Why do most europeans have different accents than Americans?!
Question:
Why do most europeans have different accents than Americans?
Just wondering.
Answers:
Don't get put off by it sounding a really silly question. There is some fascinating science behind all of that. I'm not across all of it and I'm not a linguist.
In the Australian country areas, there's a tendency to talk with the mouth almost closed ... some think to stop the flies getting in ya mouth mate. An article about the New Zealand accent suggested that the entire accent flowed from one town to the rest of the country.
A lot is to do with the heritage and the sounds of the original language spoken - Americans had a lot of Irish influence. Their language was originally Gaelic and if you listen to Europeans, the Irish are closest to a US accent.
Germans speaking English use the sounds of some consonants that they are familar with like 'V' instead of 'W'. Even fluent English speakers from Germany will still use the rather harsh germanic tones. So one could imagine that races derived from germanic people will tend to have those harsh tones unless influenced.
We also adopt the sound of people with influence - politicians, entertainers and those around us ... geez mate I remember when Mel Gibson had an Australian accent!!
In summary though accents tend to be most distinctive in the most isolated places.... there are no outside influences to bring them back to the norm. With Globalisation will we all end up soundin like George Dubya?