How come America as a whole doesn't have a uniform accent?

Question

You can tell who are Southerners, Bostonians, New Yorkers, etc. We are not all that far apart, and we speak the same language, so why did all these accents pop up, and persist?

Answer 1

No country, as a whole, has the same accent. America is huge compared to England or Japan but they all have specific accents and dialects too.

Answer 2

well, there's actually a lot of history to it,

each area has their own use,

like, New England would mainly be trading by boats so the jargon and British language would be more incorporated up there, while down in New Orleans and the western frontier, farming and cotton growing was the main thing, which brings up a whole other set of language that was used daily, it just all sprouted from there.

Answer 3

A primary reason is that it depends upon who settled an area.  For example, where I live we have had a lot of Polish and Dutch who immigrated here.  Once an accent takes hold of an area the people who live there will continue to use it.

Then again speech develops idioms in areas of the country which are unfamiliar to others and usually are considered to be charming.

Answer 4

Actually, America is a huge country. So it's normal that in separate groups, people will talk in a certain way and people around them will begin to mimic it. Be glad that we havn't formed completely separate languages like in China!  

Answer 5

we are way to big to be uniform everyone has there own little quirks like my sis has a lisp and when she was in preschool all the kids who started without lisps ended up with them bc i guess that is just what hey saw as how to sound people  will generally (without even with out thinking about it) mimick what they here but htose few who dont seem over  decades can shape how others sound but people dont always  have acents  like on tv and stuff thats how many sound its called a  midland accent its  just general plain American

most people in rual or  concentrated comunities (new york, rural oklahoma) not only have an acident from there area but change that even  just like in england where its close but they sound difrent from london and york.

so even when im out of state and people say i have an acent (like when i was in boston) im like nope i sound like just about everyone on tv while you dont  i have a general midland accent YOU have the acent  

Answer 6

Actually, the U.S. is huge compared to most countries.  Most other countries in the world are about the size of one or two U.S. states.  Also, there is a lot of space between major populations of people.  

The acents come from mimicing the other people around us, especially when we are very young.  I have a perfect case in point.  My aunt and uncle on my mom's side grew up in Nebraska in the midwest and have a slightly twangy midwest accent.  They moved to Southern Oklahoma when their first kid was born.  Both of their kids have strong Oklahoma acents but their parents do not.  My cousins grew up around other Oklahoma kids and adults and picked up on their acent.  

Sometimes, if you have a good ear for acents and really enjoy them, you will pick up on acents yourself if you move somewhere new for a long time.  I grew up in Nebraska too.  I moved to North Dakota for two years and when I came home to Nebraska for a vacation, my mom commented that I was talking "funny".  I realized that I was starting to pick up a "Nodak" accent.  I later on moved to Oklahoma for five years and caught myself saying stuff like "y'all" and "fixin" without even thinking about it after two or three years.  

Different parts of the country were settled by different ethnic groups from different countries.  Each part had many groups, but there were usually a couple that dominated in terms of numbers and prominance.  In the case of the South, you had a lot of settlers from France, Spain and other countries that spoke "romantic" languages.  That's why southern accents sound so musical with such soft consonant pronounciation.  In the Bayou country of Lousiana and Mississippi, the French influence is so strong that some people there even still speak Creole which is a mix of French, English and Indian languages.

New York was settled by a lot of Italian, German and English people.  If you listen to New York accents, they sound a lot like people from either England or Italy.  

Boston was settled by a lot of Irish and Scottish immigrants.  It's no fluke that their basketball team is called the Celtics and that they have one of the biggest St. Patricks Day parades in the country.

Acents still persist because, even as mobile as our society is now, there are still a whole lot of people who grow up in one part of the U.S. and either never move from it or who don't move until they are older.