Last edited Thu Aug 27, 2020, 04:42 AM - Edit history (2)
that was very popular and taught in the first half of the 20th c. FDR is a classic, the long vowels and more..
Ex. Eleanor Roosevelt, Julia Child, Wm. F. Buckley, Gore Vidal, Jackie Kennedy, the Kennedys, John Kerry, George Plimpton.
In Hollywood: Orson Welles, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, more. *FDR had the quintessential accent.
Wiki. The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a purposefully cultivated accent of English blending together features of both American and British English (specifically Received Pronunciation for the latter) that were considered the most prestigious features by the early 20th-century American upper class and entertainment industry. It is not a native or regional accent; instead, according to voice and drama professor Dudley Knight, it is an affected set of speech patterns "whose chief quality was that no Americans actually spoke it unless educated to do so".
Primarily fashionable in the first half of the 20th century, the accent was embraced in private independent preparatory schools, especially by members of the Northeastern upper class, as well as in schools for film and stage acting. The accent's overall use sharply declined following the Second World War. A similar accent that resulted from different historical processes, Canadian dainty, was also known in Canada in the same era. More recently, the term "mid-Atlantic accent" can also refer to any accent with a perceived mixture of both American and British characteristics.
At the start of the 20th century, formal public speaking in the U.S. focused on song-like intonation, lengthily and tremulously uttered vowels, and a booming resonance, rather than the details of given words' phonetic qualities. However, since the 19th century, upper-class communities on the Eastern seaboard increasingly adopted many of the phonetic qualities of educated, non-rhotic (sometimes called "r"-less) British accents based around London and southeastern England, at least as evidenced in recorded public speeches of the time. Sociolinguist William Labov et al. describe that such "r" less pronunciation, following Received Pronunciation', the standard accent of London and much of Southern England, "was taught as a model of correct, international English by schools of speech, acting, and elocution in the United States up to the end of World War II"...
..Now sometimes identified as a Mid-Atlantic accent, this consciously-learned pronunciation was advocated most strongly from the theater and oratory, became popular affectations onstage and in other forms of high culture in North America. The codification of a Mid-Atlantic accent in writing, particularly for theatrical training, is often credited to Edith Warman Skinner in the 1930s,[4][54] a student of Tilly best known for her 1942 instructional text on the accent: Speak with Distinction. The Mid-Atlantic accent was carefully taught as a model of "correct" English in American elocution classes,[6] and it was also taught for use in the American theater prior to the 1960s (after which it fell out of vogue).[70] It is still taught to actors for use in playing historical characters.[71] A version codified by voice coach Edith Skinner was once widely taught in acting schools of the earlier 20th century. Her code is listed below:[citation needed]...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent
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