but one of the things in it particularly amused me.. the notion that our modern American stereotypical regional accents even existed in those days.. I realize that the people indeed originated from different places from the Old World and spoke different languages... but I figured that in the mid-1700s; only a 100 years after people got settled.. that they were still speaking the accents from wherever their people came from.... or that at the least any regional accents of the day wouldn't be so similar to what they are now.
Then reading this made me chortle with delight.
BF wrote:
During the first visible Eclipse Saturn is retrograde: For which Reason the Crabs will go sidelong, and the Ropemakers backward. The Belly will wag before and the A-- shall sit down first. Mercury shall have a state in these Affairs, and so confound the Speech of the People, that when a Pensilvanian would say PANTHER, he shall say PAINTER. When a New-Yorker thinks to say (THIS) he shall say ( DISS) and the People in New-England and Cape- May will not be able to say ( cow) for their Lives but will be forc'd to say ( KEOW) by a certain involuntary Twist in the Root of their Tongues
http://books.google.com/books?id=FvoL_BQ0YOwC&dq=poor+richard%27s+almanack&pg=PP1&ots=iC9lZPRimh&sig=YcZ4YubvChPreYqN15VF47Ofkrs&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=poor+richard%27s+almanack&spell=1&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail#PPP1,M1
from the peanut gallery