American Grimoire

So it occurred to me…do Americans have an accent? After all, the British spawned the language of English, so isn’t their way of speaking the “correct” way? To them, do we have the accent? And I discovered…yes! To non-American English-speakers, Americans do have an accent!

Evidently the “proper” way of speaking any language is entirely cultural and chosen by government and taught via schools. In the case of America, the US at large has been pushing a Midwestern dialect dubbed the GAE dialect (General American English) for some decades now. Also, outside America, virtually all—if not all—ESL classes teach using the GAE. Despite this, dozens of cultural and regional dialects still thrive in the US and over a hundred thrive worldwide. I took the tongue-in-cheek test below and was amazed that it predicted a regional accent that encompassed my birthplace (Philadelphia Dialect) despite the fact that I grew up in the South. Also, I didn’t answer the way I normally speak, I answered “correctly,” I.E., how I spoke when I was in a professional situation. I didn’t even think I had an accent. Fun!

What American Accent Do You Have?

Regarding the GAE: why is the US (and the world) at large, using a Midwestern dialect as the English standard? Answer: TV.

The reason it’s pushed on students nowadays is courtesy of Hollywood! The Californian movie factory produced movies where most actors spoke with a Midwestern accent (because that’s what most native Californians spoke at the time). When new thespians streamed into LA with stars in their eyes, they discovered they had to talk like the preexisting stars/directors/etc to “fit in.” This Midwestern dialect spread to TV and News Broadcasting with Walter Cronkite sealing the deal. Public school teachers pointed to news anchors as the “right way” to speak English…even though they themselves may not speak with that accent, and of course I’m not sure any President has ever spoken with a GAE accent.

And so a Midwestern frontier dialect has taken over our perception of how English should be spoken. Fascinating.