A lot of us here in Deepest Springfield are obsessed with accents. How do we do a good Scouse accent so no one will think it’s Geordie? But with that obsession is also learning about the history of accents and how things shift.

So we’re doing some research for some scripts that raise the question “When did American colonists lose their British accent?”

Damn Yanks and their “audio theaters!”

Well, Matt Soniak over at Mental Floss has some answers. Granted, it’s not exhaustive like a linguistic tome, but it is informative.