More Things I Think About While You're On Your Cell Phone

Ever wonder why we don't have British accents here in America?

Think about it. All of the early colonists were from England. They established settlements here in America and the towns that survived were eventually populated by more people from the UK. Sure, there were people born here who never set foot in England, but their parents were English. Their grandparents were English. Their neighbors were English. Every person those first Americans knew were either from England or descended from people from there.

Our speech is formed and modeled by the folks around us. We make sounds really out of mimicry more than anything else. A child of deaf parents, ones with altered speech as a result of their deafness, will grow up with slightly altered speech themselves. If you live in the south, you're going to speak with a southern accent because every one around you talks that way.

So then why don't all of us have British accents?

Someone always tells me that our accents have faded... that that's what happens over time. Really? Did they fade in England? Have they disappeared in other parts of the world too? Then I'm told that because America is full of people from so many different places, we've developed a neutral accent as a result... kind of a mix of a thousand accents, which results in nothing discernible in our speech. Really? I'm pretty sure that England has just as diverse a population as we do here. It's not like people don't travel and relocate there from all over the world. So what gives?

Bloody hell, man!