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Accents
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I was thinking today. How did accents come about?
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The English language is constantly evolving, with slightly different ways of pronouncing words gradually developing.
With modern media, many of those change now affect the whole of the country (or the whole of the English-speaking world) almost simultaneously but, prior to the coming of the railways (which, in historical terms, was only a short while ago) most people never ventured more than 5 miles from their place of birth, throughout the whole of their lifetime.
So each geographical area would undergo it's own evolutionary changes to the spoken language, which would be different to those in other areas. Hence there was no reason why spoken English in Newcastle should sound at all similar to the same language when spoken in York or London.
Chris
With modern media, many of those change now affect the whole of the country (or the whole of the English-speaking world) almost simultaneously but, prior to the coming of the railways (which, in historical terms, was only a short while ago) most people never ventured more than 5 miles from their place of birth, throughout the whole of their lifetime.
So each geographical area would undergo it's own evolutionary changes to the spoken language, which would be different to those in other areas. Hence there was no reason why spoken English in Newcastle should sound at all similar to the same language when spoken in York or London.
Chris
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I spent three years living in Grimsby in the 90s and I was in my mid-30s at the time. By the time I moved back to Buckinghamshire I was using various terms I had picked up in Grimsby without thinking about them. My family also noticed that I was pronouncing particular words with a Lincolnshire accent.
Chris, I believe historians are starting to think they may have been wrong about lack of mobility - even back in the Middle Ages, people moved around rather more than was once supposed. Merchants went all over Europe; peasants might go on crusade; but even within England people would often move around in search of work (especially after the Black Death, when they no longer felt tied to the land and the lord)
http://www.exploregen...move-middle-ages.html
http://www.exploregen...move-middle-ages.html
Jno;
I'm aware that some people did leave their home communities. (It's evident from the surnames which appear in court registers and other documents, where people are named after the town that they came from). However the fact that the family names in many village records don't change over hundreds of years provides clear evidence that the majority of the population was fairly static.
Chris
I'm aware that some people did leave their home communities. (It's evident from the surnames which appear in court registers and other documents, where people are named after the town that they came from). However the fact that the family names in many village records don't change over hundreds of years provides clear evidence that the majority of the population was fairly static.
Chris
It probably was right in those days, JL - I used to work with a person who'd never left her home town, and that was only 20 years ago. People would ride or walk to the nearest town in the middle ages to the market, but most people never had any reason to go further afield. They all lived locally and worked locally.
