[MarianaM (OP)]

Martin asks...

Why do people have different accents?

What do you think?

[evan_au]

In the days before cars, when few people traveled beyond their valley, and there was no mass media (wireless, TV, internet), language could evolve independently in adjacent areas, producing regional accents.

Over longer time periods, the whole language can drift - English from 400 years ago is hard to read (eg King James Bible), and 700 years is a real struggle (eg Chaucer). This is even without the effects of the invasion of Germans, the French and Vikings in the centuries before that.

Effectively, after 1000 years, the language looks like another language. I was recently talking to a tour guide about the similarities between the different Scandinavian languages. She said they Scandinavian countries around the Baltic can sort-of understand each other. But Iceland split off about 1,000 years ago, and she can't understand the Icelandic local dialect.

If you want a detailed view of British English (and sometimes, why US English is different), you could listen to an episode of:
https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2018/06/27/episode-113-a-zouthern-accent/

...The US-based presenter often tries to imitate how scholars believe passages were pronounced in previous centuries. It bends your brain, even when he prefaces it with the modern pronunciation!