Question: What causes differentiation in people's accents - not as in other people speaking in a certain way around them, but the actual cause of different accents in the first place?
People started out living in small groups without telephones, TVs or any other form of communication with people outside of the group. They were unlikely to spend much time socialising with other groups, or even to meet them if they lived in an isolated area. The only people they would hear and speak to would be each other. So each group developed different sounds to communicate.
When people started to travel more they came into contact with different ways of speaking and different sounds. They would have begun to use the same words in order to communicate with another group, but to pronounce them using their own distinctive sounds. Over time, the accents that we are familiar with today were developed. It’s like evolution because you start out with one thing and it changes over time in response to what’s happening around it.
You would think that, with all the communications technology available today, we would eventually end up with a very similar kind of global accent. Maybe this will happen in the future, but for now people from different countries, or even parts of a country, have very different accents. I guess this is because we learn our accent from the people around us, so you’re likely to make the sounds that you hear most often.
Yes, the reason there are differences is – well, probably random. They remain because people in one place reinforce each other. But the differences are probably just random drifts. To some extent it’s still happening – accents are changing the whole time, but it’s so slow you don’t notice.
It’d be interesting to see if accents are caused by one important person in a community talking in a different way. Very difficult to study. Maybe you could try this – start talking in a new accent, become famous, and see if people copy you. 🙂
One example is interesting – compare the irish accent with the accent in Boston in America. Different, but you can hear they’re similar. And the Boston accent is more similar to Irish than any other part of America. That’s because there’s a shared history, way back, so it makes sense. But because of the physical separation, they have changed over time. Very slowly and randomly.
Aimee is right – a sort of evolution for language. People are influenced by their local environment. For example, people in a hectic environment and fast lifestyle tend to speak quickly. That in turns influences their vowel and consonant sounds. People with a slow relaxed lifestyle tend to speak slowly and their vowel and consonant sounds also change. So the way a single person speaks and sounds, can change during her/his lifetime depending on their environment. The same thing can happen to the way whole groups of people speak, giving rise to regional or ethnic accents.
There are special scientists who study language and accents – they are called linguists. They study how people make sounds in their mouth using different machines. The shape of your mouth when you say a sound is part of what makes an accent.
Did you know that there are different accents around Australia? I don’t know where you are from pineappalelozenge, but I’m from Sydney, so people in other states sound different to me. If you aren’t from Sydney, people in Sydney probably sound different to you.
For example, people in Melbourne have a different way of saying “el” – it sounds like “al”. The best example is George on Masterchef. When he says “celery” it sounds like “salary”, but they are very different words.
People from Adelaide say some words different to Sydneysiders too. They would say “Plarnt” and “Darnce” whereas I would say plant and dance so they rhyme with the word “ant”
It’s sort of like evolution for language.
People started out living in small groups without telephones, TVs or any other form of communication with people outside of the group. They were unlikely to spend much time socialising with other groups, or even to meet them if they lived in an isolated area. The only people they would hear and speak to would be each other. So each group developed different sounds to communicate.
When people started to travel more they came into contact with different ways of speaking and different sounds. They would have begun to use the same words in order to communicate with another group, but to pronounce them using their own distinctive sounds. Over time, the accents that we are familiar with today were developed. It’s like evolution because you start out with one thing and it changes over time in response to what’s happening around it.
You would think that, with all the communications technology available today, we would eventually end up with a very similar kind of global accent. Maybe this will happen in the future, but for now people from different countries, or even parts of a country, have very different accents. I guess this is because we learn our accent from the people around us, so you’re likely to make the sounds that you hear most often.
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Yes, the reason there are differences is – well, probably random. They remain because people in one place reinforce each other. But the differences are probably just random drifts. To some extent it’s still happening – accents are changing the whole time, but it’s so slow you don’t notice.
It’d be interesting to see if accents are caused by one important person in a community talking in a different way. Very difficult to study. Maybe you could try this – start talking in a new accent, become famous, and see if people copy you. 🙂
One example is interesting – compare the irish accent with the accent in Boston in America. Different, but you can hear they’re similar. And the Boston accent is more similar to Irish than any other part of America. That’s because there’s a shared history, way back, so it makes sense. But because of the physical separation, they have changed over time. Very slowly and randomly.
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Aimee is right – a sort of evolution for language. People are influenced by their local environment. For example, people in a hectic environment and fast lifestyle tend to speak quickly. That in turns influences their vowel and consonant sounds. People with a slow relaxed lifestyle tend to speak slowly and their vowel and consonant sounds also change. So the way a single person speaks and sounds, can change during her/his lifetime depending on their environment. The same thing can happen to the way whole groups of people speak, giving rise to regional or ethnic accents.
0
There are special scientists who study language and accents – they are called linguists. They study how people make sounds in their mouth using different machines. The shape of your mouth when you say a sound is part of what makes an accent.
Did you know that there are different accents around Australia? I don’t know where you are from pineappalelozenge, but I’m from Sydney, so people in other states sound different to me. If you aren’t from Sydney, people in Sydney probably sound different to you.
For example, people in Melbourne have a different way of saying “el” – it sounds like “al”. The best example is George on Masterchef. When he says “celery” it sounds like “salary”, but they are very different words.
People from Adelaide say some words different to Sydneysiders too. They would say “Plarnt” and “Darnce” whereas I would say plant and dance so they rhyme with the word “ant”
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