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Watch: The Americanisation of Prince Harry’s accent, from public schoolboy to Cali slang

Video clips from the last few decades show how the Royal has changed the way he talks, particularly since moving to California

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He was born in London and educated at Eton, but just four years after moving to California in self-imposed exile, the Duke of Sussex appears to have lost his British accent and adopted an American twang.
It was a two-minute long sketch with musician Jelly Roll released this week that has convinced some that Prince Harry has gone Cali cool.
“It sounds like Prince Harry is losing his British accent,” commented one X user, while another wrote: “Every time Prince Harry speaks … his British accent sounds more diluted to make way for the American accent”.
In a video to promote the Invictus Games in which the Duke pretends to get a tattoo, he uses the distinctly American term: “Screw it, let’s do it”.
Calling the tattoo artist “Dude”, the Prince then exclaims “You put your name on my neck?!” his voice rising at the end of the sentence in a distinctly American way. “Are you serious?” he asks, with hard r’s.
He later appeared to suggest the tattoo could be put on his “ass”, rather than the English “arse”.
The apparent overhaul of the royal’s public schoolboy diction and vocabulary has left many fascinated, among them Anthony Shuster, a communication coach and accent specialist.
Mr Shuster explained that, even as a young royal, Harry’s speech style showed that he had a more laid-back style of speaking and was prone to reflect others’ accents back to them.
Now, whether through the influence of his American wife or moving thousands of miles away from home, the Duke seems to have fully embraced his “Californication”.
He habitually swaps his t’s for d’s and addresses people as “you guys” without seeming to be self-conscious. What used to be “good” in Britain is now “awesome!” in America.
It is a change which has been easy to track with the Prince’s countless public appearances.
In 2005, at the tender age of 21, Prince Harry spoke to the press alongside his brother Prince William and their father at the Swiss ski resort of Klosters.
Already, according to Mr Shuster, there was a generational distinction between father and sons.
“You notice that there’s a huge difference between the way the King speaks and the way these guys speak,” Mr Shuster told The Telegraph.
“The king speaks what I suppose most people would still think of as the King’s English.
“It’s somewhat of an antique sound where there’s not a great deal of space in your mouth.
“It’s fairly well crafted. The sound is coming out, the diction is good, they are not dropping any ‘t’s anywhere.”
He added: “What you’re hearing from Harry in these first few clips is what I tend to think of as a Made in Chelsea accent,” referencing the television show following the lives of glamorous 20-somethings who live in one of the most affluent boroughs of London.
“It’ s not exactly the stiff upper lip, it’s a sort of inert upper lip. There’s very little articulation at all,” he added.
In another clip, this time from 2004, during the Duke’s gap year where he spent eight weeks in Lesotho, Mr Shuster says the Prince’s accent differs from what you would normally expect from a British royal.
The young Prince Harry says: “Yeah it’s learning about the culture, isn’t it. Different country – not everybody knows about it.”
“He’s dropping his t’s…There’s a lot written about how posh kids try to sound less posh by dropping their t’s,” says Mr Shuster.
The accent expert said that in this case, the Prince retains his “Old Etonian sound”, just a slightly less harsh version of it.
However, in a clip from 2016, the Prince’s accent is very different from his father’s and other, older, members of the family.
Again Mr Shuster noted a few subtle changes, telling the Telegraph: “It isn’t cut glass, it isn’t like his father” and noting that even here, the final “t” in start has disappeared, while the Duke’s pronunciation of “making” becomes “makin’”.
Interestingly, it was in 2016 when Prince Harry first met Meghan Markle, now the Duchess of Sussex, on a blind date.
By the time of his marriage in 2018 another shift has become noticeable.
In a clip introducing baby Archie to the world for the first time, the proud father says: “Wow, he’s already got a little bit of facial hair as well.
“Wonderful, Guys, thank you very much, thank you for your time.”
His crisp “t” in the pronunciation of “little” has become a “d” , making it “liddle”.
“That’s something that’s quite distinctly American, is to let your final ‘t’ sort of soften to a ‘d’,” says Mr Shuster , adding: “Writer and rider – someone who rides a horse – sound the same.”
The change, he added, could be partly down to the media.
“We’re all used to watching American television and listening to American music, but now there’s so much online content,” he said.
Mr Shuster added that it was not uncommon to hear the ‘t’ sound dropped for a ‘d’ in British speech patterns nowadays as it is simply easier to say.
As well as shifts in his diction, the royal’s vocabulary and intonation have become more Americanised.
Jennifer Dorman, a linguistics expert, noted just a year into the Duke’s move to the US in 2020 that he was sounding increasingly Americanised.
In podcast recordings with his wife in 2021, Harry started peppering his speech with phrases including “awesome” and “you guys”, she noted.
“It could be that Prince Harry has started to borrow American phrases and words in order to fit in and be understood better by the American press” Ms Dorman told Cosmopolitan.
“This could become so habitual that he uses these words when speaking to Brits and Americans alike.
“Or he may just be mimicking his wife: interacting at a close level with someone all the time can cause us to pick up their speaking habits.”
Some of the “hip” language, as seen in the tattoo sketch , may also be more of a generational shift, Mr Shuster says.
“I think posh youngish men of his generation do talk like that. They do call each other, man, they do call each other mate. They do call each other bro.”
Consciously or unconsciously – to the delight of many Americans – the prince does appear to be becoming more Californian.
Mr Shuster suggests that this could actually have been helped by his royal upbringing.
“Reflecting back what’s in front of you is a social skill,” he says, adding that for most of the royal’s life he would have had to hone in on others in a “rigorous way”.
It means that the Prince’s Californian lilt, while being influenced by his surroundings and his family, could also simply be a way of making it easier to connect with his audience.
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