Hello good morning ladies and gentleman. Okay first of all let me thank you for having me here.

My name is Natasya Anindita and here in front of you all I stand as the representative of
linguistic society of America. So today’s talk is probably relevant to those of you who are
curious enough about accent. So yeah, the topic today is about why do people have different
accents? This topic brought up to you, so that we can understand the effect of culture in
someone’s life. The topic today will be divided in three parts, the first part is about the overview
of accents, and in the second part we’re going to understand how accent could affect someone’s
life, and in the last part is about the effect of accent for someone’s life.
So lets move on to the first part
Every time we speak, we must notice that not all people in this world have the exact same
pronunciation with us, even if we live in the same region. We usually call that as an accent.
Sometimes accents are so dissimilar that two speakers of the same language with different
accents can’t even understand one another.
Then, what is the actual cause of an accents?
First we will define an accent. An accent is a smaller part of a bigger thing called a
dialect. An accent refers to the way a language is pronounced but a dialect refers to the way a
language is pronounced as well as the grammatical rules used in speech. Well, there are several
factors that can influence an accent and they would be human nature, physical varieties, and
different cultures.
Okay, first of all is human nature. Babies subconsciously listen to people’s conversations
around them and that’s how child learns to imitate people’s languages and speech patterns.
Secondly, it’s believed that accents are formed because of variations in the physical
makeup of ethnicities. Different ethnic groups are born with different shaped noses, mouths and
throats; these subtle differences affect the way that words are formed. For example a group of
people with slightly wider than average throats, bigger noses and larger chests will speak in a
deeper pitch. On the other hand, people with a narrower throat, smaller nose and smaller chest
will speak with a more nasally and higher pitched accent.
And the last factors most responsible for different accents is the mixing of different
languages and cultures. A famous example of this is when Britain colonized America. Over
several years the settlers lost their traditional British accent, and start developing on American
accent.
Then, what affect can an accent have in one’s life?
Somebody might be able to trace your accent to a particular part of a country. For
instance, they might say, “Oh, this guy’s from London.” Or “This lady’s from Baltimore.”
Further, there are times when speaking with an accent can affect clarity of understanding.
An accent is a unique feature in our self, don't you think? So take a minute and think
about your own accent when you speak. How do you sound? Do you want to try another accent?
Or you might even think to change your own accent?