i want to know everything about accents!!!!?

Question

what is the point of accents?do accents change during a persons lietime?how do they change?did the founding fathers have accents???are accents genetic?how come a mom with a british accent might come to the u.s and have a kid with an american accent???Tell me everything about accents!!!!

also,is this question miscategorized?

Answer 1

Accents the majority of the time come due to the language the person comes up speaking or the area in which they live. Certain languages are known as tone languages (Latin or Celtic are great examples) their speakers rely more on the pitch and volume of speaking to convey meaning than English which is mostly based on a large number of words. This will be reflected in their speach should they learn another language, and in an area where certain languages are predominate. Even somebody who doesn't speak another language may pick up an accent based on how the people around him/her speak. This is due to the human ear, we hear people speaking in a certain manner and without thought we try to make our speach more like theirs. This is the simplest answer I can give, but no accents are not genetic.

Answer 2

You should read up about Memes which gives you insight into how people learn languages and other things by mimicking.
Accents are acquired from the place that you live in. They can change over time either unitentionally or deliberately. They have nothing to do with genes.

The founding fathers would certainly have had accents and the accent which anyone of them had would have depended on what part of England they came. Although England is a small country it has dozens of accents. The West Country accent is different from the London accent. London itself has many accents. Cockney is associated with the East End of London and has some affinities with Irish (because many Irish lived in the East End) and Australia (because many convicts were sent from London's East End to Australia). The is the Geordy Accent of the North, the Liverpudlian and county accents. There is also received English - or the Queens English which used to sound like someone speaking with a plum in their mouth and was used as a method of social discrimination.
Accents have seldom remained the same changing over time so that someone from 10th century Britain would be unintelligible.
In the links below there are up to 681 items showing the difference in English accents.
Accents have always been a means of identifying where someone is from and provides a link with one's home.

Answer 3

accents have no point. Accents may change during a lifetime, but usually it is because they improve. They improve because that person has been in the enviornment longer and have adapted to the way people talk (ex. a chinese man moves to america and can only speak chinese. when he first starts learning english, he will have a heavy accent because all the pronounciation is different than what he is used to. over time, he adapts to the sounds and memorises the language, and then his accent improves) Accents are not genetic. Accents are different depending on where someone was raised. a mother can have a kid with an american accent while she herself has a british accent because she is from britain. she's talked like that her whole life. a child is more substancial to change, and can learn a new accent very easily. this is why it is so common and easy for a five year old kid to be bilingual, rather than an older person to try to learn a new language

Answer 4

Accents are there to make us sound like our friends, family, etc. To blend in, to not be different, to hang with the posse... etc.

Yes they change during a lifetime, sometimes forced, sometimes naturally, and they change by change.

A mom with a british accent will not have a kid with an american accent. The kid will not immitate his friends, peers and everyone else, but keep the british accent as it is whay cooler and he will be so, like popular at, like high school, and be captain of the team.

(ok. The last part was false, the kids accent will be like corrupted.).
n.

Answer 5

Too much to answer dude. No accents are not genetic and yes a person's accent can change over time.

Answer 6

this is a linguistics question. accents do change, but everything changes. i used to talk very childishly with bads grammars and weirds pronunciations, and then i her dem rapaz talkin' n' started talkin' like 'em. just some evidence i gathered

Answer 7

There is no such thing as accents. Heck, ask somebody from the south if they have one and they'll deny it. Ask somebody from the north, same answer. I guess they don't exist.