American English - different language?
>>Technically the West Country dialect shares a lot similarities with American English, no?<<
Only in that both West Country dialects and most of NAE are rhotic; such is only coincidental, though, and otherwise NAE really is not descended from the same dialects as West Country at all. (For instance, you will practically never hear the initial voicing of historical /s/ that shows up in West Country in NAE.)
>>I would argue that American English is not a different language. Almost all Americans can speak and understand proper English well. However, when we're amongst ourselves and have no reason to speak in grammatically correct English (relaxing, not typing papers or doing work) we (I'm American) use a lot of slang in our speech to shorten everything said. For example:
"You gonna go with em?" instead of "Are you going to go with them?"<<
That is not slang at all, actually - that is just an example of some common differences between the everyday spoken language and the formal language. The former is just as grammatically correct as the latter - it just happens to be in a different register from it. (And hell, around here people speak like the former almost all of the time, even at work; it would be quite strange if people actually spoke like the latter outside of particularly formal contexts here.)
>>We have a lot of slang phrases too, such a "Born with a silver spoon in your mouth," "Brownie points," "Cream puff," and "Jump through hoops."<<
Well, yes, a lot of idiomatic phrases and like do show up in spoken NAE, but one will encounter such in practically any dialect.
I was speaking in general about North American English as a whole. There has been influence from a range of different English dialects upon NAE, particularly in the case of Scottish and Irish English influence upon certain NAE dialect groups, but as a whole NAE really reflects relatively standard southern English English circa the end of the Early New English period. As for West Country in particular, the matter is that NAE just does not have any of the distinctive features of West Country outside of rhoticity, which is more a shared conservatism than anything else. (Just read the page on West Country dialects - they are radically different from just about anything in NAE, and the few features which do show up in some NAE such as final /ɪ/ > /eɪ̯/ are probably just coincidental.)
Do you know when non-rhoticity appeared or was practiced in England before the English colonised America?
Non-rhoticity arose after the English started colonizing North America; it just happened to be transmitted from England to the more eastern parts of the colonies which actually had relatively direct contact with people coming from England, while the western parts did not become non-rhotic.
<<As for West Country in particular, the matter is that NAE just does not have any of the distinctive features of West Country outside of rhoticity, which is more a shared conservatism than anything else. (Just read the page on West Country dialects - they are radically different from just about anything in NAE, and the few features which do show up in some NAE such as final /ɪ/ > /eɪ̯/ are probably just coincidental.)>>
I would disagree with that. West Country is noticeably much closer to NAE than Hiberno-English or Scottish English, the other two major rhotic dialects in the British Isles. Here's an recording of an old speaker from Dorset, for example:
http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/personalisation/object.cfm?uid=021SED00C908S68U00007C01
Beyond mere rhoticity, there are a number of other features that this dialect clearly shares with NAE, including:
*Pronunciation of "START" vowel in a low back position [A] (as compared with [a] more common in Hiberno-English and Scottish English).
*Merger of all "NURSE" vowels to a single, centralized rhotic vowel [@'].
*"LOT" words pronounced with unrounded low-back vowel [A].
*STRUT-FOOT distinction.
*Voicing of intervocalic "t" (i.e. "bottom" becomes [bA4@m]).
To say there is a connection between West Country English and NAE is a bit misleading, however, because the truth is that MUCH of rural England had rhotic accents similar to this up until fairly recently. For instance, this old speaker for Berkshire:
http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/personalisation/object.cfm?uid=021SED00C908S23U00005C01
Or this one from West Sussex:
http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/personalisation/object.cfm?uid=021MMC900S16412U00002C01
That's, I believe, the key to where the American accent came from--when we think of "British English" Americans immediately think about the non-rhotic dialects of the cities, when much of English countryside up until very recently spoke in accents that were actually in some ways closer to what we think of as North American English.
That is essentially what I myself would say (except that I doubt the LOT thing, as it can be shown that early NAE clearly had [Q] for the LOT vowel), but all that really is is saying that West Country is similar to NAE in that it is a rhotic southern English English dialect. The matter is that there are very many aspects of West Country, though, which simply have no parallel in NAE at all aside from that. It has quite significant syntactic and morphological differences from NAE, for instance, where in comparison NAE as a whole is very close to Home Counties dialects morphologically and syntactically. Likewise, it has voicing of initial historical /s/ and /f/, which simply does not occur in NAE.
As for my mention of Irish and Scottish English, the matter is that while they differ quite a bit from NAE overall, there has been a clear transfer of features from Irish and Scottish English into NAE dialects. Probably the biggest example of such is probably Canadian Raising, which effectively is a modified version of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule which became established in Canadian NAE dialects and later northern US NAE dialects. However, various NAE dialects have more Irish or Scottish English-type features, such as the presence of "need washed" rather than "need washing" in some NAE dialects. Such is particularly true of dialects in the interior of the South and especially Newfoundland; the only question in this case is whether Newfoundland English is really NAE at all or is it an independent branch of English separate from NAE.
So the first settlers to America were from all around England?
The most interesting thing in this thread was the proximity of conservative NAE to the English of the motherland. I have always thought Jared Taylor of the New Century Foundation to be one of the most refined NAE speakers. You can hear his audio files at
www.amren.com.
American English may only be considered more "correct" than British English if you use as a yardstick the spoken Language of 17th century England. Many Americans still use formations which were widely used in England all those years ago but which fell out of use on this side of the ocean in favour of different ones. The passengers on the Mayflower took their style of English with them from Plymouth, Devon to Plymouth Rock, MA and somehow some of it has survived to this day. One such which immediately comes to mind is "gotten". Nobody uses that form in the UK any more but practically every present day American still uses it as a matter of course. Americans generally regard much of what they see here in the UK as "quaint and old fashioned" - we regard terms like "gotten" in much the same light!
It's inevitable that the two "Englishes" will diverge in various ways over time, and there have always been claims that these differences have become so marked that they can almost be considered separate Languages. Even as far back as WW2, every single one of the very many thousands of American servicemen who "invaded" every single corner of the British Ises prior to the assault on the Nazi occupied European Continent, was issued with a little booklet which not only contained assistance in coping with "the strange ways of the British people" but also a full dictionary of American English v. British English. The vast majority of these Americans had absolutely no idea of British terms and expressions and customs - I'm not too sure if they do even now, generally! :-) - and in spite of the booklets they still had either a good laugh or suffered acute embarrassment when they either committed linguistic cock ups - or were completely misunderstood by the "natives".
Now in the 21st century we are much more familiar with each other as people speaking basically the same Language, theoretically, and the Brits of today are much more used to the American version of English than our great grandparents were back in the 1940s. Conversely, I assume it's the same for many Americans now - alhough the experiences of many UK tourists to those parts of America a wee bit off the main beaten tourism track suggest otherwise. It's not that uncommon for British tourists to the United States to be told that they speak "very good English"! That would make you wonder what Language those Americans think we speak over here! How is it that some Americans are not sure, or even aware, of what Language it is people in ENGLAND speak??? You couldn't make it up, could you! :-)
<<Technically the West Country dialect shares a lot similarities with American English, no? >>
I would think so. When I hear someone from Western/Southwest Britain, they almost sound American to me (I am American). It takes a while before I catch on that they are British. This has always made me believe that American English stemmed from varieties from this area.
<<. One such which immediately comes to mind is "gotten". Nobody uses that form in the UK any more>>
"Gotten" (or sometimes "getten" in broad dialect speech) is common in much of the north of England
<<"getten">>
Wow. "getten" is even more historically "correct" (if we were to go by previous standards [--allusion to prior post]) than American/N. English "gotten" (gietan/geat/gegiEten -- get,git /gat,got/ got, gotten, and now getten!)
Sweeeet