Question: Why do people from different places have different accents?

Damien Hall answered on 16 Jun 2011:

That’s a really good question – and not many scientists know the answer!

Often, accent differences can be to do with the history of a place, and what sort of people used to live there in the past. So, if you know anyone older from Yorkshire, you might have noticed that sometimes they say “thee” or just “ee” when they mean “you” for just one person, but they say “you” when they are talking to more than one person. That might be because, about 1000 – 1200 years ago, the Vikings lived in all that part of Northern England, and they spoke a language that made a difference between the two different kinds of “you”. (English used to, but most people’s English doesn’t any more – if you know the Our Father, you might have learnt the form of it that includes the word “thy”, which is the old word for “you” for just one person, because the prayer is talking to just one person or being – God.)

One thing we do know is that, in the UK, the number of different accents for different places is becoming less over time. So the South West of England used to have its own really distinctive accent, but now the young people from there sound like young people from the South East. Also, at the moment, the Geordie (Newcastle) accent is different from the accent of the North West, but some people think that might not be true any more in a generation or so’s time. That’s why, if you really want to hear different accents, you should ask older people!

In my part of linguistics, we tend to concentrate on seeing the accents that are there and describing them. If we can say WHY they are there, that’s great, but we don’t often do it.