What Colonial Americans Really Sounded Like in the 1700s

For years, historical dramas got Colonial American accents completely wrong. When HBO's acclaimed miniseries John Adams premiered in 2008, dialect coach Catherine Charlton set out to discover what America's founders actually sounded like.

The answer surprised everyone. Colonial Americans didn't speak with the twangy American accent we know today. They sounded remarkably British.

Charlton dug deep into historical records from the 1700s to crack the case. One British lord visiting the colonies in 1770 wrote about how clearly Americans spoke compared to people back home. Despite settlers arriving from all over Europe, their English remained "perfectly uniform and unadulterated."

The reason makes perfect sense. Accents take time to evolve, and Colonial America moved slowly. John Adams rode on horseback from Boston to Philadelphia for Congressional meetings. Without phones, television, or fast travel, dialects changed at a snail's pace.

The show's producer Kirk Ellis worked with Colonial Williamsburg historians to get the details right. They learned that where you lived in America often matched where your ancestors came from in England. Virginia settlers mostly hailed from East Anglia, bringing that region's distinctive accent with them.

The differences that did exist were subtle but real. Americans were already developing their own pronunciation pet peeves. Colonial teacher Noah Webster was writing his dictionary during this time, and Americans hated how the British clipped syllables. They taught children to carefully pronounce every syllable: ce-me-ta-ry instead of "CEM-tree," mil-i-tar-y instead of "MIL-tree."

Regional variations emerged too. New England colonists came from parts of Britain where people didn't pronounce the letter R, creating the famous Boston accent. Southern Virginia was settled by people from western England, giving it a different flavor entirely.

The Bright Side

This linguistic detective work gave the John Adams cast something no previous historical drama had: authenticity grounded in real research. The actors learned developing accents that honored both British roots and emerging American identity. It transformed the show into one of the most historically accurate period pieces ever created.

The fascinating truth is that American English was still being born in the 1700s, shaped syllable by syllable by people building a new nation while holding onto pieces of home.