> People don't just decide to speak differently to feel different from their neighbors. Actually, it seems that they do, when they don't get on with their neig

> People don't just decide to speak differently to feel different from their neighbors. Actually, it seems that they do, when they don't get on with their neighbors for one reason or another. And this seems to be accelerated when they are geographically close to the neighbors they don't get on with. So yeah, in 1000 years the US will likely have more diverse dialects (and actually, a very different form of english (or spanish). But that doesn't eliminate the cause for the highly variegated dialects in small regions like the UK. Time has something to do with it, but not everything.