• Question: Why are accents different in different parts of countries?

    Asked by danielburton to Betul, Bridget, Ceri-Wyn, Maria on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Bridget Waller

      Bridget Waller answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      GREAT question. One current theory is that accents evolved to help people identify their ‘group’. So, if someone speaks the same way as you, you know you can trust them because they are part of your group, and if they do something wrong you can always keep track of them! If someone has a different accent, that means they come from a different group, and maybe you should be careful. These are just ideas though – we need to test them with clever experiemnts!

    • Photo: Ceri-Wyn Thomas

      Ceri-Wyn Thomas answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      This is a great question! Really interesting! Accents tend to develop through people interacting with other people who themselves have very different accents! This can change the way vowel sounds are pronounced which can cause an accent to become quite different. For example, Welsh, Scottish and Irish settlers greatly influenced the way vowels were pronounced in Canada and Australia. In America many other European settlers- Dutch and Italian for example influenced the sounds of different words. So I guess accents evolve gradually through people interacting! I wonder what the first accent sounded like? I’m wondering whether, as humans settled in different areas of the globe, multiple accents sprung up at first, as people used different sounds to describe different things! These then spread and evolved as more and more people began to interact! At least that’s what I think 😉

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