what's the deal with UK and American accents and English?

Seriously, what's with both of them?

I appear to have walked into the worst Seinfeld sketch ever.

The who what now?

Language and the manner of speaking (accent) change over time. US accents (there are many) evolved differently from Britain's accents (there are many).

And there is no such thing as a bad Seinfeld sketch.

During the colonial era, the British and American accents were pretty much the same. Both accents were rhotic (hard R). Around the time of the American Revolution, the British upper class developed a non-rhotic accent basically as a way to distinguish themselves from common laborers during the Industrial Revolution. That form of speech eventually became the standard in Britain. As a further example, the two primary American accents that are non rhotic are the New York and the Boston accent, both cities that had heavy British influences after the Revolution.

This also jibes with my understanding of how Southern US accents came to be. I heard somewhere that they are closer to British accents, pre-revolution.

And airline food! What's up with that?!?

Shut. Up.

Not least because of the influence on the American accent of accents and languages of non-British origin, such as Dutch, which had a huge impact in addition to the British origins.

Here in my country, they teach us UK English. I've seen people making fun of uk accent. Especially Americans saying what's with those pants suits and all.

I find uk accent classy.

Some British accents are classy. Some regional and chav accents, not so much (looking at you, Scousers and Brummies ).

Scouser isn't horrible, certainly holds higher than some American accents. Besides, it can't be all bad down in the Merseyside -- they gave us yellow submarines

Simplified English = American English?

Why did you write some in italic? What does that mean and how can i use it in future?

Emphasis.

Not really, no.

It's like using "hi" ( ही ) in Hindi.

Southern Accent = English accent - It's why Southern characters in tv and movies are played by British actors, from Scarlet Ohara to everydamnbody in Blackhawk Down.

Appalachian Accent = Scottish accent

New Jersey and New Orleans = French.

Um.

No.

British and American English have the same common vocabulary with a few minor spelling differences (color vs colour), and a fairly small set of words that are only commonly used one place or another, but which almost everybody understands. The main difference between the accents is pronunciation, such as the rules for when and how to pronounce an 'r', where the resonance is in the mouth, and all sorts of other minor shifts.

Youtube if full of videos on accents, and there are also a lot of resources online for actors who have to pick up a regional accent for a particular role. Those resources are usually good and quite detailed, down to how to learn to sound like a Swedish, Russian, or German speaking English (required for lots of movies). I even listened to one that taught Canadians how to sound like the standard midwestern American accent, the closest accent to theirs, because there's a whole lot more "American" TV and movie roles than "Canadian." Rule #1 for them was to drop the pitch of the words (tone) consciously downwards throughout the sentence because their natural habit was to keep moving the pitch up, so that the end of the sentence is always higher than the beginning. That just screams "I'm Canadian!"

I downloaded lots of audio books on acting with accents and some were so detailed that they distinguished between about 5 New England accents (two in Boston), New York, Virginia, Carolina, Tennessee (different parts), Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Chicago, standard Midwest, and California. England is similarly divided up into tiny regions, and there were also courses on several Australian accents, New Zealand, and South Africa.

One that won't be covered anymore is the now-extinct and always fake "mid-Atlantic" accent that was common in radio and movies from the 1920's through WW-II even though nobody really spoke that way. Then it died. The story about that is in the Atlantic.

The Rise and Fall of Katharine Hepburn's Fake Accent
When Hollywood turned to talkies, it created a not-quite-British, not-quite-American style of speaking that has all but disappeared.​

ETA: I'm not sure if it's in that article, but I recently read that radio announcers back then spoke in a artificially high voice because early radio sets had extremely poor bass sounds.

I didn't know you could do that. पण, या विचित्र नाही.

Google translate to the rescue.

Although the other day I was using Google Translate on Norwegian and it translated "Hønefoss", a town of 14,000 about 40 miles north of Oslo, as "New York City."

No it didn't. .

Plug this sentence in as Norwegian: "Jeg startet på et lite kurs på ballettskolen i Hønefoss, og tok det videre ved å opprette et eget lag med mine beste venner og en dyktig trener." It spits out "New York City". No idea what the bug is.

That's from Emilie Nereng's blog post about her days in cheer dance. Her current top post is about Star Wars.

I've been at it a week and can already read some Norwegian sentences without difficulty. Others not so much. It's like English that took a wrong turn somewhere.

I have no idea what you said.

I think it was something like "This is weird" in Marathi. It's Google Translate, so who knows?

Oh, I thought it was supposed to be Hindi.

I noticed they had a Marathi option, and I think Vtrendzzy said that was is first language, so I tried it.

Perfected English = American English.

English in any form is overrated. Engrish is where it's at!
http://www.engrish.com/

Where do Geordie Nutters fit in?