Were British Accents Invented in the 1700s? A Deep Dive

In this video, I explore the idea that southeastern standard British pronunciation was 'invented' in the 1700s, to distance upper-class British people either from Americans or from working-class people. I examine phonetic evidence from the 1600s-1800s to put across the historical reality: that sound changes like R-dropping (non-rhoticity) and bath-broadening were natural, organic developments that were often stigmatised or discouraged in educated speech before they eventually became normalised.

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