Name: The Origin of That Old-Timey Accent in Classic Movies
Uploaded: 2019-09-22T08:52:08.000Z
Duration: 1 min 50 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

- [Narrator] In the 1920s and up through the 1950s,

Hollywood had a particular way of talking.

- What are up doing up there, impersonating a book cover?

- [Narrator] It was called the mid-Atlantic

To know why it disappeared, we need a little history.

The accent is sort of a British American hybrid.

Linguistically speaking, it has three main tenants.

Two, emphasize the T, like writah and wintah.

And three, soften your vowels, like daance and caah.

And this accent was acquired, so there's no line

But many attribute its popularity to writer Edith Skinner.

She actually wrote a book called Speak with Distinction,

which was the book to help you learn the accent.

Either way, it was a language for the American upper class.

People like FDR, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant,

But after World War II, the accent dwindled in popularity.

With a growing middle class, an aristocratic accent

As for Hollywood, acting methods changed,

Niles and Frasier spoke with an updated mid-Atlantic accent.

- To let the woman I love die before your eyes.

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The Origin of That Old-Timey Accent in Classic Movies

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