their /r/'s after vowels pre-war. Labov offhandedly suggested that WWII resulted in a "radical shift in the relative power and status of Britain and the US" as one part of the explanation as to why New Yorkers were starting to say /r/.
I have to say that just because a speaker drops their /r/'s doesn't necessarily mean that they have a British accent. These New Yorkers who say /boid/ for "bird" don't sound particularly British.
Robert Hobbs came out with a book called Teach Yourself Transatlantic in 1986, mentioned by Knight.
In 2006, Labov, Ash and Bobert used the word "Mid-Atlantic" to refer to the Middle Atlantic States, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware.
Robert MacNeil was a newscaster for PBS. He interviewed Labov in the "Do You Speak American?" TV specials. Dongord ( talk) 21:14, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
@ Dongord: I will respectfully ask you to stop editing the page at this point and to instead engage with a discussion with me here until we can get some disagreements sorted out. I also ask that you please stick to the topics at hand to avoid the discussion becoming too huge and unwieldy. I've reverted all your recent edits for the following reasons: some of your syntax is overly informal or contains typos like "not pronouncing your R's" or "as the year went by" or "McKean" (rather than McLean). Please point me to the source (and page, if relevant) saying that Tilly taught only summer sessions at Columbia; that may be true, but a source is needed. You are also steamrolling my edits/reverts without explanations as to why, so that we are verging on an WP:EDITWAR. At this time, please discuss any other changes you want to implement here before enacting them. Thank you. Wolfdog ( talk) 19:04, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
please stick to the topics at hand to avoid the discussion becoming too huge and unwieldy; 2)
Please point me to the source (and page, if relevant) saying that Tilly taught only summer sessions at Columbia; and 3)
please discuss any other changes you want to implement here. Most importantly, be transparent about the sources you're basing your info on. Wolfdog ( talk) 12:14, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
This video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xoDsZFwF-c) downplays Tilly's role in Hollywood Accent, giving audios that predate him as evidence. Kdammers ( talk) 21:04, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
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Should certain relevant content here on the page "Mid-Atlantic accent" 1) be moved/split off to this section on Elite Northeastern American English (or perhaps even an entirely new page Elite Northeastern American English); or, 2) should we go in the other direction and totally merge from the aforementioned section over to "Mid-Atlantic accent"? Wolfdog ( talk) 17:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
British linguist Geoff Lindsey has recently dropped a YouTube video that has blown up this talk page (see the previous three sections above). Lindsey claims that the Mid-Atlantic accent once employed by certain famous actors a) is not "contrived" or "consciously learned" (or, the word in his video title, "fake") in an attempted emulation of British RP as so often described in the media, and instead b) is, in fact, basically the same thing as a naturally-acquired upper-class Northeastern U.S. accent whose heyday existed about a century ago. I've studied about this for years and the confidence of Lindsey's claims shocked me. After reacquainting myself with the admittedly scanty scholarship on the topic over the last few days, I'm content that the following reliable sources do not agree with Lindsey. (His confusion though is quite understandable; there's a lot of minutiae to unpack.) With regard to a), sources that I list below contend that this is in fact an accent actively learned and taught in elocution classes rather than a native accent. As for b), sources also contend that there are in actuality two distinct accents (the learned classroom accent versus the natural regional sociolect), with general agreement that the two are indeed quite phonetically similar but not the same.
Here is an overview of the relevant sources (the Wikipedia page has others too, but these seem to be the most reliable):
Lindsey also makes other claims that these sources would regard as contentious, but back to my Request for Comment. Does it make more sense to split along the lines of the two accents (one theatre-based Mid-Atlantic accent page and one Elite Northeastern accent page/section); or, to simply merge everything here into one "Mid-Atlantic accent" because the two accents are so commonly (if somewhat mistakenly) equated? Wolfdog ( talk) 17:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC)