(calm classical music)
- Listen, Walter.
- Listen, I made great
reporter out of you, Hildy,
but you won't be half as
good on any other paper
and you know it.
We're a team, that's what we are.
You need me, and I need you,
and the paper needs both of us!
- Sold! American.
- Oh, all right.
- Listen Walter, please.
- If you've ever heard
old movies or news reels
from the 30's or 40's,
then you've probably heard
that weird old-timey voice.
This pronunciation is
called the Transatlantic
or Mid-Atlantic accent,
and it isn't like most other accents.
Instead of naturally evolving,
the Transatlantic accent was acquired.
Now this means that people
in the United States
were taught to speak in this voice.
Now historically, Transatlantic
speech was the hallmark
of aristocratic America and theater.
In upper-class boarding
schools across New England,
students learned the Transatlantic accent
as an international
norm for communication,
similar to the way posh
British society used
Received Pronunciation,
essentially the way the queen
and aristocrats are taught to speak.
It has several quasi-British elements,
such as a lack of rhoticity.
Now this means that Mid-Atlantic
speakers dropped their Rs
at the ends of words like winaa or clea.
They'll also use softer British vowels,
dahnce instead of dance, for instance.
Another thing that stands
out is the emphasis
on clipped, sharp Ts.
Now, in American English,
we often pronounce the T
in words like writer and water as Ds.
But Transatlantic speakers will hit that T
like it stole something.
Writer. Water.
But again, this speech pattern
isn't completely British,
nor completely American.
Instead, it's a form of
English that's hard to place,
and that's part of why Hollywood loved it.
There's also a theory that
technological constraints
helped Mid-Atlantic's popularity.
According to professor
J.L. Bareski, this nasally,
clipped pronunciation is a vestige
from the early days of radio.
Receivers had very little
bass technology at the time,
and it was very difficult,
if not impossible,
to hear bass tones on your home device.
So what happened to the
Transatlantic accent?
Well, linguist William Labov
notes that Mid-Atlantic speech
fell out of favor after World War Two,
as fewer teachers continued
teaching the pronunciation
to their students.
That's one of the
reasons the speech sounds
so old-timey to us today.
When people learn it,
they're usually learning it
for acting purposes rather
than for everyday use.
However, we can still hear the effects
of Mid-Atlantic speech
in recordings of everyone
from Katharine Hepburn
to Franklin D. Roosevelt,
and of course, countless films,
newsreels, and radio shows
from the 30's and 40's.
Now see here, Mr. Weathersby,
there's no more money
in dog racing.
The future is radio, you hear me, radio!
Listen here, copper.
You lay those mitts on me
and I'll give you what for, I will.
Say doll, what say we
go down the boulevard
and catch the dirigible races?
(old-timey radio music)
(laughter)
I just like the giggles
we're gonna get at the end.
