When did Americans lose their British accent and more questions from our readers (2024)

Weather systems in the United States move from west to east, so why do Atlantic hurricanes originate off the African coast and move west?

John Jay Rouse, St. Cloud, Minnesota

The wind blows from west to east in the mid-latitudes where the United States is located, but in the tropics it blows from east to west.

Douglas Herman, geographer, National Museum of the American Indian

When did the early colonists stop sounding British and start sounding American?

Katie Cavanaugh, Mason, Michigan

People in England noticed the quirky new ways in which Americans spoke English within a generation of the colonists' arrival. Over time, changes went beyond accent to include different words and grammatical structures, contributing to a new dialect. Dialects have two main causes. The first is insulation; early settlers had only sporadic contact with the mother country. The second is exposure to other languages, and the settlers came into contact with Native American languages, the Indian English pidgin of sailors and other settlers who spoke Dutch, Swedish, French and Spanish. All of these languages ​​influenced American English, as did the origins of English-speaking settlers in various parts of England, Wales, and Scotland. Later, as metropolitan centers such as Boston and New York City had more contact with England, they adopted the then-trendy r-less accent of the English upper class.

Mary Linn, taalkundige, Smithsonian Centre for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

Hummingbirds visit my feeders every spring. Do the same birds come back because they remember where the food is?

Claire Musk, Lissabon, Connecticut

There is plenty of evidence that birds can remember where they found food in the past, but it is unclear whether they remember from day to day or from year to year. Hummingbirds have been known to "trap" or regularly visit certain shrubs or even flowers for nectar, causing at least short-term recall.

Peter Marra, ecoloog, Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, National Zoo

Is the Kensington Runestone in Minnesota real or fake?

Steven Kispert, Owatonna, Minnesota

Despite recent attempts to revive the stone as a monument left by Scandinavian explorers in the 14th century, rune experts, geologists and archaeologists have ruled it a 19th-century creature. But it remains valuable as a focus of modern Scandinavian heritage in the upper Midwest.

William Fitzhugh, antropoloog, National Museum of Natural History

Does anyone know where the plane carrying Glenn Miller crashed?

Mary-Dawn Johnston, Boise

No. Conflicting theories still exist as to where and why the bandmaster's plane disappeared on December 15, 1944. He was on his way from England to France, where his band was supposed to play.

John Edward Hasse, Curator of American Music, National Museum of American History

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