Xidnaf | The Language of the Founding Fathers (not very accurate) @Xidnaf | Uploaded 11 years ago | Updated 1 hour ago
I didn't know what I was doing when I made this video. It's still a sort-of-close approximation, but what I'm doing here isn't very accurate at all.
When I talk in my reconstruction of the most recent common ancestor of Received Pronunciation and General American English, here are the differences between my own dialect (which is pretty close to GAE) and what I tried to do in the video:
- I tried to un-merge the vowels /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ (as in the father-bother merger).
- I tried to stop flapping "t"s and "d"s in contexts like the word "better".
- I tried to stop tensing /æ/.
- I tried to un-merge the vowels /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ (as in the cot-caught merger).
- I tried to un-merge /hw/ and /w/ (as in the whine-wine merger).
- I tried to un-tense final /i/ back into /ɪ/ in some words (as in happy-tensing).
- I tried to stop dropping /j/ in some initial consonant clusters (as in yod-dropping).
Here are the differences between what I did in the reconstructed-1700s-accent and Received Pronunciation:
- It's not a rhotic-accent, so I still pronounced "r"s in a lot of contexts where they're absent form Received Pronunciation.
- I didn't split change /æ/ inconsistently to /ɑː/ (as in the trap-bath split).
- I tried to un-merge /hw/ and /w/ (as in the whine-wine merger).
- I tried to un-tense final /i/ back into /ɪ/ in some words (as in happy-tensing).
- I tried to stop dropping /j/ in some initial consonant clusters (as in yod-dropping).
I didn't know what I was doing when I made this video. It's still a sort-of-close approximation, but what I'm doing here isn't very accurate at all.
When I talk in my reconstruction of the most recent common ancestor of Received Pronunciation and General American English, here are the differences between my own dialect (which is pretty close to GAE) and what I tried to do in the video:
- I tried to un-merge the vowels /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ (as in the father-bother merger).
- I tried to stop flapping "t"s and "d"s in contexts like the word "better".
- I tried to stop tensing /æ/.
- I tried to un-merge the vowels /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ (as in the cot-caught merger).
- I tried to un-merge /hw/ and /w/ (as in the whine-wine merger).
- I tried to un-tense final /i/ back into /ɪ/ in some words (as in happy-tensing).
- I tried to stop dropping /j/ in some initial consonant clusters (as in yod-dropping).
Here are the differences between what I did in the reconstructed-1700s-accent and Received Pronunciation:
- It's not a rhotic-accent, so I still pronounced "r"s in a lot of contexts where they're absent form Received Pronunciation.
- I didn't split change /æ/ inconsistently to /ɑː/ (as in the trap-bath split).
- I tried to un-merge /hw/ and /w/ (as in the whine-wine merger).
- I tried to un-tense final /i/ back into /ɪ/ in some words (as in happy-tensing).
- I tried to stop dropping /j/ in some initial consonant clusters (as in yod-dropping).
