Where do Accents and Pronounciations come from, why are we all different from a London to a US English.?

Question

I have always wondered if it is the climate that could affect how we pronounce words or is it something else in the air, how come people/ pilgrims or whoever from England back about 400 years ago can migrate to America and setup land there and take up a different accent rather than the one they would have previously had. I am talking about the first people with different accents in english > err try to make sense of what I am saying

Answer 1

Language is a living thing. Every influx of migrants brings new words and new pronunciation. In the UK we have been invaded so many times, our language is a mish mash of word origins and accents, some of which are so thick they sound like a different language. Depending on the invaders their influence is stronger in different parts of the country.

The US has such a large cultural mix that the language is sometimes confusingly similar, yet amusingly different.


It has been shown that birds also have regional accents. A cookoo up north sounds different from a bird down south. And yes I do mean the feathered kind.

Answer 2

To begin with , there was a very early attempt to make the American Language different from English. We have had different influences on the way we speak, as well. Its not something that happened immediately.

Answer 3

U.S.A".English"is a different language to UK.English.check out the spelling of many words in both versions of English.The USA accepted millions of immigrants from all over the world ;to many of these people English was a new language and as a result became very different from UK.English.

Answer 4

When English was voted to be the official language in the USA, there were actually more German than English in the country.

Answer 5

when one group is powerful, other people imitate them. including the way that they speak. for example, when the king Georges came from Germany to Britain, all the sycophants copied their accent - that's where the posh English accent comes from.