Dialect Dissection: Britney Spears

It's fair to say that Britney Spears is one of the defining pop icons from the 2000s. From the moment she smashed her way into our hearts with "...Baby One More Time," she's been delivering hits and controversy. Perhaps her most distinguishing feature is her croaky voice, which has been discussed by news outlets and fan pages alike.

Most people aren't aware that her linguistic uniqueness goes beyond the rasp. Britney Spears is a veritable vocal experimenter, playing with vowels and consonants to create a different sound on each album. She's also a Southern American with a knack for switching between radio-perfect Standard English and down-home Southern inflections. Britney's work shows a keen sociolinguistic awareness of speaking a regional dialect - she knows when to let it go and when to hold back.

In this Dialect Dissection, we're going to take a closer look at Britney's work to figure out what makes her sound so distinctive - and why she does it.

• Introduction
• Southern Accent
• Britney's dialectal awareness
• Media reaction to her Southern-ness
• Ballads remain neutral?
• Creaky Voice
• Britney-isms
• Conclusion
• Works Cited

Southern Accent

Britney grew up in Kentwood, Louisiana, a rural town with a population of 2205 in the year 2000 (per the US census). Although Britney does not have the most dramatic features of a Southern accent (no 'drawl'), her spoken speech shows that she has some Southern features. Listen to how she says "two," "five," and "ten" in particular.

Tew [tʉ], three, four, fav [fav], six, seven, eight, nan [nan], tin [tɪn], [...] twenty [twɪni]

In her interviews, she often conceals these features - a fact her fans have noticed. But Britney is also able to switch between a General American-sounding accent and a Southern one. Her Southern accent becomes more pronounced when she's with her family, as can be seen in the below clip where she talks to/about her family. It's also very pronounced when she's talking to her assistant, Felicia Culotta (who also appears to be Southern). In other words, her Southern accent most appears around people she trusts.

..."I'm surprased, I'm surprised ... this is my sister, Jamie Leean..."

There's also an exchange between Britney and Felicia, where Britney teases Felicia about using a short "u" sound in "poor" (so it sounds like "poo-er." Most Americans and English English speakers have merged "pour" and "poor" so that they sound like "pore" with an "o" sound, but some Southerners still pronounce them differently. Britney is aware that using a merged vowel is more standard, and also points out the similarity to "poo." This shows that Britney is aware of how Southern English is perceived by non-Southerners and which features may be prone to mockery.

(at 26:07) Felicia: Remember we were poo-r.

Britney: She said poo-er! [laughter] It's pore!

Felicia: I said pore!

Britney: Poo-er!

Felicia: [laughter] We were pore.

Chuck Klosterman, who interviewed her for Esquire magazine, noticed how Britney was marketed on the basis of both her sexuality and her Southern-ness. He writes about the extent he believes her celebrity life has resulted in her being disconnected from a sense of normality, but also notes how Britney flips between accents when annoyed. If she mostly uses her Southern accent in the company of people she trusts, like her family and her personal assistant, perhaps her switching away from it is a revocation of that intimacy in an interview.

After I [interviewed Spears for Esquire], people kept asking me, ‘What is she really like?’ My answer was usually, ‘I don’t know, and I don’t think she does, either.’ […]

Her management team directed so much emphasis toward turning her into an unsophisticated semi-redneck that she now has no idea what is normal what is marketing. [...]

That said, I did notice that her Southern accent always seemed to mysteriously disappear whenever she became annoyed with my questions. Maybe she’s the blond Machiavelli.”

Why might Britney switch so often between varieties, and why does she use General American so often that fans aren't even aware that she has a Southern accent? Southern accents in the United States have a complicated perception. They can be considered 'uneducated' or 'cute', but rarely 'normal.' By mostly staying in a General American accent, Britney can avoid the harsh stereotyping that Southern accents are subject to. From Slade and Narro (2002):

On the other hand, the shocking actions of Britney Spears often put the South in a negative light. From the small town of Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears has portrayed the “white trash” inferiority Portwood-Stacer examines - marketing herself “with a kind of trashy sexuality, enacted in a celebrity culture of high fashion and unfathomable wealth.” In the study, Portwood-Stacer notes in her short and cataclysmic show with Kevin Federline that depicted their lives as a young, famous and married couple, Spears often falls from her “cutesy Southern accent into a twangy Louisiana drawl.” Cute? Twangy? Would successful professionals like their speech labeled as cute or twangy? Even Southerners question their speech as being accepted.

If Britney is particular about who gets to hear her Southern accent, her music has plenty of Southern features. This isn't unusual, since the features of Southern English overlap with African American Vernacular English, and both Southern and AAV English have been heavily imitated in popular music. But Britney likes to exaggerate these features. Combined with her light, sweet tone, her use of Southern features ends up creating a definitive sound for her.

If you would like to skip the in-depth audio samples and go straight to the discussion, click here to get to the good stuff.

• Pin-pen merger: Most English dialects differentiate the the vowels in 'dress' [ɛ] and 'kit' [ɪ] when they appear before 'n' and 'm'. This means 'pin' /pɪn/ 🔊 and 'pen' /pɛn/ 🔊 sound different. In Southern accents, they sound the same, so 'pen' and 'pin' both sound like 'pin' ([pɪn]), and 'hem' and 'him' both sound like 'him' ([hɪm]) (Source). Britney often uses the merged vowel here, as she does in speech. However, she does not always merge them - she uses both "spind" and "spend" in her song "Thinking About You."
  • “I spind [spɪnd] my days ... and for us there is no ind [ɪnd] in sight ... each day that I spend [spɛnd] around you" - Thinking about you, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • “This letter that I’ve sint [sɪnt] a hundred times” - Email My Heart, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • "Now I hold him at attintion [ətɪnʃən] cuz new Britney's on a mission" - Toy Soldiers, Blackout (2007)
• GOOSE-fronting. /u/ 🔊 → [ʉ] 🔊 : Normally for the long 'oo' vowel (in goose or true), the tongue is in the back: [u]. Southern accents move the tongue forward in the mouth so it sounds kind of like 'ew' [ʉ] (Source). Britney's fronted 'oo' vowel is one of her most imitated characteristics.
  • "The reason I breathe is yew [jʉ]" - ...Baby One More Time, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • “I'm a slave for yew [jʉ]” - Slave 4 U, Britney (2003)
  • “If you want me to believe it's trew [trʉ]” - Don’t let me be the last to know, Oops! ... I Did It Again (2000)
  • "But no way I'm never gonna fall for yew [jʉ] ... never yew [jʉ], baby" - Womanizer, Circus (2008)
• GOAT-centering. The 'oh' vowel in words like 'know' and 'go' is usually pronounced as [oʊ], with the first half of it starting in the back of the mouth. Modern Southern accents pronounce it [əʊ], with the first half starting in the center of the mouth. This is another characteristic Britney feature. One commenter on New Britneyology says "I always found the way she said/sang O very distinctive and Britneyish," and poster Karenannanina comes at it from a singing perspective: "[in her first album] we get early glimpses of sounds she has always had problems with and has never been able to 'sing out'. These are the 'o' sounds in 'supposed' and 'know.'" (Source)
  • "How was I supposed to know [nəʊ]" - ...Baby One More Time, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • “Move slow [sləʊ]” - Sometimes, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • “Oh, but Cinderella's got to go [gəʊ]” - Cinderella, Britney (2001)
  • "I'm simply sick and tired of theuse [ðəʊz]" - Toy Soldiers, Blackout (2007)
• COT-CAUGHT distinction - while most young Americans (especially Californians) rhyme "cot" and "caught" [kɑt]. Britney Spears does not. She distinguishes it by having words like CAUGHT with an o-like vowel like in "core," resulting in [kɔt]. (Britney sometimes uses the merger, perhaps to sound more Californian.)
  • “The day we cried, Autumn [ɔɾəm] goodbye” - Autumn Goodbye, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • "Life doesn't al-ways [ɔlweɪz] go my way" - Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman, Britney (2001)
  • "You had caught [kɔt] my eye and I wanted" - (I Got That) Boom Boom, In The Zone (2003)
  • "Even when we're up against the wall [wɔl] - "Gimme More", Blackout (2007)
• LOT-CLOTH split - In most varieties of English English and American English, "on" and "Don" have the same vowel. In Southern English, however, "on" can have the same vowel as "door" or "dawn," resulting in [ɔn]. Britney uses this o-like vowel in words like "on" and "strong." Fans have also noticed this as a Britney pronunciation, but they have not connected it to Southern accents before.
  • "And the beat goes ohn [ɔn]" - The Beat Goes On, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • "What I like, what I wont [wɔnt] and what I don't" - Overprotected, Britney (2001)
  • "Please forgive me if I'm coming on too strong [strɔŋ] ... they're playin' my favorite song [sɔŋ]" - Hold It Against Me, Femme Fatale (2011)
  • "I got what you wont [wɔnt] - What You Need, Glory (2016)
• FACE-lowering. In most American accents, words like 'baby' and 'say' are pronounced with a vowel that's high in the front of the mouth, [eɪ]. Southern accents use a vowel that's lower down in the mouth, resulting in [ɛɪ]. No imitation of "oh baby baby" is complete without some FACE-lowering.
  • "Oh baby baby [bɛɪbɪ]" - ...Baby One More Time, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • "I'm like a fire, bottle busting in your face [fɛɪs]" - Toy Soldier, Blackout (2008)
  • "Oh bayby bayby bayby [bɛɪbɪ]" - If U Seek Amy, Circus (2009)
• Light l/dark l contrast - many varieties of American English use a dark l [ɫ] in all positions, with the back of the tongue raised towards the back of the mouth. A light l [l], in contrast, is made by gently tapping the tip of the tongue against the front of the mouth without raising the back of the tongue. Southern American English uses a light [l] at the beginning of syllables and a dark [ɫ] at the end of syllables.
  • "I still believe [bɪliv]" - ...Baby One More Time, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • "She's so lucky [laki]" - Lucky, Oops! ...I Did It Again (2000)
  • "Not this time because I realize [riəlaɪz]" - Lonely, Britney (2001)
• STRUT-fronting. /ʌ/ 🔊 → [ɜ] 🔊 : The 'uh' vowel as in bug, luck, strut, etc., sounds like [ɜ] or [ə], a sound similar to British 'er'. It is higher in the mouth (Source).
  • "Before we rurn [rɜn]" - One Kiss From You, Oops! ...I Did It Again (2000)
  • "I lurv [lɜv] rock and roll" - I Love Rock and Roll, Britney (2001)
  • "I’ve had enurf [ɪnɜf]” - Cinderella, Britney (2001)
• FEEL-FILL merger. This results in the sound 'eel' /il/ being pronounced as 'ill' [ɪl], so that "feel" [fil] 🔊 ends up sounding exactly like "fill" [fɪl] 🔊. Britney pronounces "feel" not with the vowel "ee", but as "fill," with the vowel sound "ih".
  • "Fillins [fɪlɪns]" - When Your Eyes Say It, Oops! ...I Did It Again (2000)
  • "Why am I so rill [rɪl]" - My Prerogative, Greatest Hits: My Prerogative (2004)
  • “My heart, it feels [fɪlz] so safe, You are my melody” - That's Where You Take Me, Britney (2001)
• MARRY-MERRY distinction. Britney pronounces words like "paradise" with the vowel of "mat" [mæt], resulting in something like "maarry" [mæri] 🔊. Meanwhile words like "merry" and "fairy" are pronounced with the vowel of "met" [mɛt], resulting in "meh-ri" [mɛri] 🔊. Most Americans do not distinguish between -arry/-erry words and pronounce them the same, as -erry. Meanwhile, British English speakers have a three way distinction between MARRY, MERRY, and MARY - one more distinction than Britney.
  • “From the ashes rise a glimpse of paradise [pærədaɪs]" - When I found you, Britney (2001)
  • “I don't believe in fairy [fɛri] tales” - Cinderella, Britney (2001)
  • “From the first kisses to the very [vɛri] last rose” - From the Bottom of my Broken Heart, ...Baby One More Time (1999)

Britney's Dialectal Awareness

Britney Spears would not be the first singer to use a more Southern/African-American Vernacular influenced dialect in her sung speech while using a different accent when speaking. What is interesting is that it seems Britney was not always so comfortable using Southern American English in her music. As an example, let's look at aɪ-monophthongization, which is where vowels like "I" start sounding more like "ah." It is one of the most distinctive parts of Southern English. Britney's first album, ...Baby One More Time, has a remarkably low usage of aɪ-monophthongization. The blogger Karenannanina notices as such:

In fact, contrary to many assumptions – and I have been as guilty as anybody – at the start of her career her singing was rather mannered, with self-consciously “correct” pronunciation. On the BOMT album, the “i” sounds as in “time” and “sign”, are sung open-mouthed and open-throated and not rendered as “tahm” and “sahn”. The way she delivers “time” and “find” in From the bottom of my broken heart is quite startling.

You can hear the exaggerated "ai" diphthong in the following clip. There is barely any focus on the "a" part and instead a lot of stress on the "i" part. It sounds almost purposefully constructed to be the opposite of the Southern "ah."

Britney seems to be able to switch between a Southern and a General American accent, so she is bi-accent-al. Moreover, she seems aware of the stigmatization of Southern accents. Her decision to not use aɪ-monophthongization on her first album could be to avoid sounding "uneducated" or "low class."

Note that this doesn't really apply to the rest of the Southern features that she uses. As an anecdote, most people I've spoken to associate a Southern accent with a 'drawl' or with aɪ-monopthongization. Features like the FEEL-FILL merger, the DON-DAWN distinction, and GOAT centering tend to go unnoticed. A lot of Britney fans don't even relate GOAT centering to Southernness but as a "Britneyish" mode of singing." See the following quotes from "New Britneyology", which relates GOAT-centering and the DON-DAWN distinction to a failure to "sing out." A fan, Sucker Pnch, also considers the GOAT-centering to be a Britney feature:

On the other hand, we get early glimpses of sounds she has always had problems with and has never been able to “sing out”. These are the “o” sounds in “supposed” and “know”, and even more so in “born”, “on”, “wrong” and “along”, which have always been Britney’s biggest weakness. - Karen Annanina

I always found the way she said/sang O very distinctive and Britneyish - Sucker Pnch

Britney therefore shows interesting dialectal awareness on her album where she uses plenty of common Southern features, except for the most well known one. Once her status as a star was assured, she seemed comfortable using aɪ-monophthongization freely on her songs. She abandons her efforts to sound "neutral" on Oops! ...I Did It Again and beyond.

The media reaction to her Southern-ness

That a Southerner might feel self conscious using aɪ-monophthongization is curious when you consider the number of singers who use aɪ-monophthongization freely such as the Beatles, Grand Funk Railroad, and Iggy Azalea. They can imitate speakers of aɪ-monophthongizing dialects (in other words, African Americans who speak AAVE and working class White Southerners) and reap the benefits of sounding "soulful" and "authentic." Meanwhile, AAVE speakers and speakers of Southern English are aware of how stigmatized this feature is.

Plenty of African-Americans and white Southerners use the feature in their music anyway, as can be seen in genres like the blues, country music, r&b, Southern rock, and hip-hop. But those wanting to seem more 'neutral' may suppress it because, unlike Northern American and English speakers, they are scrutinized more harshly and subject to class and race-based attacks. Detractors of Britney often mock her by using slurs and stereotypes against working class whites:

"I'm convinced she's an inbred hick," writes one Britney-hater on an Internet chat site, while another declares, "Well, what can you expect from her parents? (in a southern Hick accent) 'Gosh golly, ma dawters so a purrrty (Isa bees fangkin' cousin Henry for the inbred genes) . . . HYuk Hyuk! *snort*!'" "Britney Spears," writes one who intends to succinctly dismiss the whole matter, "herself is from Louisiana, she is a hillbilly." (Campbell 2001)

Cambell's 2001 paper "I'm Just a Louisiana Girl: The Southern World of Britney Spears" deals at length with Britney's Southern identity and how both her marketing team and the press used it to different ends. At the beginning of her career, when she was marketed as a sweet, young girl (who was frequently asked about her virginity), she was able to portray herself as a "Southern belle." But as her image became raunchier and more sexualized in an adult way, she was no longer able to maintain that image and she was instead increasingly castigated for being "white trash." Is it a coincidence that her more sexualized image in "Oops! ...I Did It Again" and "Britney" coincided with her increasing usage of Southern features? (It's also worth noting that this is the portion of her career when Britney began working with more African-American producers and music, a predecessor to singers like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift using AAVE for their 'edgy' periods.)

The tabloids had a field day with this. Certain parodies of Britney Spears honed in on the "Southern" part. Mad TV liked drawing on the "stupid Southerner" stereotype. The "I'm-a wiser" skit employed an exaggerated Southern accent (as seen below) while the "My Predicament" skit simply had the lyric "I'm gonna flash with all this cash - I cannot hide, that I was born white trash."

"Look I'm naked in the sauna! And I still can't really sing, bay-by ... a happy end for this white trash cinderella ... my hair's red now, y'all! ...And leave my bray-n and bay-bies at the door... look at y'all just pretend that I'm the girl from 'oops, I did it agin!' ... Hey y'all, did you like my sawng? I'm nay-kid!

Ballads remain neutral

Another curious aspect of Britney's dialectal awareness is how she treats ballads or otherwise 'sentimental' songs. She uses a lot of exaggerated features on fun songs, be they upbeat or slinky. But she tones the features down on her ballads, where she strives to sound more General American. Think about how the ballad "From The Bottom of my Broken Heart" had an exaggerated "ai" diphthong, sounding almost like a parody of General American.

I'll mention my subjective experience here - singers are more likely to use an accent perceived as neutral on ballads than on other types of songs. Perhaps it's the same way there's a distinction between how the use of accents in motion picture is associated with comedy, while supposedly 'serious' actors in dramas don't do accents. The idea is that the use of regional accents would detract from the emotional weight of the work (or that accents are too high risk to imitate and can easily end up sounding silly or offensively bad). A similar logic seems to be at work in music, where singers strive to sound more 'neutral' on ballads. Despite this, Britney still uses creaky voice on ballads, which shows that she considers it to be a vocal technique as opposed to part of an accent or dialect.

Creaky voice

Britney did not invent creaky voice. Even clear-voiced clean-cut singers like Karen Carpenter from the 70s have been using creaky voice selectively. Karen Carpenter likes using creaky voice to suggest a sort of emotional intimacy with the listener. (We'll use a tilde ~ to mark creaky voice in this section.)

"~Or am I really lying here..." - I Just Fall In Love Again, Carpenters

Britney took creaky voice to a new level, using it liberally throughout songs. When used on her ballads, the creaky voice suggested the same kind of vulnerability that Karen Carpenter used decades before. But her creaky voice also made helped her with a more sensual sound - Rami Yacoub, co-producer of the album ...Baby, One More Time, said "With N' Sync and the Backstreet Boys, we had to push for that mid-nasal voice. When Britney did that, she got this kind of raspy, sexy voice." While creaky voice is often maligned nowadays, Britney's singing style was clearly enormously successful considering the amount of records she sold and imitators she spawned.

Britney's use of creaky voice is neither random nor formulaic - it is intentional and situationally-dependent. She tends to use creaky voice either to lead into a word (as in "E-Mail My Heart" and "Oops! I Did It Again"), or to finish a word on a lighter note (as in "Gimme More"). The creaky voice works both on ballady songs like "E-Mail My Heart" and contemporary pop like "Oops! I Did It Again." Her use of creaky voice on "Oops! I Did It Again" is especially nuanced as she goes from creaky voice to modal voice on the phrase "oh baby," back into creaky voice to finish it off, and then fades back into the last "oh." Try it out for yourself - slipping in and out of creaky voice smoothly is tougher than it seems.

"~Oh baby baby, ~I shouldn't have let you go" - ...Baby One More Time, ...Baby One More Time (1999)

“~I can see you ~in my mind” - E-Mail My Heart, ...Baby One More Time (1999)

"But to lose ~all my senses, ~that~ is just so typically me, ~oh, Baby~, ~oh” - Oops! ...I Did It Again, Oops! ...I Did It Again (2000)

"Cameras are flashing while we’re~ dirty dancing" - Gimme More, Blackout (2007)

She can also use creaky voice for an entire phrase, as in "Me Against the Music," to add sonic texture to a phrase - note that the example on "Me Against the Music" is layered under a melodic phrase.

"All the people in this crowd grab a partner take it down" - Me Against the Music, In the Zone (2003)

Britney-isms and other Miscellanea

I mentioned in the "Creaky Voice" section around three sentences ago that Britney's use of creaky voice is "neither random nor formulaic - it is intentional and situationally-dependent." The same applies generally to her approach to each track. She noticeably likes experimenting with different voices. She may start using a feature on one track and then use its opposite on the next one. Some are found just on one album, while others seem to be favorites she likes using often ("babay").

These features aren't necessarily from copying an accent. They're more like an actor trying different approaches to the same character. The result is that listening to a Britney performance on one album may sound different from a Britney performance on another, despite her ultimately staying in a relatively conservative vocal range and using pitch-correction software in later albums.

One of the fun things about listening to the discography for this project was hearing Britney use all sorts of creative features. From the point of view of a researcher, I would be frustrated that she only used a feature a handful of times. But from the point of view of a listener, I found her playfulness and creativity delightful. It goes to show that you don't have to have a five-octave vocal range to be an engaging vocalist. Experimenting and having fun can be just as effective in connecting with listeners.

• HAPPY-breaking. The 'ee' sound at the end of a word becomes 'ey'. Although Britney is not the first singer to use this, she has become one of the codifiers of this accent trope by using it heavily in the 90s and 2000s.
  • "You can't take your pretty eyes away from may [meɪ]" - Sometimes, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • "Finallay [faɪnəleɪ] ... what we had is historay [hɪstoreɪ]" - Don't Go Knocking On My Door, Oops! ...I Did It Again (2000)
  • "You want a piece of may [meɪ]" - Piece of Me, Blackout (2007)
  • "I might be a little hazay [hæɪzæɪ]" - Hold It Against Me, Femme Fatale (2011)
• NURSE/SQUARE lowering. Britney often uses a variable vowel in words with an r-colored vowel.
  • "I will be thar [ðær] " - I Will be There, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • "Early marnin' [manɪn] she wakes up" - Lucky, Oops! ...I Did It Again (2000)
  • "Like them city boys from New Yark [jɑk] ‘ - Toy Soldier, Blackout (2007)
• L-vocalization. This is when the 'l' at the end of a word sounds more like a 'w', so "well" sounds like "wew.'
  • "I kiw [kiw] the lights" - Kill The Lights, Circus (2008)
  • "I used to be your girlfriend and I know I did it wew [wæw]" - Cinderella, Britney (2001)
• [a] diphthongs becomes centered. This is another one that sounds similar to a technique pop singers use because it is easier to 'sing on' the schwa vowel. She uses this one mostly on her first album "...Baby One More Time." To my ear, it sounds like she's trying to make her voice sound deeper and more "adult."
  • "And say our love will never duh-ee [dəi] and I, I know you're uh-ut [əʊt] there" - Email My Heart, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • “A clever way to get ba-uh-ee [baəi]” - Soda Pop, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • “Taking time is what love's all aba-uh-ut [əbaəʊt]” - From the bottom of my broken heart, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • “Hold you ta-uh-it [taəit]” 3:09 - From the bottom of my broken heart, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
• KIT and FLEECE changing places. On Blackout, Britney pronounces 'eek' as 'ick' on words like 'freak' and 'sneak.' I haven't encountered this pronunciation on other Britney albums, so it seems like she was playing with language on this album. Meanwhile on Circus, you have the opposite: she pronounces 'ill' with a long 'ee' vowel.
  • "Frick show, frick show [frɪk]" - Freakshow, Blackout (2007)
  • "Or snick [snɪk] away to the Philippines" - Piece of Me, Blackout (2007)
  • "Are you steal [stil] in my bed?" - Shattered Glass, Circus (2008)
  • "I kiw [kiw] the lights" - Kill The Lights, Circus (2008)
• DRESS-raising. Words like 'dress' are pronounced with a higher vowel. Although this is also a feature of Southern English, I have included it here because it subjectively sounds similar to a technique singers use where they raise mid-low vowels to mid-high vowels to 'sound better.'
  • "My loneline-ss [loʊnlines] is killing me" - ...Baby One More Time, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • “You used to say that I was spe-cial [speʃəl]” - What u see (is what u get), Oops! ...I Did It Again (2000)
  • "But to lose all my se-nse-s [sensez]" - Oops! ... I Did It Again, Oops! ...I Did It Again (2000)
  • "I want it more than e-ver [evə] now" - Toy Soldier, Blackout (2007)
• Monophthongs. These might be copped from Caribbean English, and there are many Caribbean English speakers in r&b and hip-hop. Britney has been influenced by r&b and hip-hop before, so this is likely the source.
  • "Don’t you kno [no] that you’re toxic" - Toxic, In The Zone (2003)
  • "o [o] you’re a womanizer, baby" - Womanizer, Circus (2007)
  • "But you kno [no] i’m just your type" - Hold It Against Me, Femme Fatale (2011)
• Opposite to the above, Britney sometimes pronounces DRESS vowels lower than normal so that they approach the TRAP vowel. This sounds similar to the California Shift. Britney has imitated a 'bratty' Valley Girl in her music before, which illustrates her comfort with borrowing from this dialect.
  • "I used to be your girlfriend and I know I did it wæl [wæw]" - Cinderella, Britney (2001)
  • "It's not the way I planned et [ɛt]" - ...Baby One More Time, ...Baby One More Time (1999)
  • "Sink or swem [swɛm]" - When I Found You, Britney (2001)

Conclusion

The rise and fall of one of the twenty-first century's musical icons had everyone saying "gimme more." Every aspect of Britney's life was scrutinized. When she uses a British accent, it's noted. Fans were shocked to find out that a number of vocals on Britney Jean seemed to come from her backup singer. Her use of creaky voice and otherwise non-standard vowel space made her the subject of derision and imitation.

We can also see the consequences of failing to stay inside an approved box. Because Britney wanted to expand beyond the 'sweet little girl' angle and explore more sexual themes, both the media and the general public felt free to rip her apart and mock her origins. It does not matter how neutral she sounded on her first album - they were more than happy to call her a hick all the same. Britney may have been rich, but the attacks themselves were classist. As we've discussed in other articles, nobody should have to be mocked for the way they speak or where they are from. Britney may have had problematic behaviors, but mocking her origins does nothing but reinforced prejudiced attitudes towards Southerners.

Despite the controversy, she still put out some great pop records. Britney has never truly been duplicated, though many a record label has tried. Her influence is still felt throughout the industry as the archetype of the young pop star gone awry. But even in her dark moments, her records remained full of a playful approach to language and music. Britney cultivated a recognizable style not by slavishly following the Standard, but by playing at the margins of it. She had no qualms about using a pronunciation for one album and abandoning it the next - while her imitators were still copying her creaky voice and "oh" vowels, she was experimenting with "snicking" to the Philippines.

This article only scratches the surface of Britney's unique musico-lect. If you like Britney Spears and know just a little linguistics, you can expand on some of the phenomena discussed above. The New Britneyology post shows how valuable laymen approaches to music and linguistics can be. There's still a lot to cover that I just can't squeeze into this article without it becoming (even) longer. I hope there will be some more writing on this in the future from fans.

Works Cited

• Annanina, Karen. 2012. Britney: her accent, pronunciation and enunciation. New Britneyology (fansite).
• Bronson, Fred (2003). The Billboard book of number 1 hits. Billboard Books. p. 377
• Campbell, Gavin James. 2001. "I'm Just a Louisiana Girl": The Southern World of Britney Spears. Chapel Hill: Southern Cultures
• Doolittle, Leslie. 1999. Britney Spears For Real. Sun Sentinel (newspaper).
• Klosterman, Chuck. 2010. Bending Spoons with Britney Spears: An Essay from Chuck Klosterman IV
• Slade, Alison & Narro, Amber J. 2012. Mediated Images of the South: The Portrayal of Dixie in Popular Culture.
• Smit, Christopher R. 2011. The Exile of Britney Spears: A Tale of 21st Century Consumption
• Where Is Her Country Accent. Thread on Breathe Heavy (fan forum).

Dialect Dissection: Founding Fathers

"What did the Founding Fathers sound like?" Plenty of Americans have Googled this question, and there have been more than a few attempts to explain what they sounded like to a general audience. However, these articles are usually of limited scope, pointing out only a handful of features, such as that Colonial English pronounced all its "r"s and therefore it sounded more like American English than British English. I can't blame them for not going more into detail. After all, Colonial English is more than two-hundred years old, and it's hard to document all of that when you have a strict deadline and word count. Listening to "Hamilton" and "1776," I found myself wondering - what did the Founding Fathers sound like?

Much to my surprise, it's very difficult to find anything on the English of the 18th century! Perhaps it's because all the dramatic changes already happened around two centuries earlier and the modern dialectal changes only really become traceable a century afterward (Beal 2002). Due to my difficulty finding a straightforward explanation of Colonial American English, I conducted some research and gathered it all together here for your reading pleasure. As far as I am aware, this is the only non-paywalled article that discusses Colonial American English in depth and with a general audience in mind.

Sources Used

The way this article is organized is as follows: I will describe a difference between Colonial American English (CE) and Modern General American English (GA). I will then either show you an example (if available) or give you a citation. The examples come from Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and (in exactly one instance) John Jay - these men are commonly considered to be "The Founding Fathers" of the United States. An example from the poet Phyllis Wheatley is also used as a supplement. All the citations in parentheses can be found in full at the bottom of the article; links to the texts have been provided where possible.

Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet is one of the most important sources used here. Dissatisfied with the discrepancy between English spelling and pronunciation, he came up with a spelling - or orthography - that purported to represent speech as accurately as possible. There are no silent letters. New symbols were added for sounds. The values of old letters were changed. Some letters were removed altogether! His orthography is thus more predictable compared to our orthography. In his writings, he both described the value of each letter and gave samples of writing in the alphabet; this includes poetry and a letter exchange between him and a pupil of his. There are some minor inconsistencies between the poems and the letter exchange, but for the most part the alphabet is consistent. His alphabet was not used outside of his own writings. When quoting Franklin's writings in the phonetic alphabet, I will put his phonetic alphabet on the left and the modern orthography on the right.

Note that I did not describe every possible difference here. English in the 1700s was very diverse, and I am presenting a simplified picture here when the truth is that there were likely multiple competing forms at a time! Moreover, there are so many differences between Colonial American English and modern General American that this could easily become a fifteen page document if I described each and every one. This is not intended to be the most comprehensive source on Colonial American English - such a project would be beyond the scope of this blog and would require years of research, and this post has already been more than a year in the making! Instead, consider this a sampler, strongly influenced by Benjamin Franklin, of what a speaker of English might have sounded like had they lived in Colonial America from 1700 to 1750.

Table of Contents

• Sounds (Phonetics and Phonology)
• Consonants
• Wine-Whine distinction
• T-flapping hadn't occurred
• Value of /r/ sound
• Yod-dropping
• Vowels
• /e/ and /o/ monophthongs
• LOT-unrounding
• /ɑ/ sound
• Unrounded /wa/
• /əi/ vowel
• /aʊ/ as /ɔu/
• LINE-LOIN merger?
• SQUARE vowel
• /ærV/
• CURE vowels
• HORSE-HOARSE distinction
• Lax HAPPY vowel
• Example Audio
• Regional Differences
• New England
• The South
• Words: Morphology, Lexicon, Spelling
• Negation without Do-Support
• Non-standard Verb Forms
• V2 Word Order
• Passive Ditransitive
• Subject-to-Object Raising
• Unergatives
• Subjunctive
• Lexical Items
• Spelling
• Conclusion

Sounds (Phonetics and Phonology)

Consonants

Colonial English Consonants
	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m		n			ŋ
Stop/Plosive	p b		t d			k g
Affricate				tʃ dʒ
Fricative	f v	θ ð	s z	ʃ ʒ			h
Approximant			l		j	ʍ w
Trill			r

Let's start with something simple - consonants. One of the remarkable traits about English is that the consonant inventory does not seem to have changed radically over time. Words may change, and vowels certainly will, but the actual list of consonants is not dramatically different between dialects, or even over time. Overall, the consonant inventory of Colonial American English is not too different from the consonant inventory of modern American English. Some of the more notable differences are elaborated on below.

Wine-Whine distinction

Words spelled with used to be pronounced differently in English from words spelled with . For example, "whine" was pronounced with a sort of 'h' sound at the beginning, resulting in /hwaɪn/. This means it was different from "wine," which was just /waɪn/. This distinction has been disappearing over the last hundred years, with only a few English dialects preserving it today. Most English speakers pronounce "wine" and "whine" as /waɪn/. In Colonial English, the distinction was robust, as evidenced by Franklin's spelling:

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
So huen sɥm Endիel, bɥi divիin kcɩmand,	So when some angel, by divine command
Uiⱨ rɥiziŋ tempests իeeks e gilti Land;	With rising tempests shakes a guilty land

Notice that Benjamin Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet gives different transcriptions for "when" and "with". "When" is "hwen", which suggests that 'wh' was still preserved.

T-flapping hadn't occurred

T-flapping (pronouncing the "t" in words like "kitty" as a flap sound, [ɾ]), does not appear to have started yet. This one is more proof by absence of evidence, as none of the contemporary sources of the 18th century I found described t-flapping. By the early 20th century we already have t-flapping in American English, so it must have been present during the 19th century, but I have not found any evidence that t-flapping happened in Colonial American English. Wells implies that t-flapping is a post-1750 phenomenon, saying that up until 1750, American and British English were more or less similar, and that after that point began the now-distinctive differences between the two to develop. He lists “Tapping and T Voicing” under “Some American innovations” and after “The Great Divide” (1982).

Value of /r/ sound

The 'r' sound is contentious. Benjamin Franklin describes the 'r' as alveolar and “vibrating”. Unlike New York English and most Southern England varieties, Colonial American English was generally rhotic - 'r's after vowels were pronounced (though see the “Regional Variations” section below to see how non-rhotic varieties existed even then). However, we don't know what this post-vocalic 'r' sounded like. In General American today, 'r' after a vowel is an r-colored vowel, but in Scottish English, it's a flap or a trill. It's possible the sound was in transition so that you would have heard both.

Per Beal, the trilled version of /r/ still existed in the 18th century, but already a weakening had begun to a continuant in the preconsonantal and final positions. (Beal 2002 p163-164)

Yod-dropping

Words like 'due' (/dju/), 'Tuesday' (/tjuzdeɪ/), and 'new' (/nju/) used to be pronounced with a 'y' sound, or "yod." Most American dialects nowadays pronounce these words without the yod, resulting in "do" /du/, "toosday" /tuzdeɪ/, and "noo" /nu/ (Krapp 155). Curiously, Benjamin Franklin's transcription of 'new' would be pronounced "noo" [nu], showing that the loss of this 'y' sound was already beginning.

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
And e nu hev’n in its feer Bɥzɥm իoz.	And a new heaven in its fair bosom shows.

Vowels

Colonial English Vowels
	Front		Central	Back
	Lax	Tense		Lax	Tense
Close	ɪ	i		ʊ	u
Close-mid		e	ə		o
Open-mid	ɛ			ʌ	ɔ
Open	æ			ɒ
Diphthongs	əɪ əʊ

Now it's getting interesting. Whereas the consonants remained mostly similar, the vowels changed quite a bit compared to General American. Vowels have been prone to mutation throughout the history of the English language, and it's no surprise to see that modern American vowels have gone through a lot of change from their colonial forebears. A lot of the differences between vowels aren't just a matter of substitution - some vowels are simply missing compared to General American, and some words had different vowels in them that Americans don't really distinguish today.

Here are some further comparisons of Colonial English (CE) vowels with British Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA). The word on the left is an example word, and the sounds say the vowel that will be used in the word depending on the dialect.

Full Monophthongs
Lexical Set	RP	GA	CA
TRAP	æ
BATH	ɑː	æ	æ
PALM		ɑ
LOT	ɒ		ɒ
CLOTH		ɔ,ɑ	ɔ? ɒ?
THOUGHT	ɔ:		ɔ
KIT	ɪ
DRESS	e	ɛ	ɛ
STRUT	ʌ
FOOT	ʊ

Potential Diphthongs
Lexical Set	RP	GA	CA
FACE	eɪ		e
GOAT	əʊ	oʊ	o
FLEECE	i:	i	i
GOOSE	u:	u	u

Full dipthongs
Lexical Set	RP	GA	CA
PRICE	aɪ		əɪ
CHOICE	ɔɪ
MOUTH	aʊ		əʊ

Pre-R Vowels
Lexical Set	RP	GA	CA
NURSE	ɜː(r)	ɜr	ɜr?
START	ɑː(r)	ɑr	ær
NORTH	ɔː(r)	ɔr	ɔr
FORCE			or
NEAR	ɪə(r)	ɪr	ɪr
SQUARE	eə(r)	ɛr	er
CURE	ʊə(r),ɔː(r)	ʊr,ɔr	ʊr

Reduced Vowels
Lexical Set	RP	GA	CA
COMMA	ə
LETTER	ə(r)	ər	ər
HAPPY	i		ɪ

All information here is supplemented by the evolution of English vowels throughout English language history.

/e/ and /o/ monophthongs

The vowels in "day" ([deɪ]) and "doe" ([doʊ]) are diphthongs in General American - they are composed of two sounds, gliding smoothly from the first to the second. This was not so in Colonial English, where these were "pure" vowels, or monophthongs (Beal 2002:97). To get the impression, imagine that the final element of the diphthongs in "day" and "doe" were chopped off. This would give us [de] and [do]. .

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
So ˇⱨi piur limpid striim, huen fcɩul uiⱨ steens	So the pure and limpid stream, when foul with stains
[...] Riflekts iitի flcɩur ˇⱨat cɩn its bcɩrdɥr groz,	[...] Reflects each flower that on its border grows

Benjamin Franklin places and with the rest of the monophthongs. His description of these vowels does not mention any change in the tongue position while making the vowels, and his diphthongs are made with two different vowel letters. (Note that the use of "long/double vowels" is inconsistent in Franklin's orthography.)

o – the first vowel naturally, and deepest sound; requires only to open the mouth, and breathe through it.
cɩ - the next requiring the mouth opened a little, or hollower
a – the next, a little more.
e – The next requires the Tongue to be a little more elevated.

LOT-unrounding

In modern American English, words like "lot," "cot," "odd," "Ron," "bother," etc. have the same vowel as words like "spa," "palm," and "father:" /ɑ/ . This was not the case in Colonial American English, where words like "lot," "cot," "odd," etc. had a vowel that was made with rounded lips: /ɒ/. To try making it yourself, keep your lips round while saying 'spa'.

Words in the second set, such as "spa," "palm," "father", etc. had a different vowel entirely. This means 'father' and 'bother' wouldn't have rhymed! Most dialects of England still preserve this distinction, while old Boston and very old New York dialects are the only American dialects that pronounce them differently.

Krapp (141:144) suggests that turning /ɒ/ into /ɑ/, a process called LOT-unrounding, had already begun by the 18th century, though it was not common and was prescribed against.

We can see an example of this in Franklin's text. Franklin has his vowels in “short/long” pairs. “John” and “folly” have the “short” version of “awl” and “ball.”

Webster says “a in fall has its short sound in folly."

/ɑ/ sound

So what sound did they use in the second set of words above? The broad 'ah' /ɑ/ sound in words like "spa," "palm," "father", etc. does not appear to have existed yet (Grandgent 1899)! Franklin does not dedicate a sound to it in his alphabet, and uses the same symbol for "arm" that he does for "hat." This suggests that all these words had /æ/. This means "arm" would have sounded like [ærm] or [arm] (Krapp :50). Krapp notes that the broad 'ah' /ɑ/ sound was coming into existence and possibly existed as a variant at the time. This means that 'palm' and 'Pam' would have sounded the same in Colonial American English. By the mid 1700s, the /ɑ/ vowels appears to have finally appeared (Grandgent 1899, Wells 1982).

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
Kalm and siriin hi drɥivs ˇⱨi feuriիs blast;	Calm and serene he drives the furious blast.

Notice how Franklin uses same vowel for "calm" and "blast."

Unrounded /wa/

Consonants sometimes influence vowels. For example, in modern English, 'war' sounds like 'wore' [wɔr] . Historically, it wasn't always that way - 'war' used to sound like 'wahr' [war] (Beal 2002:127). Over time, the 'w' before the 'a' made people start to pronounce the 'a' lower and back in the mouth, which turned it into [wɔr]. You can see an example of this in Hamilton's poetry, where he rhymes 'arms' with 'warms'. We know this is supposed to be a rhyme because his poem uses AABB rhyme scheme:

If present love [unlegible] face
Deny you to my fond embrace
No joy unmixed my bosom warms
But when my angel’s in my arms.

- Alexander Hamilton

Similarly, the poet Phyllis Wheatley uses AABB rhyme scheme, rhymes "war" with "air". (More information on the pronunciation of "air" can be seen in the "Regional Differences" section below.)

Or thick as leaves in Autumn’s golden reign.
Such, and so many, moves the warrior’s train.
In bright array they seek the work of war,
Where high unfurl’d the ensign waves in air.

- Phillis Wheatley

/əi/ vowel

The "i" /aɪ/ sound as in "kite" had a lower starting vowel; Franklin equates it with the vowel in "about." It likely sounded like [əi]. Krapp suggests that there may have been some variability, so that there were some people saying [ai], some saying [ʌi], and some [ɑi] (p189). The last part of the diphthong was also higher than it is today. The colonial realization of this sound was closer to the sound that Shakespeare would have used.

Benjamin Franklin describes that the sound of “i” is actually a diphthong made of the sound he dedicates to ‘uh’ and ‘ee’, so ‘uh-ee’.

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
So huen sɥm Endիel, bɥi divիin kcɩmand,	So when some angel, by divine command
Uiⱨ rɥiziŋ tempests իeeks e gilti Land;	With rising tempests shakes a guilty land

Notice the same symbol used for "some" and "rising."

/aʊ/ as /ɔu/

The 'au' /aʊ/ sound in 'bout' was formed further back in the mouth compared to today. Franklin uses the symbol that represents either /ɒ/ or /ɔ/ for it, meaning it may have sounded like /ɔu/. This means that 'bout' would have sounded a lot like General American 'boat'.

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
So ˇⱨi piur limpid striim, huen fcɩul uiⱨ steens	So the pure and limpid stream, when foul with stains
[...] Riflekts iitի flcɩur ˇⱨat cɩn its bcɩrdɥr groz,	[...] Reflects each flower that on its border grows
[...] fcɩr it cɩluaz cɩkɥrz hwen eni refcɩrmeիɥn iz propozed;	[...] for it always occurs when any reformation is proposed

The /ɔ/ vowel is used for "foul," "flour," "border," and "always."

LINE-LOIN merger?

Krapp (p197) suggests that the /ɔɪ/ vowel of "choice" was not yet its own distinct category, and would have sounded the same as the vowel of "price," /əi/ . This means "line" and "loin" would both be something like [ləin]. Franklin does not mention the diphthong that today is /ɔɪ/ in his sounds.

SQUARE vowel

Many of the examples shown above give the impression that colonial English was straightforward, but Eighteenth century English was wildly diverse. This can be seen in the fact that I did not assign a single value for the vowel in words like SQUARE /skwɛr/. What is now the modern SQUARE /ɛr/ vowel seems to have been in quite a bit of flux, and could have had a higher realization as /er/ (Krapp:106-107). Franklin does not describe this vowel, although he does provide a transcription for the word "fair" below.

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
And e nu hev’n in its feer Bɥzɥm իoz.	And a new heav'n in its fair bosom shows.

Franklin uses in his phonetic spelling, the same value he uses for the vowel of “stains”. This would suggest [er].

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
So ˇⱨi piur limpid striim, huen fcɩul uiⱨ steens	So the pure and limpid stream, when foul with stains

This is backed by Wells’s suggestion that the SQUARE vowel of English in both America and Britain was /er/ in 1750 (1982:212).

Note, however, that we have "air" and "war" rhyming in Phyllis Whealey's poem. "tears" and "cares" can be found rhyming in Thomas Jefferson's poem. More information on this pronunciation of SQUARE set words can be found in "Regional Variations."

Or thick as leaves in Autumn’s golden reign.
Such, and so many, moves the warrior’s train.
In bright array they seek the work of war, [wær]
Where high unfurl’d the ensign waves in air [ær].

- Phillis Wheatley

Life's visions are vanished, it's dreams are no more.
Dear friends of my bosom, why bathed in tears? [tærz]
I go to my fathers; I welcome the shore,
which crowns all my hopes, or which buries my cares [kærz]

- Thomas Jefferson

/ærV/

Most dialects of General American pronounce words such as "marry," "carrot," and "carriage" with the same vowel sound as in "merry" and "Kerry" - /ɛr/. In Colonial English, "marry," "carrot," "carriage" etc. would have had a different sound: the 'aa' vowel of 'cat'. Observe how Franklin uses the <a> for "carriages [kærɪdɪʒ].

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
and iven dcɩun az lo az rods and huil karidիiz.	And even down as low as roads and wheel carriages

CURE vowels

'ur' words like 'you're' and 'pure' consistently had the short 'u' /ʊr/, as in look, /jʊr/ and /pjʊr/. American English is in a process of pronouncing these words with /ɔr/

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
So ˇⱨi piur limpid striim, huen fcɩul uiⱨ steens	So the pure and limpid stream, when foul with stains

"pure" spelled 'ur'. Compare with "perform", spelled differently:

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
And, pliiz’d ˇⱨ’ cɩlmɥitis cɩrdɥrs tu pɥrfcɩrm,	And, pleas'd th'almighty's orders to perform

HORSE-HOARSE distinction

Words like 'horse' and 'hoarse' were distinct. 'horse' had a /ɔr/ sound, while 'hoarse' would have had a /or/ sound like in "oh" (Wells 1982:212). Nowadays this distinction is almost extinct in General American.

B. Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet	Transcribed to modern English
Uɥrds in ˇⱨi kors cɩv tɥim	Words in the course of time
And, pliiz’d ˇⱨ’ cɩlmɥitis cɩrdɥrs tu pɥrfcɩrm,	And, pleas'd th'almighty's orders to perform

"course" with the mid-height vowel , "perform" with low height .

Lax HAPPY vowel

Nowadays, the final vowel in words like 'happy', 'baby', 'coffee,' etc. is pronounced with the same vowel as in fleece: [i]. In Colonial English, the final vowel in words like 'happy', 'baby', 'coffee', etc. is pronounced with the same vowel as in kit: [ɪ] (Wells 1982:165). Conservative varieties of Received Pronunciation and Southern American English still use this latter pronunciation. This phenomenon is also discussed in my article Oh Babih, Babay.

Example Audio

When you put all these changes together, the end result sounds a lot like how Shakespearean English does when pronounced! It also bears some resemblance to modern Irish English. As an example, I've prepared the following reading of a quote from the Declaration of Independence in Colonial English.

Text	IPA
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.	wi hold ðiz truθs tu bi sɛlf ɛvɪdɛnt, ðæt ɔl mɛn ær krietɪd ikwəl, ðæt ðe er ɪndɔud bʌi ðer krietər wɪθ sərten ʌnelienəbl rəits, ðæt əməŋ ðiz er lʌif, libərtɪ, ænd ðə pərsut ɔv hæpɪnɛs.

For a little bit of fun, I've also covered the song "My Shot" from the musical "Hamilton," also done in Colonial English. I had originally also planned to do a Colonial English version of a song from the musical "1776," but I could not settle on a song. Perhaps it can be added in a future revision of the article...

I've also added the explicit version as a lyric video on YouTube. The IPA is included here!

Regional Variations

Although British visitors to the colonies noted its "purity" of speech and "lack of idiom or tone", it seems unlikely that everyone in the colonies spoke the same variety. We know that certain parts of the colonies were settled by certain groups. It makes sense that those groups would bring the features of their particular region of Britain to America. Wells (1982) estimates that British English and American English had shared developments until 1750, when both varieties started to develop apart from one another. It also makes sense that, since travel between the colonies was rather difficult and the distance between them rather large, that they would begin to develop separately from each other.

There is some evidence for dialectal division when you look at runaway slave advertisements, which often described slaves on the basis of their accents. We have instances of slaves being identified as being "from Maryland or Virginia," having a "New England accent," and a "West Indies" accent, which suggests that these were distinct and recognizable varieties. Due to the paucity of information on other Colonial English dialectal regions, we're going to be looking at New England and the South.

New England

New England is the best-documented region of the early colonial period with regards to early dialectal variation. There were a lot of documents written by semi-literate people, and their naive spellings show some divergent features (Bailey 2015:29). Such a tradition was not strong in the Middle or Southern colonies, where documents were written in the standard English of the time, so it's harder to determine dialectal variation there (Krapp 1925).

There's evidence for non-rhoticity. It seemed to have existed alongside rhotic pronunciations, with some variation: "horse" was often written "hoss," and "George" was sometimes written "Geoge" (Bailey 2015:40). Bostonian Benjamin Franklin seemed to have used a rhotic pronunciation; his description of the 'r' sound in English in particular suggests a trilled 'r', and he does not drop the 'r' in his transcriptions.

Franklin's transcription does not include a way to represent the sound we now have in "father"; words like "father" rhymed with "gather" and "rather" for him. However, there were signs of what is called TRAP-BATH split in Boston. This means that words like "trap" were pronounced with /æ/ and words like "bath" were pronounced with /ɑ/. It's possible that the broad 'ah' sound was in circulation, but it had not been established as a separate phoneme in all varieties of English (Krapp 1925).

The South

First of all, Southern American accents as we know them did not exist. Many of the features we associate with the South are actually rather recent. For example, pronouncing 'ride' like 'rad' was not something that happened in the 1700s - it probably began in the mid to late 1800s (Bailey 1997,Source 1,Source 2, Labov, 2016). Some other features, like rhyming "pen" and "pin," may have started in the early twentieth century (Brown, 1991). This means an eighteenth century Southern accent would not sound like a twenty-first century Southern accent.

Don't take this to mean that there weren't nascent difference between the South and the rest of the country, though! Many of these differences have simply disappeared since. For example, a lot of words that are pronounced -eer /ir/ in modern English were historically pronounced /ɛr/ or /ær/ (Primer, 1887:90). For example, Thomas Jefferson seemed to rhyme "tear" (salt water from our eyes) with "care," meaning "tear" was likely pronounced something like [tɛr].

Life's visions are vanished, it's dreams are no more.
Dear friends of my bosom, why bathed in tears? [tærz]
I go to my fathers; I welcome the shore,
which crowns all my hopes, or which buries my cares [kærz]

- Thomas Jefferson

It's possible that this feature was also present in some other regions of the colonies. The poet Phyllis Wheatley was born in Africa in 1753, and sold as a slave to Boston merchants. Although her variety of English was probably influenced by Boston, note how she rhymes "war" and "air" in the poem below. Knowing that "war" would have been /wær/ at the time, this means it's likely she pronounced "air" as /ær/.

Or thick as leaves in Autumn’s golden reign.
Such, and so many, moves the warrior’s train.
In bright array they seek the work of war, [wær]
Where high unfurl’d the ensign waves in air [ær].

- Phillis Wheatley

There's another phenomenon that is typical of very conservative Southern speech - palatal stops in words like "garden" and "cart" [kɑrt] so that they sound like "gyarden" and "cyart" [cart]. We may not have direct evidence for it in the 1700s, but it seems to have already existed by the 1800s, and is in decline by the 1900s.

We know at some point, big hub cities (most famously Charleston in South Carolina) in the south tended towards non-rhoticity (Mencken). Bailey (2015) reports that Virginians spoke non-rhotically. This feature later became emblematic of coastal Southern speech, and is moribund nowadays.

Words: Morphology, Lexicon, Spelling

Now let's look at everything other than pronunciation. For the most part the morphology, lexicon, and spelling of Colonial English should still be recognizable to the modern American. However, that doesn't mean that you won't find notable differences here! The differences here are a lot less systematic than the sound ones. Some of these differences are mostly used by a single Founding Father, while others are more varied. This simply reflects the fact that Colonial American English was fluctuating and, moreover, not yet standardized.

Negation without Do-Support

Most verbs in English need a "do" if you want to form a negative: "I do not/don't care," "I do not/don't know," "I did not/didn't need..." etc. Only a handful of verbs can form negatives without "do" such as "to be" ("I am not") and, in some varieties of English, "to have" ("I had not"). Making negatives without "do-support" is much more common in the past. "I know not" is still in common use, though now in variation with "I don't know." Occasionally other verbs are also negated with "not" directly.

“The rival you mentioned I know not whether to think formidable or not as there has been so great an opening for him during my absence.” - Thomas Jefferson
“I cared not what I did if I could but get away from school, and confess to my shame that I sometimes play’d truant.” - John Adams
“What will be the consequence, I know not.” - John Adams “Yet I had not the same confidence…” - John Adams
"I think we need not fear geting a good price for his Mules when he arrives." - Alexander Hamilton

Non-standard Verb Forms

Standard verb forms are not set in stone (Krapp 261). You'll see the founding fathers use forms that nowadays would be considered non-standard. This is dialectal variation, not an "incorrect" form.

“The rats that had eat” – Thomas Jefferson
“Who told you that I reported you was courting Miss Dandridge and Miss Dangerfeild?” – Thomas Jefferson
“The language in which he sung” – Thomas Jefferson
"In a little more than a Year Mr. Marsh pronounced me fitted for Colledge"- John Adams
"About 10 the sun brake out." - John Adams
"I receiv’d your favour of Decr. 29.2 about 3 or 4 Days after it was wrote." - John Adams
"We cleaned ourselves (to get Rid of the Game we had catched the Night before)" - George Washington

V2 Word Order

V2 word order is a type of word order where the verb must come after the first constituent in a sentence. Modern English does not have V2 word order and instead has Subject-Verb-Object word order, meaning the verb must come after the subject. However, Old and Middle English had V2 word order, which began to disappear over time. There are remnants of this in Early Modern English and Colonial American English.

"At Colledge, a Clowdy morning, and in the afternoon, Came up a Clowd of thunder and lightning." - John Adams
"Whatever deficiencies there may be in them as to that matter, will I hope be supplied by the extract now enclosed." - John Jay

The Modern English versions would be "In the afternoon, a cloud came up of thunder and lightning" and "Whatever deficiencies there may be in them as to that matter, I hope will be supplied by the extract now enclosed."

Passive Ditransitive

A ditransitive verb is a verb that accepts a direct object and an indirect object. For example, in "She sent me a horse" the direct object is "horse," because that is the thing being sent, and the indirect object is "me," because it is the direction of the thing being sent. If we wanted to turn this into a passive construction, we would have to say "A horse was sent to me." However, this "to" does not seem necessary in 1700s English, as shown by John Adams's quote below.

"About three Weeks after commencement in 1755, when I was not yet twenty Years of Age, a horse was sent me from Worcester and a Man to attend me." - John Adams

Subject-to-Object Raising

In a sentence like "John wanted her to leave," it is interesting to note that "her" is not actually the semantic object of "wanted." What John wanted was not "her." What John wanted was her leaving. "Her" is actually the subject of "to leave." Some verbs in English allow for this sort of construction. Nowadays we don't really see this with the verb "to wish," but it seems to have existed in colonial American times.

“He wished me to address the assembly” - Thomas Jefferson

Unergatives

One of the more interesting verb differences is that you can find examples of things like "I am come" instead of "I have come." This is preserving a distinction that used to exist in English - the difference between unergative and unaccusative verbs. Unergative verbs are verbs which describe actions that the speaker voluntarily started, like "I ran," "I jumped." Unaccusative verbs are verbs where the subject did not start the action themselves. These are verbs like "John died," "the vase broke," "Mary arrived." These are more like things that happen to the subject. In 1700s English, unaccusative verbs are marked by using "to be" as an auxiliary verb instead of "to have." This means you have examples like "I am fallen," "I am arrived" in the Founding Fathers' texts. This distinction still exists in French: je suis tombe vs j'ai travaille (I fell vs I worked). Nowadays most English speakers will only encounter this construction in the King James Version of the Bible with "Jesus is risen."

“Walker is just arrived.” - Thomas Jefferson
“I am become desirous” - Thomas Jefferson
“are now become numerous” -John Adams

Subjunctive

The subjunctive form was used a lot more often, especially by Thomas Jefferson. It's worth noting that the founding fathers were learned men, and their writing likely was not an exact reflection of their speech.

“whether the story we read be truth” - Thomas Jefferson
“if the painting be lively” - Thomas Jefferson
“or whether the whole be not fiction” - Thomas Jefferson

Lexical Items

Some words that aren't in currency anymore are still being used at the time, such as methinks.

"It requiring methinks a steady continued Consideration for some Time to become a Master of your Doctrine in all its Parts." - Benjamin Franklin

Spelling

Spelling was also in flux. Honor vs honour, college vs colledge, public vs publick. This is clearest in the Constitution, where Pennsylvania is spelled "Pensylvania" (one n at the beginning). This isn't Hamilton making a typo - the spelling had not yet been settled. This is especially bad with commas and punctuation. Thomas Jefferson is fond of using commas where nowadays we would prefer a semi-colon or even just a period.

"Well I will shew you what it is to be a Farmer." - John Adams (pronounced ‘shoo’)
"in my own class at Collidge, there were several others," - John Adams
"His inattention to his Schollars was such as gave me a disgust to Schools, to books and to study and I spent my time as idle Children do in making and sailing boats and Ships upon the Ponds and Brooks, in making and flying Kites, in driving hoops, playing marbles, playing Quoits, Wrestling, Swimming, Skaiting and above all in shooting" - John Adams
"At Colledge, a Clowdy morning, and in the afternoon, Came up a Clowd of thunder and lightning." - John Adams

Conclusion

As was noted in the introduction, Colonial American English and eighteenth century English are woefully understudied. There were further points I was interested in researching, but was unable to find sufficient writings for. One was the extent to which dialectal differences from British English dialects affected the formation of Colonial American English. A paper I am unfortunately no longer able to locate suggested that almost all the settlers must have been from Southern England, since all American dialects have the PUT-STRUT split and most Northern English dialects do not. I wanted to include more comparisons to eighteenth century English English, but had to scrap this due to time concerns. A more in-depth study would mention that there were far too many lexical differences to include, and perhaps go more into detail about aspects beyond phonology. Finally, this article focused on just the first half of the 1700s. However, there is evidence that a distinct Colonial American English was already emerging in the 1600s. In other words, anyone interested in expanding on this field has plenty of room to look in.

Colonial American English represents a fascinating point in between Elizabethan English and our modern varieties of English. Although the primary point of this article is to note how American English has changed from colonial times to modern times, there are also many points of comparison with varieties of British English. Some of the distinctions that no longer exist in American English are still being made in Received Pronunciation, and some of the distinctions made in Colonial American English aren't being made at all anywhere! It's a wonderful example of how language is constantly changing. The change is not always radical, but over centuries it adds up so that we don't have an accurate understanding of what the American Founding Fathers would have sounded like in the popular imagination.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to see more long-form articles like this in the future, you can support me by buying me a coffee at Ko-Fi! ☕️

Works Cited

• Bailey, Guy. 1997. When Did Southern American English Begin? In Englishes around the World: Vol.1: General Studies,British Isles,North America: Studies in Honour of Manfred Görlach, edited by Edgar W. Schneider. Amsterdam:John Benjamins.
• Bailey, Richard W. 2015. Speaking American: a History of English in the United States. Oxford Univ. Press.
• Beal, Joan C. English Pronunciation in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Spences Grand Repository of the English Language. Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Brown, Vivian R. 1991. "Evolution of the Merger of /I/ and /ε/ before Nasals in Tennessee" in American Speech Vol. 66, No. 3 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 303-315.
• Labov, William. 2016. "The Beginnings of the Southern Shift" in Linguistic Variation: Confronting Fact and Theory edited by Rena Torres Cacoullos, Nathalie Dion, André Lapierre.
• Franklin, Benjamin. 1907. The writings of Benjamin Franklin. New York: The Macmillan company.
• Grandgent, Charles Hall. 1899. "From Franklin to Lowell. A Century of New England Pronunciation." PMLA. Vol. 14, No. 2 (1899), pp. 207-239
• Krapp, George Philip. 1925. The English Language in America. Century Co.
• Mencken, Henry Louis. 1919. The American Language.
• Primer, Sylvester. 1887. Charleston Provincialisms. Transactions and Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America.
• Wells, John 1982. Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Founding Fathers Materials and Miscellania

• The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. Sponsored by The American Philosophical Society and Yale University
• Letters of Thomas Jefferson to Charles Willson Peale, 1796-1825
• Founders Online. (George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams)
• John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, vol. 1 (1763-1781) [1890]
• Meier, Paul. Original Pronunciation
• Early Modern English Phonology