Link: “That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went Away”
Interesting article on that old-timey “newsreader” accent you hear in American newsreels from the 1950s. Found it via a Reddit thread where the point was clearly made that this newsreader accent was different from the Transatlantic accent (the newsreader accent being heavily rhotic in contrast to the Transatlantic accent’s non-rhoticity, for example), despite both being a result of voice coaching and not natural accents. Anyway, the article speculates that the accent was basically the result of over-enunciating to be heard clearly over crackly old audio systems. As those improved, the need for any special accent went away. Cool stuff.
Jessica Smith is a socialist and a feminist who loves animals, books, gaming, and cooking; she’s also interested in linguistics, history, technology and society.