This is plainly not the case. The grain of truth here is that certain linguistic features common to many dialects of 16th century British English have been preserved in most dialects of American English, whereas most dialects of British English have lost these features. (E.g., most American English dialects are rhotic.) But there is ample evidence that many aspects of American English have changed in the past few hundred years. Americans are clearly not speaking some kind of fossilized dialect from the 15th century.

By the way, the term "Old English" strictly speaking refers to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English. No-one is claiming that Americans speak this language.

That's a common stereotype of Québécois French, but I think it's more accurate to say that, just like for pretty much all widely spoken languages, there was a lot more regional variation in the French-speaking world a few hundred years ago, but it's been consolidating over time, and different places happened to consolidate differently.

IOW, Parisian French also retains some primitive features that have largely disappeared from one Canadian region or another. But we don't talk about those as much. I'm guessing because doing so wouldn't jive well with certain stereotypes about Québec being a backwards hinterland.

Yeah, in a way you could consider modern British English to be largely an affectation to denote class distinctions.

Because class distinctions didn't exist in 15th century Britain?!

This is simply nonsense.

No, just the particular fads, e.g., the one that drove the change to the non-rhoticity of RP, didn't exist in 15th century Britain.

That the current accent is driven by a particular fad aimed at highlighting upper class status doesn't imply that class distinctions are novel, just the particular effort to demarcate them (which wasn't durable, obviously, as RP isn't exclusive to the upper classes.)

Sure, accents are partly markers of social status, but it's quite wrong to ascribe the diversity of accents in Britain to this. There was never a period where everyone in Britain spoke with the same accent.

> but it's quite wrong to ascribe the diversity of accents in Britain to this.

No one, AFAICT, did that. The reference to “modern British English” is not, as I read it, a reference to “the current diversity of British accents”, but rather “the current dominant British accent”.

The current dominant British accent, if there is such a thing, isn't a marker of social status. If you're referring to RP, then hardly anyone even speaks RP nowadays (even the Queen only makes a half-assed effort...)

I would say accents in the UK are a combination of social status and location.

They're a combination of that pretty much everywhere, but it's not clear to me what the "dominant" British accent is supposed to be. If there is such a thing, it's probably some kind of fairly unremarkable Estuary accent that doesn't have any strong connotations of a particular social status.

"They're a combination of that pretty much everywhere"

Fair point - I would also agree that the idea of a "dominant" British accent seems a bit odd - certainly not in terms of what people actually sound like (rather than the broadcast media).

In 15th century England, the class distinction would be between speaking French or speaking English, not between different dialects of English.

If you are talking about speaking French as a first language, this is false, except possibly in relation to the upper reaches of the aristocracy. If you are talking about speaking French as a second language, then this continued to be a marker of class for a long time afterwards.

In a highly class-conscious society where the vast majority of people spoke English as their first language, it seems fairly unlikely that accent would have had no connotation of social status.

It thus seems hard to believe that the development of the modern diversity of English dialects would have been spurred by some sudden need to mark class distinctions.

I am not sure about these "facts". Why would quebec accent stay the same for centuries? Languages are unstable, especially their pronunciation. Consider also the extraordinary diversity of accents in uk. Did only one cross the Atlantic?

It's possible for both dialects to evolve, but at different rates. Present-day Quebecois French is not identical to 17th century French, but it's closer to it than present-day Parisian French is.

You can't just make that kind of statement as a fact without providing any kind of source. Read any text from 17th century, languages have evolved quite a bit on both sides of the atlantic. One big reason why Parisian french would be quite different is that colonization to New France did not come from Paris.

People say this, but I've always thought it was just another piece of pop badlinguistics nonsense that you hear about practically every language. Do you have a reliable source?

Smaller populations very reliably have slower-evolving language. Icelandic is similar to old Norse and old English. Just like you'll hear a lot of Iowan accents in Atlanta but not if you drive 80 miles outside of town.

Believe it or not, there is an entire field called linguistics that studies human language and how it evolves.

Although Icelandic maintains an orthography close to Old Norse, the value of the letters is very different today indeed. The vowel system, for example, has been greatly restructured. Preaspiration became a quality of the consonants.

In terms of lexicon, much of the archaic flavour is actually the result of 19th-century language reformers trying to restore old words. In the meantime, Icelandic had borrowed heavily from Danish.

Indeed, there is the field of linguistics, and scholarly treatments of Icelandic (as opposed to pop-sci presentations of the language as a time capsule like yours) point out that Icelandic has undergone a great deal of innovation like any other North Germanic language.

It's true that languages generally change, but they don't necessarily change equally fast everywhere. See also this answer: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/4033/do-lang...