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