Where do accents come from? I am not just talking about American accents [closed]

Where do accents come from? If I was speaking with a Mexican person that spoke English, I would not understand them.

Solution 1:

Your accent (one's accent) comes from the people from whom you (one) learned your (one's) language (the speech community, linguists say). But the OP is not talking about native speaker accents per se, which everyone on this earth who speaks has.

The OP is talking about a person's accent in a non-native language. I wonder if he speaks a language other than English? Probably not or he would not have asked this question. If, however, he does, I bet he has a foreign accent in whatever that language is. This question has zero to do with English. It has universal application.

Here's the basic rule which anyone who learns a second language or speaks more than one language is familiar with: One's accent in a second language when it does not sound like the other community of speakers of that language (in other words, it sounds foreign in that language) is dictated by one's native or original language. Of course, there are those who can learn to speak another language without sounding like a foreign speaker. Usually, they learn the language at a young age. Those who learn another language at a later age very often do sound like foreign speakers of it. French speakers can detect English speakers, German speakers can detect English speakers and so on. I say detect to mean: if they have been exposed to that other language, they can usually detect when a German speaker is not native, for example.

An accent in a foreign language can go from very light to very heavy. And sometimes understanding a person with a heavy accent can be a challenge.

It should give us pause to remember that despite appearances, English is not the center of universe. Imagine all the Russians who speak Chinese, or all the Arabs who speak Amharic. Gives one pause, doesn't it.....