Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vog Obam here with another classic episode from our
Speaker 1: archive and from our former host, Christian Sager. If you've
Speaker 1: ever watched old movies, say from the nineties or earlier,
Speaker 1: or listen to old radio plays, you may have noticed
Speaker 1: that the accents American actors used were different than what
Speaker 1: we hear today. There's a reason for that, and this
Speaker 1: episode explains it. Hey brain Stuff, it's Christian Sager here.
Speaker 1: If you have ever heard old movies or newsreels from
Speaker 1: the thirties or forties, then you've probably heard that weird
Speaker 1: old timey voice. You know, it sounds something like this.
Speaker 1: Now see here, Mr Weather's being there's no money in
Speaker 1: dog racing. The future is radio. You hear me radio?
Speaker 1: It sounds a little like a blend between American English
Speaker 1: and a form of British English. So what is this cadence? Exactly?
Speaker 1: This type of pronunciation is actually called the Transatlantic or
Speaker 1: mid Atlantic accent, and it isn't like most other accents.
Speaker 1: Instead of naturally evolving, the trans Atlantic accent was acquired.
Speaker 1: This means that people in the United States were taught
Speaker 1: to speak in this voice Historically, Transatlantic speech was the
Speaker 1: hallmark of aristocratic America and theater. In upper class boarding
Speaker 1: schools across New England, students learned the Transatlantic accent as
Speaker 1: an international norm for communication, similar to the way posh
Speaker 1: British society used received pronunciation. Essentially, that's the way the
Speaker 1: queen and aristocrats are taught to speak. It has several
Speaker 1: quasi British elements, such as a lack of roticity. This
Speaker 1: means that mid Atlantic speakers drop their rs at the
Speaker 1: end of words like winna or clea. They'll also use
Speaker 1: softer British vowels daunce instead of dance, for instance. Another
Speaker 1: thing that stands out is the emphasis on clipped sharp teas.
Speaker 1: In American English, we often pronounced the tea in words
Speaker 1: like writer or water as d's. Transatlantic speakers will hit
Speaker 1: that t like it stole something writer water. But again,
Speaker 1: this speech pattern isn't completely British, nor is it really
Speaker 1: completely American. Instead, it's a form of English that's hard
Speaker 1: to place, and that's part of why Hollywood loved it.
Speaker 1: There's also a theory that technological constraints helped mid Atlantic's popularity.
Speaker 1: According to professor J. Oberski. This nasally clipped pronunciation is
Speaker 1: a vestiage from the early days of radio Receivers had
Speaker 1: very little based technology at the time, and it was
Speaker 1: very difficult, if not impossible, to hear based tones on
Speaker 1: your home device. Now we live in an age where
Speaker 1: based technology booms from the trunks of cars all across America.
Speaker 1: So what happened to the Transatlantic accent. Well, it's no
Speaker 1: longer the common tongue of elite boarding schools. Linguist William
Speaker 1: Labov notes that mid Lantic speech fell out of favor
Speaker 1: after World War Two, as fewer teachers continued teaching the
Speaker 1: pronunciation to their students. That's one of the reasons this
Speaker 1: speech sounds so old timey to us today. When people
Speaker 1: learn it, they're usually learning it for acting purposes rather
Speaker 1: than for everyday use. However, we can still hear the
Speaker 1: effects of mid Atlantic speech in recordings of everyone from
Speaker 1: Katherine Hepburn to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and of course countless films, newsreels,
Speaker 1: and radio shows from the thirties and forties. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was written by Ben Bolan and produced by Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other topics visit
Speaker 1: how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of by
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Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.