Along with wondering Who Decided? I often wonder, How’d It Happen? How did the myriad of immigrants accents become the broad twang of the New York accent? How’d it happen that the French speak French and the Germans speak German if, theoretically, all of mankind evolved from one place and one species?
How did those same immigrants who moved to the southern part of the United States start speaking in their accents? Boston? Yorkshire? Northern Ireland?
How do accents evolve? How do they start? Do they change over time?
And how are accents learned? I speak with an American accent, Simon with a Northern Irish/English/Scottish one. What kind of accent will our kids have? Combination? Northern Irish as that is what they will hear most often? But we’ll be the ones teaching them to talk.
I can’t even tell you how Simon achieved his accent. His parents are both Scottish, his father speaks with a definite burr, his mother sounds more English to me. But one thing I have learned in my time here is that I have a hard time differentiating between the United Kingdom accents. Someone will call at work for the CEO and not leave their name and I’ll tell him and he’ll ask me what kind of accent they had. I can never tell him, unless it is *not* UK.
So…How’d it Happen?
Well my Dad is from near London, and my Mum is from Hull/Leeds (but with a mother from London) and I sound more East Yorkshire than either London, Hull or Leeds.