The Transatlantic Accent
Listen to this video starting at 45 seconds, for about a minute or so.
Notice that accent? It might sound familiar. Most of us automatically associate it with old time movies, radio clips, or interviews with major politicians. For another example, listen to the first 20 seconds of this old news clip here:
You might notice that the accent is sort of a combination of American and British, most notably characterized by dropping “r”s, emphasizing “t”s, and softening vowels. But what exactly is this unique accent, why was it so prominent, and what exactly happened to it?
This accent is commonly referred to as the “Transatlantic Accent”, and it actually has a really interesting history. You see, there is absolutely no trace of this accent arising naturally. No group of people slowly transitioned to speaking it, like 99.9% of accents out there. Instead, this accent was only taught and learned.
What exactly do I mean? Well, in early 20th century, a lady named Edith Skinner wrote a book called “Speak With Distinction”. For whatever, reason this book became the de facto guide to speaking in an “upper class” way, and for whatever reason the intonations and verbal cues that Edith suggested were basically the fundamental characteristics of the transatlantic accent. In other words? This lady basically YOLO made up an accent, told the world that it was the right way to speak, and everyone jumped on board.
Of course, given that this was the early 1900s, only the upper class actually had time to study the “right” way to speak, while the rest of the population spent their days doing actual jobs. And so, this accent quickly became something reserved for politicians, celebrities, radio show hosts, and wealthy aristocrats. They would teach their children the accent, and avoid teaching it to poorer people, basically turning it into a marker of prestige.
It is further hypothesized that a complementary reason this accent caught on so much in the early days was that radios at the time could only really support certain pitches of sound (other frequencies would get lost). As a result, radio talk show hosts had to learn to speak in a way that would result in very little loss, and it just so happened that Edith Skinner’s method fit the bill.
Note how unique this is — no one ever naturally spoke the accent. It was purely artificial, but became so commonly taught that you started to hear it all the time, and today most people hear this accent and immediately associate it with old time movies and shows. There are virtually no other accents on record like this — almost every accent that exists naturally arose or naturally evolved in some shape or another.
So, where did the transatlantic accent go? Well once the US came out of WW2 and had a booming middle class, it started to become more gauche to have this type of “fake”, “aristocratic” accent. This, in combination with the fact that acting methods started to become more natural and less forced (and therefore actors wanting to sound less fake), led to the accent dying in popularity in the 50s and 60s after its short, but popular life.
