Simon Roper, a polyglot who enjoys exploring the history of the English language, explained how the standard British English accent was developed in the 1700s by the upper class in order to distinguish themselves linguistically from the hoi polloi beneath them and Americans whom they disliked. One of the signature changes was dropping the “R” from certain words.
I explore the idea that southeastern standard British pronunciation was ‘invented’ in the 1700s, to distance upper-class British people either from Americans or from working-class people. I examine phonetic evidence from the 1600s-1800s to put across the historical reality: that sound changes like R-dropping (non-rhoticity) and bath-broadening were natural, organic developments that were often stigmatised or discouraged in educated speech before they eventually became normalised.
