The Way you Think about Accents is Wrong

What Every Actor Should Know About Authentic Accent Work

You’ve probably heard someone say, “People in that city speak like this,” or “The accent changes when you cross the river,” or even “The intonation is up and down because of the mountains.” But what if I told you those explanations are almost always wrong?

I've heard people (even coaches) explain that a region's accent has an undulating prosody because of the surrounding hills or mountains. While this might be a helpful way to remember, their is absolutely zero evidence to suggest a causal relationship.

Let’s clear something up right away: Accents are not determined by geographic borders, city limits, terrain type, or weather conditions. 

That idea might feel right — especially if you’ve noticed how people “sound different” a few towns over — but it’s not how language really works.

Whether you’re an actor trying to learn a regional accent or someone fascinated by speech patterns, understanding how accents form is essential.

So What Does Shape an Accent?

The short answer? Memetic drift.

A meme — in the original sense coined by biologist Richard Dawkins — is an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads from person to person within and across cultures. Accents are exactly that: a bundle of tiny habits in pronunciation, stress, and rhythm that spread memetically through groups of speakers.

Internet memes are just ONE kind of meme

Like fashion trends or slang, these speech habits evolve as they’re passed along. Over time (and space), groups develop subtle changes in how they pronounce vowels, mutate consonants, or use pitch — not because of a mountain or a river, but because they’re copying each other. And just like memes, those features alter slightly as they spread.

This is memetic drift: the gradual change of a shared habit, and accents are one of the most powerful and persistent memetic systems humans have.

What's more is that different accent features are shared among populations over wide areas (these can be shown as isoglosses on a map) and overlap with other features that cover a different area. An [insert name here] accent is where several of these coincide in a small region, often urban, but not always.

Why Regional Borders Don’t Matter Much and Why the Way you think about Accents is Wrong

A simplified isogloss map of the United States of America, showing English-language accent regions. While you might think of each differently-coloured region as a homogenous area unto itself, the reality is that most are merely overlapping regions of shared accent features. Few of them coincide with state boundaries. A map showing African American English (AAE) would look quite different.

We like neat boxes, city limits, regional borders, and post(al)/zip codes. It makes sense to say, “This is how people from Boston speak,” but in reality, no city or region speaks with one voice. Language doesn’t often change at the boundary — it shifts slowly, person to person, street by street, community by community.

This is why accent training for actors can’t rely on generalizations. If you’re doing character work, it’s not enough to "do a Southern accent" or "sound British." To deliver an authentic accent for character work, you have to go deeper — into social dynamics, peer influence, and language history.

No, the Climate Doesn’t Shape Your Accent

The idea that cold weather creates clipped speech or that damp places make people talk with an adenoidal accent? That’s linguistic folklore. Fun to imagine, but not grounded in science.

These simplified isogloss maps show the rhotic areas of England (where r is/was pronounced wherever it appears in a word, e.g. in car) in 1950 (left) and 1990 (right). While this feature—once universal—has receded over the decades in accents in England, it has expanded in North American accents.

There’s no credible evidence showing that temperature or environment determines how people speak. Instead, accents evolve through social contact, cultural identity, and group behaviour.

So when you're wondering why do people have different accents, the answer isn't in the weather forecast — it's in the way humans imitate and influence each other across generations.

Accent Work Is Social Work

If you're an actor preparing for a role and wondering how to learn a regional accent, start by asking deeper questions:

What kind of community is this character from?

Who are they likely imitating or reacting against?

How might class, age, or even media consumption affect their speech?

This is exactly what a good dialect coach helps you do. If you’re searching to hire a dialect coach for film, look for someone who can unpack those cultural and linguistic layers — not just teach you where to place your tongue.

What Does a Dialect Coach Do?

A dialect coach in action

Dialect coaches don’t just teach speech sounds — we help actors understand the why behind those sounds. They consider the difference between dialect and accent, explore character background, and ensure the speech is grounded, not cartoony.

In short, they protect the integrity of the character — and make sure the audience believes every word.

Final Thought

Accents are living patterns, passed through people, not places. They don’t respect maps, and they’re not carved by tributaries or dumped in a snowfall.

If you want to master an accent — for performance or personal growth — stop looking at borders and start listening to people. Understanding how accents actually work isn’t just useful. It’s essential.