Why do people have different accents?

Answer

Learning a language is always very difficult, there are no exceptions. Particularly the hardest are the ones that seem to be spoken the most, Chinese, and English, among a few others. To use a simple analogy, take a French student studying English. This student, whether he or she, is learning phrases in English, and learning how to translate French phrases into English, which is almost the same as it is learning how to translate English phrases into French, or French to German, or Russian to Celtic, etc. If we were to say, Hi, my name is Ben, I am 12 years old, and then translate it into French, the chances are, we'd write it; "Salut, je m'appelle Ben, j'ai douze ans," and the majority of us would write it word-perfect, but we wouldn't pronounce it too well. The same is true when that French student translates "Salut, je m'appelle Ben, j'ai douze ans," into English, in nearly all languages, it takes a matter of years to perfect pronounciation, a decade before somebody could pass off as a foreigner, and succeed.

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