Outside of a Dog: O'Brian, Patrick: (05) Desolation Island (audio)

David Tate

David Tate wrote on March 6, 2006 at 12:45 PM:

A note on the reading: Patrick Tull doesn't give the American characters anything I would call a contemporary American accent, but since I don't know what an American accent would sound like in 1811 or 1812, I can put up with this just fine.

It's an interesting question, what an American of that time would sound like. There was enormous regional variation even then, but less class differentiation than in England. Apparently, the New England accent already had many of its stereotypical features by then -- see e.g. the abstract here.

If you're very interested, here's a shockingly long bibliography of papers on the linguistic history of New England accents. A much more accessible (if less scholarly) source is the Old Sturbridge Village guide Sounding Yankee I.

steve

steve wrote on September 14, 2006 at 9:29 PM:

The link above is a page dedicated to trying to explain the very complex system of naval ship ratings of the times of lucky jack aubrey and earlier..

Also I have a page about building a frigate from that era, possibly earlier. I am just reading Desolation Island at the moment and hope to chart the voyage of the novel and put it on my pages..

Kate

Kate wrote on September 15, 2006 at 7:32 AM:

steve: Thanks for the links, and sorry that they got temporarily caught in my spam filter.

I believe that the location of Desolation Island is an ongoing matter of discussion among readers, so I'll be interested to see what you come up with.