LovenPeace

Hmmm I hope there isnt another thread of this anywhere... But I realized something ever since I came down here to the states. Why is it, that in America, everyone in different parts of the country speak with a different accent when we are all speaking the same language? Same with in Canada, apparently people from Ontario say "eh" more then people from Alberta, and we all talk differently as well. I can understand some reasons for Ontario, becuase there are more bilingual people there compared to over in Western Canada, and Eastern Canada is where more of the French speakers are, some are in BC as well (which is the farthest province in the west) but not as much as over in the East.

Sooo, opinions?

Phoenix Fires

The same in the UK. Liverpool and Manchester are great examples. They are only ~30 miles apart but they have completely different, distinct accents with their own slang.

People in the north of England pronounce the letter U as the oo in cook (unless you have an extremely deep Liverpool accent then you will pronounce the oo like ooooooooh). People in the south of England and the entirety of Wales pronounce the letter U like "uh".

North Wales and Liverpool share certain aspects of dialect because of migration between the two areas. South Wales and south England share aspects of dialect because of the influx of English people into Wales (with results we are still sore about). North Welsh people are far more nasal with funny accents, to the eternal amusement of the South. Liverpool accents can be pretty nasal too. Coincidence? I think not.

Accents in the UK depend a lot on geography. I think it has a lot to do with migrating groups of people. I am not a linguist and I do not study dialects, although I'd be interested in what other people think. How they all come about I just don't know. Like I said though I think migration has a lot to do with it.

LovenPeace

I really agree with this line, which sparked something in my head. And made me think about how our languages have grown all from 2 trees. And the main tree was Palaeo-indian or something, i forget what its called, I would have to look at my notes but thats all the way up in Canada lol but it has to do with it, and it was derived from the current day middle east. Also a lot of the romance language came from Latin itself, so maybe because languages can spread and grow like this, maybe thats how accents grew and change too? Maybe someday we will form another form of english, and a new language will be born out of English and spread into other branches on the language tree?

Innocencia

You have those accents in every language. For example Germany, where I come from. We have so many different accents, it's insane. Also people in Austria and part of Switzerland talk German, but some of the accents are so strong you can barely recognize the language. In northern Germany we talk mostly high German, very articulate. If you try to learn German you can probably understand us best.
But even within one region of Germany there are so many different accents. One accent itself has hundreds of sub-accents.
I guess "Schwitzerdütsch", the German talked in Switzerland is the hardest to understand, it's barely German.
I can't even begin to describe how the accents in Germany, Austria and Switzerland differ from one another, you have to hear it to understand.

Bullshit theory of the day: Maybe once upon a time people tried to make themselves stand out from people in other regions? Say, there were two families living a few miles away from each other and they didn't like each other, so to not be associated with the other family they tried to talk a little differently?

LovenPeace

I like this bull shit theory. With how people think, I wouldnt be surprised if that could be one of the reasons. I was also wondering before if geography could have anything to do with it?

Raskull

My bullshit theory is this:

People are lazy. An accent is just a slack of the language I think. And people are also creatures of habit, so therefore a common slack of the language is second nature. Some accents are fast and blunt, others are slow and drawn. Depends on how the people in a certain area take short cuts I'd guess. Again, it's just a theory but I think it works for me.

Rocksatyourwindow

This is inevitable in all languages. It has to do with geography, demography, immigration, technology, etc. I'll copy an extract from a book I have:

"...But there has always existed a great diversity in the spoken realizations of our language, in terms of the sounds used in different parts of the country and by different sections of the community. On the one hand, the sounds of the language always being in process of change, there has always been at any one time disparities between the speech sounds of the younger and older generations; the speech of the youngis traditionally characterized by the old as slovenly and debased. On the other hand, especially in those times when communications between regions were poor, it was natural that the speech of all communities should not develop either in the same direction or at the same rate; moreover, different parts of the country might be exposed to different external influences (e.g. foreign invasion) which might influence the phonetic structure of the language in a particular area. English has, therefore, always had its regional pronunciations in the same way that other languages have been pronounced in a variety of ways for basically geographical reasons."

Taken from Gimson's Pronunciation of English.

shards-of-me

I was raised in New England, left in 1978, moved to Florida for 4 years, now live in Colorado....and I still have a strong Boston accent. HA!

LovenPeace

Hmmm Rocksatyourwindow, that is the kind of answer I was looking for. It made me remember something Dr.Ulmer said to me, he told me that depending on out geography, and our surroundings and even our culture it will influence our language, and we will use other words more then others, which can create a change in the sounding of the word. (Phoneme?) Just like here, in Arizona, they say 'about' like 'abow' and in Canada its the full thing we dont cut it off, it sounds as its read.

Rocksatyourwindow

Yeah, it is more complex than we think. Besides, English is not a phonetic language (so no word sounds as it is read! ), i.e., the same letter has more than one pronunciation. Take the letter "a" and its pronunciations in cake, farm, wall, watch. However, Spanish, my mother tongue, is phonetic; that's why it can be hard for us to pronounce English words properly. A Professor at Cambridge University, Skeat, once declared: "I hold firmly to the belief that no one can tell how to pronounce an English word unless he has at some time or other heard it".
Look at this: George Bernard Shaw suggested that the word fish could in fact easily be spelt ghoti: gh as in enough, o as in women and ti as in nation. Perhaps the fact that English has no clear cut rules as to how to pronounce words helped develop different pronunciations too.