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When you watch film clips from the 50's and 60's, Americans spoke with a disctinct style and accent. Walter Cronkite, Cary Grant, and Jackie Kennedy spoke this way. Actually, this style of speech probably goes further back than the 50's. Where does this accent come from and why don't we hear it anymore today?
It was particularly conspicuous in movies of the 1930s and 40s. Every actor, depending on the station of his character, either spoke with a British or a Brooklyn accent. This was taught in acting school, and became fairly standard among the Americans who spent so much time watching movies and identifying with the characters.
Some words were distinctly pronounced differently then, probably influenced by actors. "Take an arrow-plane to Los Angul-eez",
I don't know if it's just me, but in the 50's I thought people had a terrible southern accent anywhere south of central Illinois. Now, I never even notice a southern accent unless it is almost comically severe. Movie actors in southern films way oversouthern their lines, to a laughably conspicuous degree, and it is hard to find anyone now in the south with such an exaggerated accent.
I'm not sure if I correctly put Walkter Cronkite in the category of people that spoke with this accent I'm thinking of. Just as another example, if you watch science project films narrated by NASA or other gov't scientists, they also spoke this way.
When you watch film clips from the 50's and 60's, Americans spoke with a disctinct style and accent. Walter Cronkite, Cary Grant, and Jackie Kennedy spoke this way. Actually, this style of speech probably goes further back than the 50's. Where does this accent come from and why don't we hear it anymore today?
I don't see any similarity in the accents of these three.
However, I do think that in the Fifties and Sixties many more Americans on radio and television spoke with a much "flatter" sounding accent than now. Nevertheless, that same accent is still alive and well among lots of Americans as I hear it all the time among U.S. tourists visiting Europe, though Americans from the Deep South, Texas and the Southwest do not sound that way.
Before television there were many more pronounced regional accents. People in national broadcasting used what was called a basic mid-western accent, and over time more and more Americans followed suit, just from listening to it all the time, till it became a sort of generic American accent. People I know from the UK often refer to a BBC accent.
Cary Grant adopted an American accent that was akin to an upper class accent. There are variations, but they seem to have a similar base. In the Philadelphia area it's sometimes referred to as the Main Line Clench. You have to keep your jaw slightly clenched to use it. When I listen to Cary Grant, Kate Hepburn, Jackie Onassis and her cousin Edie Beale in the documentary Gray Gardens, I can hear similarities.
The pronunciation of Los Angeles as Los Anguleez, wasn't really usual in the 30's. I think it's a hold over from Americans pronouncing Los Angeles in a Hispanic manner, with a hard G, in years past. Bugs Bunny used to say Los Anguleez.
When actors came to Hollywood, many of them adopted other accents. In the 30's you can hear a lot of Brooklyn-Bronx type speech, even from actors who came from Iowa or California. This is because of the kind of movies that were popular at the time. In the movies, a wealthy woman usually seemed to have a clench accent or a southern one. I guess it depended on which one they could do.
have you ever heard Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd speak? They had clipped midwestern accents I never hear today. LLoyd was from Nebraska, and Keaton's parents were from Indiana and Iowa.
I think Art Linkletter was the last survivor of the "Los Anguleez" school. Arrow-plane was actually spelled "aeroplane" until about WWII. The number of actresses that pronounced "Dah-ling" were legion. Leading ladies, in their furs and cigarette holders and hats with mesh veils, being handed a cocktail by a man in a tux in their living room, would invariably use a British accent. Gee whiz, fellas, those movies were swell.
By the way, New York has also gone through a transformation around WWII. Before that, actors in film distinctly pronounced it "Nieu Yawk", as if there was also an Old York and a New Yank, and they were trying to avoid any confusion.
The pronunciation of Los Angeles as Los Anguleez, wasn't really usual in the 30's. I think it's a hold over from Americans pronouncing Los Angeles in a Hispanic manner, with a hard G
I don't know if it's just me, but in the 50's I thought people had a terrible southern accent anywhere south of central Illinois. Now, I never even notice a southern accent unless it is almost comically severe. Movie actors in southern films way oversouthern their lines, to a laughably conspicuous degree, and it is hard to find anyone now in the south with such an exaggerated accent.
I recently located to NE Tennessee. The people around here have the same southern drawl as did their ancestors. The same goes for SW Virginia. Not sure if its a drawl, probably more of an Appalacian accent, whatever that is. I don't think that accent is going away anytime soon because children sound just like their parents & grandparents.
There is a distinct difference in southern accents depending on what area of the South a person has been raised I think the reason you don't hear a distinctive southern accent in the larger cities of the South is because those area are becoming more & more diverse. For decades people have been moving from all areas to the South for jobs.
Well, I could swear I learned some Spanish somewhere with a G, maybe it was a different accent or I heard it wrong or remembered it wrong.
Anyway.....I got interested and found this:
Quote:
Pronouncing "Los Angeles"
There was once heated debate over how to pronounce “Los Angeles.” Although the name is now commonly pronounced “Loss An-je-les,” its original Spanish pronunciation is “Loce Ahng-hail-ais.” Non-Spanish speaking Angelenos seemed to prefer the harder-sounding anglicized version. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Los Angeles Times vigorously defended the Spanish pronunciation and printed directly below its editorial page masthead, “LOS ANGELES (Loce Ahng hail ais).” When the U.S. Geographic Board recognized the anglicized version in 1934, the Times was outraged, declaring that the pronunciation made the city “sound like some brand of fruit preserve.” The newspaper further suggested that Easterners plotted to deprive the West Coast of its softer-sounding Spanish names, proposing that California would next have to tolerate such place names as "Sandy Ego," "San Joce," and "San Jokkin." In all fairness, however, the Times did not express the same distain for the prevalent pronunciation of San Pedro as “San Pee-dro” rather than the Spanish “San Pey-dro.”
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