Human capital and cultural capital.

Is is not racial or ethnic distinctions as such which have proven to be momentous but cultural distinctions, whether associated with race, with geographical origins, or with other factors. The particular culture or "human capital" available to people has often had more influence on their economic level than their existing material wealth, natural resources, or individual geniuses. ... [Differences] between groups themselves have been the rule, not the exception, in countries around the world and down through history. These groups differ in specific skills - whether in optics, winemaking, engineering, medicine, or numerous other fields - and in attitudes toward work, toward education, toward violence, and toward life. ...

[Following the fall of the Roman Empire, the] elaborate institutions needed for the continued transmission of a complex civilized culture simply disintegrated, along with the state apparatus that had supported it, because the invaders who were capable of destroying the Roman Empire were not capable of taking it over and running it themselves or of preserving its cultural achievements.
- Thomas Sowell, 'Conquests and Cultures', p. 355

The real wealth of a people is in its ability to retain, transmit, and capitalize upon knowledge. This includes practical skills of agriculture and industry, the basics of literacy and arithmetic, and (no less important) working knowledge of the social landscape and of how to negotiate financial and personal transactions. Capitalizing upon this knowledge means willingness to work hard to achieve results, and willingness to acquire new knowledge and skills when these will prove beneficial. Human society has never not been an information economy.

The English language and its accents - here and there, now and then.

I've always been a bit of a language nerd, so I couldn't resist when I ran across this article (via Pocket): When did Americans lose their British accents? Specifically, the article focuses on rhoticity - what you do with the letter R.

Around the turn of the 18th 19th century, not long after the revolution, non-rhotic speech took off in southern England, especially among the upper and upper-middle classes. It was a signifier of class and status. This posh accent was standardized as Received Pronunciation and taught widely by pronunciation tutors to people who wanted to learn to speak fashionably.

In the United States, the fashion was emulated in port cities that maintained strong trading ties with Britain - Boston, Richmond, Charleston, and Savannah - but failed to catch on in the industrial cities populated by the Scots-Irish and other settlers from Northern Britain.

The title of the article bothers me a little, since it implies that the "British accent" was something that remained constant in England and changed only in America, which isn't necessarily the case. Also it says "Americans" specifically and not "North Americans".

The article doesn't cover Canadian speech, where as far as I know the R is never dropped; that would be an interesting topic in itself. (And it doesn't go into vowel sounds. The RP treatment of the long O sounds like "ew" to American ears; and Canadians do something very weird and mysterious with the "ou" sound.)

But you can hear the difference between modern RP English and what Shakespeare's English might have sounded like, thanks to David and Ben Crystal. Notice, too, that the -tion suffix is pronounced as two syllables in 17th-century English, and not "-shun" as we say it today.

Here's David and Ben reading Shakespeare:

Watch on YouTube

Here's the Proclaimers with a few thoughts on rhoticity:

Watch on YouTube