[Ari Ben Canaan]

I have thought on and on about this in my free time, but I still can't understand why people of different nations have different accents.

I've heard some people say it has something to do with the climate, geography and all manner of other things.

Yet, they always seem stumped when I pose these questions :

The English invaded North America and a lot of modern day Americans have an accent that completely differs from their English ancestors.

If the 'Out of Africa' hypothesis holds true then shouldnt we all have the same accent as our prehistoric ancestors ?

Anyone willing to enlighten me ?

[sicarius1992]

(Original post by Ari Ben Canaan)
I have thought on and on about this in my free time, but I still can't understand why people of different nations have different accents.

I've heard some people say it has something to do with the climate, geography and all manner of other things.

Yet, they always seem stumped when I pose these questions :

The English invaded North America and a lot of modern day Americans have an accent that completely differs from their English ancestors.

If the 'Out of Africa' hypothesis holds true then shouldnt we all have the same accent as our prehistoric ancestors ?

Anyone willing to enlighten me ?

Interesting question

Perhaps it has something to do with other communities trying to say words from different languages and failing? A lot of languages are mixtures of two or more others so it could be from errors. I'm just guessing though, I have no idea really

[chellzey]

I've always wondered this too. I will keep posted.

[garethDT]

(Original post by Ari Ben Canaan)
I have thought on and on about this in my free time, but I still can't understand why people of different nations have different accents.

I've heard some people say it has something to do with the climate, geography and all manner of other things.

Yet, they always seem stumped when I pose these questions :

The English invaded North America and a lot of modern day Americans have an accent that completely differs from their English ancestors.

If the 'Out of Africa' hypothesis holds true then shouldnt we all have the same accent as our prehistoric ancestors ?

Anyone willing to enlighten me ?

Because they speak different languages obviously. The range of sounds you can produce is limited to the language and accent that you are brought up with. Up until the age of 12, you can pick up any language or accent provided you are given enough exposure to it, past puberty it is much more difficult.

How do you know that the modern day American accent is completely different to 17th century English? There are actually many similarities between the vowel sounds of american english and irish english, which makes sense when you think about the amount of irish people who migrated there.

[Chucklefiend]

Many similarities can be drawn between accent development and evolution in Biology. Much like a mutation (or an error) spontaneously occurs in the genetic code of living organisms, an error in the pronounciation of a word can soon spread through a population until it becomes the norm.

In your example of America, you fail to metion that although the majority of early immigrants were English, there was subsequently large scale immigration from all over europe and then from Africa. These diverse populations, whose native language was not English, had to learn English as a second language and thus were more prone to make mistakes, or have difficulty pronouncing certain words. These errors were soon assimilated into the American English language we know today.

[The_fantastic_D]

If we're talking about English here then it's important to remember that the language wasn't made overnight, nobody sat down and thought "I want to create a new language and everyone shall speak it and I shall name it English". People in England used to speak completely different languages depending on what part of the country they were living in and without modern transport links the people in Yorkshire had no contact at all with people in Cornwall, they were basically different languages. It is only relatively recently that as England has become one big unified country that we all speak the same language. The regional accents which we have now are just leftovers from the original languages which our ancestors all spoke. In the future as England becomes increasingly more unified then it is likely that accent will be eliminated altogether and we will all speak the same, regardless of where about in the country we are from.

[*ballade*]

But why are there different regional accents? The language is the same...

[Cynthi007]

1. accents give identity
2. accents seperaqte people from each other --> an accent can create a border between two groups or can create the feeling of coimmunity --> the border between 2 linguistic phenomena is called isoglosse. you can check differences in a linguistic map
3. accents develop because of seperated groups

[Ari Ben Canaan]

(Original post by garethDT)
Because they speak different languages obviously. The range of sounds you can produce is limited to the language and accent that you are brought up with. Up until the age of 12, you can pick up any language or accent provided you are given enough exposure to it, past puberty it is much more difficult.

How do you know that the modern day American accent is completely different to 17th century English? There are actually many similarities between the vowel sounds of american english and irish english, which makes sense when you think about the amount of irish people who migrated there.

How do you explain the strong Texan accent ?

It represents A big diversion from any English accent; 17th or 20th century.

[Ari Ben Canaan]

(Original post by Cynthi007)
1. accents give identity
2. accents seperaqte people from each other --> an accent can create a border between two groups or can create the feeling of coimmunity --> the border between 2 linguistic phenomena is called isoglosse. you can check differences in a linguistic map
3. accents develop because of seperated groups

Lets a Group A of early humanoids exists in prehostoric South Africa. They split into three sub groups.

One which eventually reaches Europe, one remaining in South Africa and the other moving into Asia.

In this highly simplified scenario which represents the Out of Africa theory all subsequent offspring of the groups should have the same accent.

This is obviously not the case. Why ?

[Ari Ben Canaan]

(Original post by The_fantastic_D)
If we're talking about English here then it's important to remember that the language wasn't made overnight, nobody sat down and thought "I want to create a new language and everyone shall speak it and I shall name it English". People in England used to speak completely different languages depending on what part of the country they were living in and without modern transport links the people in Yorkshire had no contact at all with people in Cornwall, they were basically different languages. It is only relatively recently that as England has become one big unified country that we all speak the same language. The regional accents which we have now are just leftovers from the original languages which our ancestors all spoke. In the future as England becomes increasingly more unified then it is likely that accent will be eliminated altogether and we will all speak the same, regardless of where about in the country we are from.

Eons ago a group of humans must have colonised Britain and they must have spoken a single language with one accent.

If they split up into what we know as the Celts why id their accent change ?

[Ari Ben Canaan]

(Original post by Chucklefiend)
Many similarities can be drawn between accent development and evolution in Biology. Much like a mutation (or an error) spontaneously occurs in the genetic code of living organisms, an error in the pronounciation of a word can soon spread through a population until it becomes the norm.

In your example of America, you fail to metion that although the majority of early immigrants were English, there was subsequently large scale immigration from all over europe and then from Africa. These diverse populations, whose native language was not English, had to learn English as a second language and thus were more prone to make mistakes, or have difficulty pronouncing certain words. These errors were soon assimilated into the American English language we know today.

I agree with you. I had known that large scale immigration wouldve affected accents especially in major American cities like NYC.

[Fjarskafinn]

Interaction between two (or more) groups of people speaking different languages?

I've personally noticed that the Scouse and Cumbrian accents are quite similar to some Norwegian accents. Also, the Geordie accent is quite similar to Danish. Looking up a video of someone speaking Danish on YouTube is like listening to a Geordie speaking some strange language (I don't know Danish yet.. ).
Old Norse and Old English certainly came into contact in the 9th-11th centuries, and if some Norse words made it into the English language, then surely the accent would stick around in some settlers, and subsquently their children.

[The_fantastic_D]

(Original post by Ari Ben Canaan)
Eons ago a group of humans must have colonised Britain and they must have spoken a single language with one accent.

If they split up into what we know as the Celts why id their accent change ?

I'm not sure if anyone did actually colonise the WHOLE of Britain before then. When people came across they colonised small areas which is why the language was all different.

[Cynthi007]

(Original post by Ari Ben Canaan)
Lets a Group A of early humanoids exists in prehostoric South Africa. They split into three sub groups.

One which eventually reaches Europe, one remaining in South Africa and the other moving into Asia.

In this highly simplified scenario which represents the Out of Africa theory all subsequent offspring of the groups should have the same accent.

This is obviously not the case. Why ?

because they have less contact to their relatives and adopt the accent, which is surrounding them. to keep up an accent it takes at least a small group of active speakers in contact with each other.

language ans accents are learned or acquired but they are not a genetical aspect.

but good question. I like people who are using their brains.

[Bobbler]

(Original post by Fjarskafinn)
Interaction between two (or more) groups of people speaking different languages?

I've personally noticed that the Scouse and Cumbrian accents are quite similar to some Norwegian accents. Also, the Geordie accent is quite similar to Danish. Looking up a video of someone speaking Danish on YouTube is like listening to a Geordie speaking some strange language (I don't know Danish yet.. ).
Old Norse and Old English certainly came into contact in the 9th-11th centuries, and if some Norse words made it into the English language, then surely the accent would stick around in some settlers, and subsquently their children.

Geordies also sound a lot like the Dutch speaking English :P... ever heard a Dutch person say boat? They say it like Geordies ("bert") :')

[Redkicker]

USA is heavily influenced by the immigrants. Most people there speak English, but most Americans today are not originally from England. There's even more Germans in the USA than English.

So the immigrants who started speaking English spoke it differently. I know New York accents are heavily influenced by Irish and Yiddish.

[diogenes]

I'm Indian so when I last visited India, I kinda realised why accents develop.
People know an Indian accent but my parents can tell which part of India a person is from from their Indian accent. This is, as others have pointed out, due to the different languages spoken. Each language has different main sounds and weightings on certain sounds. So when in the past, English was written in a specific person's language, it wouldn't actually be too much like English; you can't EXACTLY replicate the perfect pronunciation without, well, written English. So this is why, I think that accents developed.

[iq101]

I wanna know why too !
I guess it has something to do with accents reflecting their 'native' language which their ancestors spoke.

[_vox_]

Good question... I always thought it was to do with times when people lived in small communities, and were isolated from the rest of the country most of the time. So for example, a group with the same language colonised Britain but then settled into communties across the country. The lack of communication meant that over time each community developed a varying way of speaking, originating from the common language but becoming more individual. That's why accents aren't normally so strong now, because there is so much more communication between people and you're influenced by TV etc as you grow up, not just the accents around you.

Kind of vague I know That's just the way I've always thought about it, I don't know why