Do accents and language variation have anything to do with evolution?
Only in as much as languages that are alive (being spoken everyday) will evolve of themselves, and if they are in isolation then they will evolve in different ways. To take accents first, before such things as automobiles and aeroplanes and trains the way that people moved about was by riding a horse, sitting in a carriage, or using Shank’s Mare (walking). This meant that most people were confined to a world of approximately 80 square miles (five in any direction=Pi r2). This meant that local language was pretty much isolated and accents changed over time. The basic language was kept the same as the townships would trade with each other and needed to be able to communicate, but there would be local words for local phenomena. This is where language variation appeared. When people started taking long journeys on board ships they would often find new lands to subjugate/colonise and new communities sprouted up all over the world. The lack of regular communication, though, meant that langua
