http://ask.metafilter.com/tags/regionalaccents tag posts with regionalaccents Sat, 16 Dec 2006 07:05:00 -0800 Sat, 16 Dec 2006 07:05:00 -0800 en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 http://ask.metafilter.com/53295/How-is-one-to-know-a-Vancouverite-from-a-Haligonian Why doesn't Canada have more regional English-language accents? In Canada, to the best of my knowledge, there are only two English-language accents — the Newfie accent and the Peter Jennings accent everyone else has. My Albertan relatives and a guy I dated who was from Yellowknife sound exactly like Ontarian born-and-bred me. <br> <br> In the U.S., by contrast, there are so many, many accents that even some cities have their own, and New York alone has several.<br> <br> Why is this? Is our population simply not big enough? After all, how many accents would the U.S. have if it only had one-tenth of the population? Perhaps the various regions aren't populous enough so that they can mostly interact just with each other and so develop a particular accent?<br> <br> <small>Hope this isn't too open-ended a question, but I figured there must be some specific criteria/conditions necessary to the development of a regional accent.</small> tag:ask.metafilter.com,2008:site.53295 Sat, 16 Dec 2006 07:05:00 -0800 accents Canada regionalaccents orange swan