Hi everyone, I'm Georgiana, founder of speakenglishpodcast.com.

My mission is to help you to speak English fluently.

In this episode, I'll talk about why the American accent is so different from the British accent.

After that, I'll use the question and answer technique for helping you develop your speaking skills. Let's get started.

In the 18th century, American and British pronunciations were pretty similar.

Remember that the British Empire colonized America.

Many immigrants traveled to America to start a new life.

So, why is American and British pronunciation so different nowadays?

Well, there are many theories, but here's a reasonable one.

I know this may come as a surprise to you, but it's actually the standard British accent

that has radically changed in the past two centuries. However, the American accent

has remained almost identical. So what happened? A little bit of history can help. At the same time,

the British accent started to change, the Industrial Revolution began.

That means that many families became wealthy in a short period. The upper class society did not

welcome those families, although they had a lot of money. Therefore, newly wealthy families

tried to distinguish themselves from the other lower

classes. One way to achieve that was to change the way they spoke. They tried to sound more

sophisticated, more elegant. So new tutors and experts on pronunciation offered their services to the newly affluent people.

New guidelines and pronunciation dictionaries were written.

This new way of speaking became standardized.

It's called Received pronunciation. and it spread all over the country.

More and more people wanted to sound more elegant and not like the lower class.

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