BrainStuff Classics: Why Do People Talk Weird in Old Movies?

There's a distinct accent of yesteryear that's not quite British, and not quite American – so what gives? Learn about the Transatlantic accent, or Mid-Atlantic accent, in this classic episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren vog Obam here with another classic episode from our
archive and from our former host, Christian Sager. If you've
ever watched old movies, say from the nineties or earlier,
or listen to old radio plays, you may have noticed
that the accents American actors used were different than what

(00:23):
we hear today. There's a reason for that, and this
episode explains it. Hey brain Stuff, it's Christian Sager here.
If you have ever heard old movies or newsreels from
the thirties or forties, then you've probably heard that weird
old timey voice. You know, it sounds something like this.
Now see here, Mr Weather's being there's no money in

(00:44):
dog racing. The future is radio. You hear me radio?
It sounds a little like a blend between American English
and a form of British English. So what is this cadence? Exactly?
This type of pronunciation is actually called the Transatlantic or
mid Atlantic accent, and it isn't like most other accents.
Instead of naturally evolving, the trans Atlantic accent was acquired.

(01:08):
This means that people in the United States were taught
to speak in this voice Historically, Transatlantic speech was the
hallmark of aristocratic America and theater. In upper class boarding
schools across New England, students learned the Transatlantic accent as
an international norm for communication, similar to the way posh

(01:28):
British society used received pronunciation. Essentially, that's the way the
queen and aristocrats are taught to speak. It has several
quasi British elements, such as a lack of roticity. This
means that mid Atlantic speakers drop their rs at the
end of words like winna or clea. They'll also use

(01:48):
softer British vowels daunce instead of dance, for instance. Another
thing that stands out is the emphasis on clipped sharp teas.
In American English, we often pronounced the tea in words
like writer or water as d's. Transatlantic speakers will hit
that t like it stole something writer water. But again,

(02:10):
this speech pattern isn't completely British, nor is it really
completely American. Instead, it's a form of English that's hard
to place, and that's part of why Hollywood loved it.
There's also a theory that technological constraints helped mid Atlantic's popularity.
According to professor J. Oberski. This nasally clipped pronunciation is

(02:32):
a vestiage from the early days of radio Receivers had
very little based technology at the time, and it was
very difficult, if not impossible, to hear based tones on
your home device. Now we live in an age where
based technology booms from the trunks of cars all across America.
So what happened to the Transatlantic accent. Well, it's no

(02:53):
longer the common tongue of elite boarding schools. Linguist William
Labov notes that mid Lantic speech fell out of favor
after World War Two, as fewer teachers continued teaching the
pronunciation to their students. That's one of the reasons this
speech sounds so old timey to us today. When people

(03:13):
learn it, they're usually learning it for acting purposes rather
than for everyday use. However, we can still hear the
effects of mid Atlantic speech in recordings of everyone from
Katherine Hepburn to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and of course countless films, newsreels,
and radio shows from the thirties and forties. Today's episode

(03:38):
was written by Ben Bolan and produced by Tyler Klang.
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