Why do people have accents?

BRY2K

Slight variations within groups of closely related individuals can be likewise grouped in a range of characteristics distinct from other definable groups of speakers. All speech forms can be thus analyzed across the whole of humanity. Thus "accent" is simply one term we use to refer to some noticeable difference in production. The greater the differences, the more difficult it is for certain speakers to hear others. Those who can hear each other we group together and refer to their set of speech forms as a language or dialect of a larger set of speech forms. Thus accents are not variations from some metaphysical standard handed down from some divine source, but simply a valid form of production of some set of speech sounds within a recognizable set. http://orvillejenkins.com/languages/accents.html Jun 21 08, 10:49 PM