Why do people in the Southern U.S. talk differently than those in the North?

Answer 1

My thoughts on the subject:

It has to do with the language spoken before English was learned. Everyone who learns a second language has an accent of some sort. Get a person who speaks French, learning English, and you get French accented English. Now mix that in with someone who speaks Spanish accented English, and you get another way of pronouncing words. Now take a kid and raise them to speak heavily accented English, accented with a bit of French, and maybe a Native American language or two.

Now you have dialects. Take an entire community of French speaking people, who also learned English, and they will raise their kids to speak French accented English.

Now, in the south, where a lot of French settled, toss in a lot of black people who spoke languages native to many African countries.Now you have English speaking, French Speaking, Nigerian Speaking people, and more. Gradually, all these languages blended and became a southern dialect, and even in the south there are people with different dialects.

Now, take a state like Pennsylvania. There you have a lot of German speaking settlers who speak German accented English. Move to other states and the accent changes.

Now go to England and you'll find various accents too, and England is a tiny country compared to the USA. Dialects are how we recognize the area a person comes from.

There is no one way to pronounce a word in a given language, even tho' a dictionary might give one way. The dictionary was only written in the last century or so, but people have been talking a lot longer.

Heck, I live in California, and people from the East Coast speak a different way than people here. Just go from country to city in my state, and the way some people talk, changes. If we all sounded the same, it would be boring.

Answer 2

Simple answer -- they always did!

Some interesting theories so far -- and these sorts of things do account for dialectal differences. . . . but they're not really the answer in this case.

The ROOT of the main dialectal regions in the U.S. is NOT differences caused by living apart, nor the influence of settlers from non-English speaking lands. Rather it goes back to differences that the 17th-18th century English colonists brought with them.

There were FOUR main migrations of English speaking people to America from the British Isles during the colonial period (1607-1775), each dominated by a different group from a different part of the British Isles. Each group had not only a distinctive dialect, but various other disstinctive "folkways" that they brought with them and wish continued to shape the original regions where they settled as well as the places their offspring later migrated to as they spread across the country.

The four waves:

1. New England - Puritan Migrations (1629-40) from East Anglia
2. Coastal South (Virginia to Florida) -Cavalier Migrations (1642-1675) from South England
3. New Jersey, Pennsylvania - Quaker migrations (1675-1725)from the Midlands area of England (near Whales)
4. Appalachian English - Scots-Irish migrations (1715-1775), mostly English people from Britain's Celtic fringe (North England, Northern Ireland)

http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/AmericanDialects.htm

For a study of the OTHER folkways of these four groups see David Hackett Fischer's book *Albion's Seed*

Answer 3

People in the north of a country (Britain & US) have developed a quick and short way of saying things, because of the cold temperatures. Particularly, in the old days they didn't want to hang around outside. Whereas, in the south, they tend draw out their words (southern drawl), because it is warmer.

Answer 4

Because in olden times they lived apart and rarely communicated to each other so within the communities the way certain words and inflections were sounded evolved differently. It happens everywhere, think about how different a Essex accent sounds from a scottish accent.

Answer 5

Regional differences. Sicilians speak differently--MUCH differently--than Northern Italians.

The New England area had more immigrants during the turn of the century, while the south just had the Latin immigrants to deal with (though not as much of a problem as they are now).

It's simply regional differences.

Answer 6

An Essex accent sounds different. Full stop.

Answer 7

Genetics.

Answer 8

Its the same all around the world

Answer 9

We figured out how to talk using more than just our noses. C'mon Northern buddies, you can do it!