Is there a 1950's American accent?


Listening to old recordings, there is a distinct accent that radio and television announcers used that is different from a modern-day "Standard American" or neutral accent. It seems that over the course of fifty years pronunciation has shifted. Is this a documented phenomenon? Or is it more a function of broadcast media being less focused on proper enunciation and diction?


(Possibly related, I've noticed some old books spell "Hello" as "Hullo". Is this a reflection of the same thing?)



Answer



You might find this article in Wikipedia to be elucidating, though I don't like the term itself, as "Mid-Atlantic English" to me signals the accents spoken between New Jersey and Washington, D.C.


Anyway, it's true that there's a now-largely-disappeared dialect that was spoken both by the upper classes of the Eastern Seabord and by Hollywood actors and actresses wanting to appear upper class.


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