Accents
'Howdy, partner!', 'Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!', 'G’day, mate'. Greetings from around the globe – and all in English. English has become the language of the world – but how did that happen, and how can one language sound so different in different places?
English Language History
English as we know it has developed for about 1500 years. It is a part of the West Germanic languages – along with Dutch, Danish, Frisian, and German. It developed as a separate language as Germanic people started settling permanently on the British Isles. The form of the English language that was spoken in England until about AD 1100 is called Old English. English has been heavily influenced by Old Norse as a result of the Viking invasions. Also, the arrival of the French-speaking Normans in 1066 had an enormous effect on the language.
Keywords
- language (n.)
- influence (v.)
- colonise (v.)
- pronunciation (n.)
- accent (n.)
British Colonisation
Until about AD 1600, English was not even spoken in all of Britain. But then Britain started colonising the world and the English language arrived in Ireland, in what is now the United States, in India, and in the Bahamas, Jamaica and many other Caribbean Islands, as well as Honduras, Nicaragua and Colombia, which remain English-speaking to this day. Over the next centuries, the same thing happened in Scotland and Wales and on the other side of the world, in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zambia, etc.
English Takes Over
The countries that Britain colonised had languages before English arrived. And as a result of the clash between the old and the new languages, different English accents have developed in every single colonised country. Both words, spelling and the pronunciation differ. Though these countries are now independent from Britain, many have kept English as their main language.
Local Dialects
Some accents have developed into different recognised forms of the language, e.g. North American, Caribbean, Southern African, and Australasian English. All of these, again, have different local dialects – a person from Texas and one from New York surely do not sound the same. Just like a young lad from Glasgow does not sound anything like a true lady from London's posh West End.