Nice article. Civil War, always been a good reads, and an interesting history, Thanks for sharing
I realise that it’s a written article, but it would have been good to hear what people actually sound like. There are some videos and articles online, but they seem to suggest that most Confederados don’t speak any English. The account from Jimmy Carter seems to be the closest to stating that they still spoke southern English, but that was almost 50 years ago, and just over 100 years after the war. Not that it’s an implausible story (I’ve met a number of German speaking Paraguayans with interesting accents, for example), but I was actually hoping to find some examples of Confederado English.
Amber. Preserved in amber. Aspic would make a really bad preservative.
and the Times whiffs it again. good article apart form that, though.
I’ve been involved on two productions of the musical “1776”. In those productions, in pretty much any productions anywhere, and especially in the film version, the various delegates always speak in distinct accents to mirror their geographical origins. But I have always questioned exactly how accurate those accents would have been in that time period. It seems to me that although these various populations had been on the continent for about 150 years, and were removed long enough from Britain, would they have already developed the “southern drawl” or “Boston nasal” that we hear today? Or would they still have spoken in something closer to the pronunciations of the Mother Tongue? I can see slight variations due to the isolation of populations and the influences of non-English immigrants, but I wouldn’t think that these accents would already be as set in stone and familiar to modern audiences as this play usually presents them.
"A linguistic time capsule “preserved in aspic”. "
Further proof that aspic is just plain horrible, no matter what’s in it.
Why is it assumed that accents in the US have changed over that time, but that theirs has stayed exactly as it was? Surely their accents would be just as subject to shifting over time…
There are some pockets of Scots Gaelic speakers in Argentina too.
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