Accents and Dialects in a British Controlled USA?

How would Americans speak differently if it was a peaceful part of the Commonwealth? What would be the primary dialect? What dialects would most likely disappear?
 
The North would speak like conventional Englishmen and the South would speak like Scottish or Irishmen...no seriously, I do not know. I suppose there would be a few more similarities between them, but I wouldn't count on them having British accents or anything.
 

NomadicSky

Banned
I don't think it would sound much diffrent. BNA (British North America) Would still attract immigrants from all over Europe it did that already before the United States and would once the revolution failed.
The British weren't tyrants (even though history books in the US want you to think that reasonable tea tax to pay for a war the colonist started made them so) The crown would have given us an elected responsible government.

Spelling would be another thing though. Americans would spell things just like the Brits. And Canadians would be considered Americans.
 
I too don't think US English varieties would sound too much different to what they do now. However, I wonder whether the elite might be more British sounding? I wonder whether you might get a "Morningside" US English, i.e. a variety of US English that developed from trying to sound more British but ends up as a unique form. (Morningside is a posh area of Edinburgh). I wonder too whether this Britticised elite might use more British/English idioms.
 

Glen

Moderator
I too don't think US English varieties would sound too much different to what they do now. However, I wonder whether the elite might be more British sounding? I wonder whether you might get a "Morningside" US English, i.e. a variety of US English that developed from trying to sound more British but ends up as a unique form. (Morningside is a posh area of Edinburgh). I wonder too whether this Britticised elite might use more British/English idioms.

I tend to agree. The predominant accents in the US were already present by and large at the time of the split, and in fact US accents have stayed rather more stable than in the UK. Given how closely Canadian accents tend to be to US accents OTL, I think it is safe to assume that they will continue to sound more or less as they are.

I do agree that there is likely to be more congruence in spelling between the US and UK, and that the upper upper class in the US is more likely to have affected british accents from going to school 'in the mother country' as it were....
 
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