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People from all over Europe settled in North America in the 17th century, so how and when did the North American accent develop? (continued)

Mat Macmillan
Tauranga, New Zealand

I have been following the previous answers to this question, and I notice that no one has made allowances for the effect of interactions between native English speakers and Native Americans, who learned to use English with their own unique intonations.

I came across this idea many years ago while reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. As an English person living in New Zealand, I find it easy to see how this same process could have generated the Kiwi accent.

Claire Cassidy
Bethesda, West Virginia, US

In a previous answer (10 June), James Cawse mentioned valleys in West Virginia where some people continued speaking a form of Elizabethan English into the 1960s.

The whole issue of where American accents came from is interesting and much studied. As in the UK, there are many different accents and accent sources, depending on the immigrants who first settled a region.

For a thorough study of American dialects please see the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), a six-volume work that documents words, phrases and pronunciations that vary from one place to another across the US. You can find more details at dare.wisc.edu.

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