Alright New More Explained Question on Accents?

Question

I want to know why do we have different accents??? I know we all have accents. I am not interested in the West Coast or Mid West... Just the North and South... Can someone tell me the cause of the different accents..... Thanks!

Answer 1

I read somewhere that people in the south got their accent from the English convicts who were transported there.

Answer 2

I'd think it is because each area of the country has a concentration of different ethnic backgrounds. Although each area of the country may have some common ethnic heritage coming from Europe, the south has more hispanic influence as well as french influence (like in Louisiana you can detect some hints of a french accent along with a southern accent with most folks from Louisiana) The north has a lot of german/irish/polish/ English influence but in the New York area, there are a lot of ethnicities that influence the area. Of course, I'm not saying that there aren't exceptions, but these cultures influence the general area over a course of time. The general population adapt to the style of speaking even if some people don't know much of the language. Also, in the U.S. history, there was a time where the folks in the north stayed in the north and those in the south stayed in the south (like during The Civill War) So there was very little "blending" of accents between the north and south because contact was limited. Now, I think this is starting to change now that most people have cars and access to airplanes because there are people with "light" accents and people with "heavy" accents. So there is my explaination. I hope these comments don't offend anyome I'm just speculating on history here.

Answer 3

Accents are generally influenced by the languages originally spoken in an area and/or by the origins of the populations that have migrated into an area. An examination of the history of the source of early immigrants will reveal a great deal about where the accents came from.

Answer 4

Different environmental isolations will cause accents to change slightly from one region another. Forexample, living in Ireland, I've noticed at least 5 different accents within the surrounding 20 miles.

So, Southern accents, while having a few things in common, are obviously going to start to deviate from one another, from the strong Texas accent, to the breathy Georgia accent. However, in listening to their commonalities, I've always thought they had many similarities to the Mexican/Spanish accents that populate the border, with their prominent "ah" sounds in their speech.

The east coast accents, from New York to Chicago to Boston are all related to each other again, and find their roots from the English colonies, and can be heard in their common "oh ah" overtones, with New York borrowing a bit from the many other cultures that have landed there, such as Italian, Jewish and even Irish.

Beyond that, it just boils down to community development over time. =)

Answer 5

'Cause you live in different places. Its very much like evolution. Distance causes some separation of the groups and dominant characteristic would define the accent. Dominance may result from a substantial immigrant group (eg Italians in New Jersey) or another powerful factor (eg wealth, education and social status in an area may cause it to be desirable to enunciate words in a particular way).

Answer 6

Part of that is due to early immigration patterns. In one area, you might have a lot of German immigrants while in another area you'd have mostly Scot-Irish. Since people didn't travel as frequently way back when, and since there was no television to spread things around, the spoken language in different regions would evolve differently.

JMB

Answer 7

Try the site below.

Answer 8

Look here : http://www.linguistlist.org/ask-ling/accent.html

Answer 9

Different environments, that is all there is to it.