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A given language, such as English, tends to develop regional accents because of a phenomenon formally known as linguistic drift. People talk to other people in their vicinity much more than they talk to more distant people. Small changes enter a language at random, or because someone thinks it is easier, or sounds better, to say something in a particular way, and other people imitate what they hear. Everybody learns about language from everybody else; we all try to some degree to sound like the other people we hear. Language slowly changes, it drifts into something new. And each region is drifting in its own direction. There are manyaccents in Great Britain, not just the London accent, just as there are also many accents in the US, and there is a different accent in Australia, and a different (but relatively mild) accent in Canada, and so forth. The state of Massachusetts has its own accent. A person from Alabama sounds different than a person from New Jersey. And so forth.

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Q: Why do people in London speak English with an accent?
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