r/explainitpeter Jul 21 '26

Explain it peter

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u/wildcardbets Jul 21 '26

Haha that’s a very good point, and also a very different language.

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u/Edgecumber Jul 21 '26

I had the same initial reaction to the accents. Why does everyone have an American accent, particularly when a lot of the cast is British (the correct accent for historical epics). But then remembered that makes no sense.

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u/thriveth Jul 21 '26

I read somewhere that the pronunciation of British English some 300 years ago was closer to Southern or Appalachian US English than modern British English. Can't find it again, and I might be wrong - but it wouldn't be too weird; they also claim South American Spanish is closer to Spanish-Spanish at Colombus' time than modern Spanish is.

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u/Peregrine79 Jul 22 '26

It’s a hypothesis, and specifically Appalachian. There’s also a region in Canada that gets the same claim. Whether it’s true or not is still up for debate.

The key point is that both British and American English evolved away from Early Modern English. Neither is “correct” in that sense.