Early American Accents

[katmai]

I refuse to start pronouncing it Zed dammit!

[Josquius]

American English is a creation of the modern world. A result of having people from all over Britain and Europe all mixed together in a way that didn't happen back home.
Most British Englishes meanwhile have a clear single lines of origin in the same areas that they still exist. They didn't just come into being in the modern world.
It seems pretty obvious to me.

[HVC]

I refuse to start pronouncing it Zed dammit!

preach it zee brother!

[Barrister]

I refuse to start pronouncing it Zed dammit!

And that... is why you fail.

[katmai]

Last i looked not stuck part of some podunk Commonwealth.

[HVC]

Last i looked not stuck part of some podunk Commonwealth.

hey, friendly fire there!

[Razgovory]

Just give it up Raz. Its no use.

I'm afraid you are right.

[Sheilbh]

It didn't just spring into being one day, it took a while, but as a distinct American dialect it is a lot less modern than distinct dialects of various parts of the UK.

Wait what?  Weren't you arguing the opposite yesterday?  Either way, any argument that one lineage is older then the other is silly.  It's like a pair of brothers arguing who has the longest family tree.

I think Tyr's right.  American English, like British English is a relatively modern thing.

There's no such thing as 'Elizabethan English' because of the differences between a London dialect and, say, a Devon dialect or a North of England dialects.  Many of those individual dialects have survived in some way in England.

American English, like British English is a product of the modern age.  American English may be closer to the British English as it begins to emerge in the 18th century but it's not closer to 'old English' because, in reality, there was no such thing just a few hundred varieties of the language. 

It's a bit like Florentine and Italian.  American and British ('RP') English are both basically dialects of the sort of English that won and became dominant - of the two the American may be closer to their original sound.  But they're amalgamations and derivatives of dialects that existed in England and in some forms still exist.  I imagine London dialect dominates over England and was influential in American English too.  It's also most prone to change. 

[Razgovory]

Sigh.  I think when I said Elizabethan, I also said London at the same time.

[Sheilbh]

Sigh.  I think when I said Elizabethan, I also said London at the same time.

Well that's not quite what you said, you compared Elizabethan English with modern London.  Whereas, if anything, 'Elizabethan English' was a London dialect.  I agree that British English and American English are brothers in the family tree.  In my view from roughly the same period and that American English has changed less.  But there's lots of English dialects that haven't changed a great deal (distinct from 'British English') and that have made it.

[Razgovory]

Ed was right.

[Ed Anger]

Ed was right.

ALWAYS.

[Jacob]

Ed was right.

ALWAYS.

??

[Ed Anger]

That depends.