Originally Posted by
norbitonite:
“Because it is Jamaican. She was brought up in Jamaica - not in Ireland or England.
Or Chris?
Or Tony?
”
Don't want to be pedantic, but I'm not saying she is not Jamaican. I was simply making the point that her 'Jamaican' accent sounded a mix of English and Irish. This Kind of explains :
If anything, there was MORE regional variation in accents and dialect in the 1700's than there is today, so in no way can you say that the British accent and the American accent sounded the same, especially when accents within Britain and America at the time didn't sound the same either. Overall, there was no general British accent or American accent at that time, and so part of the reason why Jamaicans sound different from Black Americans is because the settlement patterns of Jamaica and the US are very different.
Jamaica had always had large-scale Irish and Scottish immigration long before the United States did. Irish people were deported to the caribbean since the 1600's, whereas the Irish didn't arrive in the United States until the 1840's. Most overseers in the Caribbean were of Irish or Scottish descent, so the accents of the English-speaking Caribbean were strongly influenced by Irish and Scottish english.
For example, in traditional Boston English, which was heavily influenced by Irish dialects, there was a great deal of similarity in some respects with caribbean english. We both pronounce our short O's like A's (for example, Morning is pronounced Mahnin' or Mahning in both dialects) and that comes from Irish influence.By comparison, Black Americans were influenced by English, Scottish and Ulster Irish accents, which were VERY different from Irish catholic accents.
Another fact to consider is that the Caribbean remained a colony of the UK until the 60's, with portions of the West Indies still under British control today. So even if we did have the same influences, our culture recieved those influences in different ratios.
Finally, you also gotta take into account the fact that Jamaicans and other Caribbean people live in majority-Black societies, whereas Black Americans live in a majority-White society. Black American dialects were significantly decreolised and are overall closer to standard American English than West Indian creoles are to British English (an exception would be the Gullah people who lived in isolation until fairly recently). So even if we did have the same influences, the African aspect and the British aspect of African American dialect eroded significantly over the years due to contact with White Americans.
