Why do we have accents?
Your Mouth's Map
Why do we have accents?
Have you ever noticed how the same word can sound completely different depending on who says it? Someone from Boston says "car" one way, someone from London says it another, and someone from Mumbai says it yet another. We're all speaking English, but our mouths are making wildly different sounds. Why?
It starts with a simple fact: human mouths can make about 600 different sounds, but no language uses all of them. English uses around 44 sounds. Mandarin uses different ones. Arabic uses others still. Every language picks its own set from the giant menu of possible noises, like choosing toppings for a pizza.
