Why do people in different places have accents?

People have accents because babies learn speech by copying the sounds around them. The brain notices how nearby adults shape vowels and consonants, then the tongue, lips, and jaw practise those patterns until they feel natural. Different communities practise different patterns, so English can sound different from place to place.

The lovely part is that an accent is a family and neighborhood history carried in the mouth. It can hold traces of older languages, migration, and daily life. Children often pick up a new accent quickly, while grown-ups usually keep the speaking habits they learned first.