Eli5: How do accents come about, like in the uk within 4 miles of each other there could be 5 different accents

Question

Eli5: How do accents come about, like in the uk within 4 miles of each other there could be 5 different accents

In: Other

Answer 1

If you want a spicy take: accents and dialects are real, languages are not.

Everyone has an accent, and everyone speaks in at least one dialect. What’s weird is that some accents and dialects were promoted, through political pressure, to “languages” and then the other related dialects were considered inferior or informal or variants of that language.

“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy” as Max Weinrich put it.