AHC: Canandians have British Accent

I'm Australian and to me the NZ accent sounds basically Australian except for one important sound. They can not pronounce "i" they say it like "e" so for example instead of "fish" they say "fesh".

Also I've noticed that the previous 2 NZ Prime Ministers have very strong NZ accents where as most of the general population sound like Australians except for that important sound I mentioned.

Funny story: I once had a noise complaint from a NZ resident who say she could hear her neighbour have "sex" which I misunderstood and asked "six what ?". Lead to an ackward conversation......
 
I've heard a few older, upper class people in the Boston, Mass. area with accents that were distinctly British. These were people born about 100 years ago, I doubt any younger ones still have the accent. Some folks call it a Boston Brahmin accent; whatever it is, it is distinctly British, something like how the Kennedys sound, only much more so. And I, too, have a 'mid Atlantic' accent; Americans usually mention my 'British' accent, but when I visited England, everyone was sure I was an American.
For reference, they refer to this sometimes as a "Mid-Atlantic Accent" (as in, from somewhere in the middle of the atlantic, not the Mid-Atlantic States). FDR had it, and alot of old movie stars like Katherine Hepburn. Jim Backus used it on Gilligan's Island, and Kelsey Grammer on Cheers and Frasier -- but I'm not sure if those were just the characters, or if people actually do still speak like that.

This is probably the closest you'd see to a British Accent in North American culture.
 
I've wondered about New Zealand... do they have any unique accent? Do they sound like Aussies or Brits or Americans? The few kiwis I've heard in movies/television don't seem to have any kind of accent, but I don't know about the majority of them...
to me kiwis sound like a fusion of candian and american english with about 40% of words sounding australian or british (mostly australian tho).

its actually an awesome accent because its hard to tell if they're american or not (which i am) until they get into a conversation and the australian accent starts to pop in and out
 
to me kiwis sound like a fusion of candian and american english with about 40% of words sounding australian or british (mostly australian tho).

its actually an awesome accent because its hard to tell if they're american or not (which i am) until they get into a conversation and the australian accent starts to pop in and out

I do find the Kiwis seem to sound more Canadian than Australians, but Australians sound more American to me than New Zealanders do.
 
C'est très drôle, Marc. :D I take it you've adjusted well to an Oz accent, then. Then again, need I remind you about one piece of funny news from a couple of years where someone on an Air New Zealand flight wished to go to Oakland (California) and ended up in Auckland (New Zealand) instead.

Anyway, to get back to the OP:

With a POD of 1776, have the Canadian people keep an accent that is noticeably more British than American.

Bonus points if the US remains as powerful and influential as OTL.

Well, the bonus points are easy - just basically change nothing about OTL. In Canada, though, it's somewhat easy. Historically Canada received lots of Scottish immigration; whilst most of it was concentrated in the Maritimes they were a decent enough present in both Upper and Lower Canada that it modified somewhat the accents of the UELs and American immigrants in general who migrated to Canada (indeed, the Canadian raising is in part an application of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule).

Now, note that originally North American English was shaped by two different groups of English speakers, who provided the founding dialects. Generally, North American English (including General American) was shaped by speakers of Southwest and Northern England; in New England, by contrast, the founding dialect of the Pilgrims and Puritans was from the East Anglia area, so some of the stereotypical characteristics of New England English can be traced directly to East Anglia (including non-rhoticity and certain values of the vowels. One value in particular that sets a traditional East Anglia accent off, and a Broad Norfolk accent in particular, is that in some cases where there is the GOAT vowel (RP /əʊ/, General American /oʊ/) an authentic Norfolk dialect may substitute with [ʊ] (the FOOT vowel). This got carried over to New England with the Pilgrims and Puritans, where it got lowered and centralized to [ɵ] (the vowel of the French "e caduc" or schwa). This sound largely died out in the 1940s in general usage, but some traces do persist - for example, I always can tell someone who's a local by the way they pronounce the name of Rhode Island. A true local would pronounce it as "rudd-DIE-lin" /rɵˈdaɪlɪn(d)/; an American from outside would pronounce it /ˌroʊd ˈaɪlɨnd/, which irritates me though I understand it.

So here's a possibility. Imagine that somehow Canada received as much heavy immigration from East Anglia early on as it did from Scotland. As such, the Canadas would have an accent similar to a traditional New England accent, mixed heavily with Scottish features. So the Canadian accent would be distinct and more "British". As in OTL, this would be enough to influence the accents of the UELs and any other immigrants from the United States - indeed, in TTL, it would be more so, and let's have much heavier immigration from New England than OTL just to reinforce the point. That would be our starting point. How does that sound?
 
I've heard a few older, upper class people in the Boston, Mass. area with accents that were distinctly British. These were people born about 100 years ago, I doubt any younger ones still have the accent. Some folks call it a Boston Brahmin accent; whatever it is, it is distinctly British, something like how the Kennedys sound, only much more so. And I, too, have a 'mid Atlantic' accent; Americans usually mention my 'British' accent, but when I visited England, everyone was sure I was an American.

Please - nobody can replicate a Kennedy accent; it's too distinct. (It's basically a Boston Irish accent mixed with some Brahmin features.) Now, the Boston Brahmin accent in general definitely sounds more British, in part because of a crucial distinction with /a/. In New England, you can establish that as a prestige accent and work from there; the same could also work with Canada and help the dialect mixing I mentioned in my last post.
 
If I ever do my Dimension-2 this will somewhat be covered. It involves poorer American-Canadian relations so Canada works with the other dominions for media a lot more, thus the children raised listening to British and Australian radio programmes, movies, and later television pick up a few accent bits from the media influence. Though it retains some uniquely Canadian sounding things (so for most of the country it's 4 parts Bob and Doug, 2 parts Newfie, and one part British with a pinch of Aussie).
 
I always find the Kiwi accent comparable to the Australian accent in the same way the Canadian accent is to the American one. Almost the same, but softer, in a way. Not as sharp.
 
C'est très drôle, Marc. :D I take it you've adjusted well to an Oz accent, then.

not realy. Apart from asians who seem to assume that any local fluent in english is an aussie, people think I'm Irish, Dutch, South African or just generic european. An my local friends crack up everytime I say "mate" or "no worries" (it sort of sneek up in your vocabulary right quick)
 
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