language and accents

[havoc]

how and why did accents develop?

[KARL]

I was once at a lecture where this topic was touched upon. It was suggested, backed up by a degree of evidence, that one particular regional accent was affected by the way industrial noise both drowned out certain sounds plus turned those exposed to it selectively deaf (certain parts of the frequency range not heard). Generally, accents developed through people influencing each other (through copying) in areas which had something of the characteristics of islands (degree of isolation) and local tonal shades took on their own trends in development. The reverse is happening today as the media, travel, etc. cause intermixing and copying of a similar model across regional boundaries. On the other hand, certain characteristics then also get sown and copied over this wide area, creating new oddities. What are seen as speech impediments by some are heard and even copied by others. Examples are "lore and order" (actually law and order), "uzz" (actually us), "he came sickth" (actually he came sixth), etc. The result is another shift in accents. Quite an intersting subject, this one.

[havoc]

thanks for you answer karl, i to find the accent thing an interesting subject and even though i'm no expert i feel that accents were around before the industrial revolution and within britain at least must be somehow connected with, for want of a better description the lanuages of invaders to those particular areas. examples would be : french, roman, influences for the south and possibly german, ( saxon) , viking, scottish for the north what do you you think?

[KARL]

I agree entirely, but to remain different from other regions each would need to have little contact with other accents which would otherwise influence a change, slowly mixing the different accents, as is now happening in the UK. There are lots of very interesting examples around the world. For example, Norse was spoken throughout present day Norway, Sweden and Denmark and crossed the sea to Britain, Ireland, Faeroes and Iceland, plus other territories at some time conquered by vikings. Following a reduction in movement of people locally between Norway and Sweden they developed apart linguistically (remaining unmistakeably similar however), and Denmark even more so. The Faeroes stayed much closer to old Norse, but the place which stayed most isolated through the centuries, Iceland, still has a language that is virtually unchanged Norse. On the other hand, there is not really much difference throughout Iceland in terms of accent, even though distances are large and communities were quite isolated within Iceland. In the UK regional accents possibly have their roots in separate languages (including long dead indiginous ones) as you suggest.