Travis Atkinson

Fred Armisen breaks down the fascinating evolution of conversational accents and speech patterns decade by decade on The Tonight Show. "I've been working on some impressions of accents through the decades" 1900s: "the manufacturer and the farmer, people thought it was very British, but it's actually very Dutch and German" 1920s: "They start getting very aware of the microphone" 1950s: "It starts to flatten out a little bit. I'd like to on a Friday night, I'd like to read a book on a Friday night" 1960s: "Diverges a little bit where there's an official sort of news hour... and then the sort of people in interviews looked like they were in shock" 1970s: "There's a whisper to it. There's a sort of confusion as to what's going on, there's a whisper" 1990s: "Very kind of laid back, wow, the nineties laid back, yeah, very sarcastic and ironic, wow" 2000s: "You start to hear the vocal fry... guys are in a meeting and they can sort of hear that throughout when they're talking on a conference call"