I think that some, like Minnesota’s, are due to the influence of the original language of the settlers (there, German/Scandanavian). But that doesn’t seem an explanation for ones like Boston or Brooklyn - too many different immigrant languages and (in the case of Brooklyn’s, at least), it doesn’t appear to match the cadences or tonality of any foreign language I’m aware of.
Sua
I think accents and dialects develop in isolation–geographic and cultural–and over time. In the old days, places like Brooklyn were actually villages with their own economies. Generations of people could grow up there, being able to do all their essential business-of-life stuff without leaving the area. This leads to a sort of microenvironment of speech patterns with minimal outside influence. As you mention, a core of immigrants with a common language (itself influenced by regional dialect differences) would usually be the start–but time is also a factor; people have to stay put. An ancient city like London, England, has very distinct regional dialects because the city has absorbed entire villages and towns which maintain their original characters.
(Insularity also preserves and mutates cultural traits. Thus the Irish who settled in Appalacia brought the roots of so-called “hillbilly” accents AND the roots of bluegrass music.)
Real old-timers here in San Francisco will tell you that before World War II there were several distinct “district” accents here as well. We had the Italian-influenced North Beach, the old-family Nob Hill, Chinatown of course, and also the Irish “south of the slot” (Market Street), among several others. New mobility from neighborhood to neighborhood and booming population served to sort of homogenize things however.
I recently took a medical anthropology course in which the professor mentioned that accents become ingrained in infants before they can speak. Take a kid, have culture X raise him with baby talk, and whisk him off to culture Y before he starts yammering. Once he does start, he’ll have at least some of the accent normally associated with adults of culture X. I thought that was pretty interesting, but, unfortunately, don’t have any further info to back it up.
</slight hijack>
Regarding the OP, how about amalgamation instead of isolation? Say Brooklyn was settled by the Irish and the Italians (I’m making this up) and the Bronx was mostly Polish and French. Each of these cultures have their own distinct accents when speaking English. Thrown together, they (especially the kids) would presumably pick up some of the accent peculiarities of their neighbors. Thus the creation of an accent particular to the region. It seems to me that this could be tested by picking a distinctive regional accent and seeing if it is duplicated in another region with a similar immigration pattern.
-ellis
I like both your points, and probably both are applicable in different places.
But here’s a stumper: what about the “accentless” accent of the Mid-West? I don’t see how either of your points account for that. The mid-west is too large an area to be considered isolated, its had lots of immigrant of varying backgrounds, and it doesn’t appear to be an amalgamation, instead it appears to be an absence.
Sua
Sua,
It’s my understanding (keep in mind that I’m only in my first year of linguistic study) that region has a lot to do with it. In the past, accents have been self-propegating- people tended to stay in the general area where they were born, and their children picked up their own speech habits.
The biggest problem I see, honestly, is the word “accent.” You’ve met me, and I don’t think that you’d say I have a Delaware accent. Part of this is because I’ve had speech therapy, part of it is because I’ve worked to get rid of it.
However, when I’m at home, I speak with a stronger DE accent than when I’m not. You’ll find this is true with most any group. When conversting with someone from your own region, especially if one is not currently in that region, an accent will strengthen. It’s a subconscious sign of solidarity and identity.
The way we speak is entirely depending on both the speaker and the addressee. I speak differently to my parents than I do my brother than I do my teacher and so on. In reality, we all have a wide variety of “registers” that we use every day.
It’s been suggested that cultivation of accents can have a lot to do with creating an identity. In New Guinea, the place in the world for diverse and original languages, there are several languages which are in all respects virtually identical… but the speakers swear that they are different languages, and more also, that they can tell the difference between them.
Accents vary by region, town, socioeconomic group, and even gender. I disagree with your assertation of an “accentless” Mid-West. A person from northern Kansas would more than likely be able to tell someone from southern Kansas. I live in a truely puny state, but I can tell what part of it someone is from by hearing them speak. It’s just one of those things that native speakers in a region know.
Anyway, one of the things in the development of accents is that there’s a “meeting” of sorts. If, in an area, there is a distinct minority group who speaks a different language than those in power, there is a tendancy to adapt a system that is a combination of both languages… with a heavy influence on the language that is the more prestigious, i.e., spoken by those in power.
Ellis, your assertation is correct. Babies are born with the ability to use any phonetic system, but very quickly learn the one of whatever language they are addressed in.
I hope this helps.
Finally a thread that can explain my pseudonym! I’m from Massachusetts, hence 2planka and not 2planker. Wheeeee! 
Here’s a link to an article I found. It seems overly simplistic to me, but the dude that’s quoted as a “Dr.” before his name, so it MUST be the TRUTH. Yeah. Well here ya’ll go:
http://www.rpm-mags.com/us8799/accents.html
Foah us guyz in bahston, it slike jimmies on ah ice cream cones, oah slike a wickid cool drink frum tha bubblah.
Wholly agree. I’ve noticed this many times myself.
Again, wholly agree. The accent of [S]lower Delaware is a vocal marvel.
Yep, it does. Thanks.
Sua
Another vote here for “accents arise due to geographic or cultural isolation.”
A more interesting question perhaps is why accents happen at all. For example, take a group of people who speak a common language, divide them into two groups and isolate the groups. Wait a while, and eventually they will develop distinct accents, and given enough time, the entire nature of the language can change- vocabulary, syntax, whatever.
It’s an interesting phenomenon from a functional viewpoint because natural languages are complete- they don’t get more efficient or complex over time, and they don’t need to. They just change. Why do they do that?
I assumed it was because of mishearings on the part of children learning the language becoming standard pronunciation, and the creation of accents based on the “averaging” of existing accents of non-native speakers is well-documented, but there are just too many examples of changes that cannot be satisfactorily explained by these two processes.
Yes, but how long would the trace of the original accent last? In a kid that young, I’d say not very long. Children’s ability to learn languages and pick up accents is very plastic up until about puberty. I wonder what the research was trying to find out.
-fh
I wholeheartedly disagree. Languages evolve when a new niche is found for them to exist, and must constantly grow to keep up with the social and technological environment in which it exists.
Just look at current “trendy” speak, especially in techno-realms.
Remember when “access” and “dialogue” were just nouns?
“bug” used to just mean insect.
“email,” “fax,” “tele-<insert almost any verb here>” are all relatively new words.
The lexicon maybe, yes, but what about accent and syntax? These things change over time, and not because they lack the facility to function in new niches. Why is that?
[hijack]Uses of the word “bug” not referring to insects are recorded as far back as the 16th century. Including Shakespeare. A word in use today that carries similar meaning to Shakespeare’s “bug” is “bugaboo.” Given both meanings of bug, I think it more likely (although I don’t have proof) that the modern “bug” meaning “defect in a system” came from whatever root “bugaboo” did, and the evolution of the “bug” meaning little crawly thing was unrelated.[/hijack]
-fh
Sorry, hazel-rah, but the term “bug” meaning “defect in a computer system” comes directly from the little crawly things. Actually, little flying things; Grace Murray Hopper coined the term when she found a moth was gumming up the works.
I can give you a guess, hazel-rah, as to how accent and syntax change. I’m one of those folks who unconsciously (and sometimes rather embarassingly) emulates the accent and syntax of the people who surround me. By the time I left New Zealand, I was no longer elucidating a vaguely Virginian “yes,” but a high-pitched “yee.”
So what happens when I take a new word home with me? My abortive attempt to learn German proved successful only in my pronunciation, so when I see a word like “flammenwehrfer,” there’s a good chance I’m going to pronounce it something a little like a real German would. But when I introduce that word to my own isolated community, others may try to echo my pronunciation. That, invariably, will get a little mangled, and now we have something different on our hands.
Somewhere, I remember reading that the average peasant in Europe in the 1400s might have had a vocabulary of as few as a thousand words, and of course was illiterate. So if I were to come into one of those isolated communities and introduce a couple of dozen new words in my own accent it may carry over into the local dialect. And the dialect I infected might change pretty fast.
That’s just a guess, though.
aseymayo You misread hazel’s post. She was only talking about the word bug to mean a problem in a general system, not a computer system. The word bug to mean a problem in a general system can be traced back in print in the US to 1878.
[hijack] Just to set the bug story straight for future generations–
Grace Hopper never coined the term bug in connections with computers. Go here to discover that she wasn’t there when the bug was pulled out of the calculator at Harvard. She just retold the story over and over.
What was coined is the term debugged. See OED 1945. The incident in question in the link which I provided supplied the term.[/hijack]
Bug, bugbear, bugaboo, and boogeyman all come from ancient Welsh (ancient British) bwg, ‘demon’. The meaning of ‘insect’ in modern English is secondary. It’s not certain whether the insect meaning of bug comes from the monster meaning or is an independent lexeme.
Something deep and dark and nasty lies buried way back in this word’s history. When the Anglo-Saxons invaded and overran the native Celtic Britons, they showed not the least regard for their civilization and subjugated them or drove them to the hills of Cymry in the west. English (which has so voraciously taken in huge amounts of loanwords from all different languages), scarcely got a handful of loanwords from ancient British. Evidently the Anglo-Saxons didn’t bother to listen to the natives much. It’s curious how one of the few words they did pick up has to do with primeval terrors hidden in the dark, as though the smashed remnants of Celtic civilization they suppressed still haunted their nightmares.
All right, as much as I enjoyed writing that last post, I may (may) have to eat crow on it. After posting I got out the Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology and looked up the bug words.
Apparently the insect “bug” goes back to the early 17th century, and may be related to Middle English budde ‘beetle’ and Low German dialect budde ‘louse, grub’. The change of d to g seems to have been influenced by Middle English bugge ‘bugbear, hobgoblin’.
The origin of bugge turns out to be in dispute. Barnhart says s.v. bugbear:
Well, even if it isn’t Welsh, it’s still Celtic and the eerie, creepy way English got it still holds – a demon that haunts battlefields! The English invaded Ireland, slaughtered brave Irish warriors on the battlefields there – and from the shadows hovering over the gore after night fell on the grim scene, they brought home this word. To lurk and fester in the dark corners of their sorry souls, faith!
You’re right, samclem, I misread it. I feel like a louse - or a grub, maybe. But you have to admit, in this case, there was an actual bug involved, and not just a metaphorical one.
And I should have known better than to trust the likes of Britannica.com! From their article on Hopper:
So, does Grace get credit for debug, then? Or should she just get credit for popularizing the term?
The Midwestern American accent is not a non-accent, it’s just one that we are all used to. Radio and telephone announcers are trained to use one, I’m not sure how that was started, my WAG is that there weren’t as many negative stereotypes about midwesterners at the time radio was becoming popular - some people associate a Southern accent with rednecks and hicks, while some people think Yankee accents are abrasive.
I am originally from northern Oklahoma, and my father is from Kansas, so my accent is basically midwestern, with a slight Oklahoma twang to it. When I moved to Texas other kids made fun of the way I talk.
I think the Buffalo, New York area is the only television market in the United States where radio DJs and television news reporters and anchors often speak in a Buffalo accent, with a pronounced “flat A.” You sometimes hear what’s called the “Italian ethnolect” on Buffalo newscasts, but never the staccato “Polish ethnolect” of the eastern suburbs. The announcers on Canadian television sound more American than those on the Buffalo stations …
I hope you don’t see this question as flippant - it’s not meant to be. It’s this: If the “dude” accent is not defined by class or region how did it develop? Is it something that is deliberately and self-consciously fostered by young males - something they lose as they grow older? Is it proof that accents can develop independent of place? Like I said, I intend these as serious questions.
