{"id":16656,"date":"2020-07-06T09:34:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-06T13:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.pimsleur.com\/?p=16656"},"modified":"2025-11-20T17:10:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T22:10:18","slug":"where-do-accents-come-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pimsleur.com\/blog\/where-do-accents-come-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Do Accents Come From?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Birth of a New Accent – Antarctic English<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Accents are truly\nfascinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent study in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America<\/a> has found the beginnings of a new English accent among the residents of the British Antarctic Survey, a group of researchers who spend months alone in isolation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of the\nstudy, there was a shift in the way residents pronounced various words. This\nlikely happened because of their isolation from other people, meaning\nresidents\u2019 accents began to influence each other\u2019s to create a whole new\nmixture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This opportunity to\nview linguistics in action is incredibly rare. In a world so well-connected by\nthe Internet and social media, allowing us to talk to \u2013 and have our accents\ninfluenced by \u2013 anyone, anywhere, it\u2019s almost impossible to capture new trends\nin spoken language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current situation with Covid provides an interesting complement to this study. With a majority of people still practicing isolation and social distancing, some people are reporting changes in their native English accent <\/a>due to having fewer external influences on their speech. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This study prompts us\nto ask the question, where do accents come from? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Makes an Accent?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The concepts of accent and dialect<\/a> are often confused, but they are equally as affected by the influences we\u2019ll mention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An accent<\/strong> is defined as a distinctive way of pronouncing the words of a language. On the other hand, the word \u2018dialect<\/strong>\u2019 describes the particular words used which are unique to a person or region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best examples of English\naccent variances can be found in the UK. In a country the size of Michigan,\nthere are at least 37 distinct accents and dialects, each with wildly unique features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading Irvine Welsh, watching Peaky Blinders, and listening to The Archers will give you a flavor of the variety of sounds found on the British Isles. Some UK accents are barely intelligible even to fellow Brits from other regions: broad Scottish accents and North-East English accents are often confusing for other Brits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how did all these\naccents come into being?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Do Accents Develop?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Put simply, accents are\nborn when speakers of the same language become isolated and, through evolution,\nunwittingly agree on new names or pronunciations for words. Dozens of these\nsmall changes result in a local \u2018code\u2019 that\u2019s not easily understood by\noutsiders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This new \u2018code\u2019 is what\nwe call an accent, dialect, or in extreme cases, even a new language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, English, Swedish, and Dutch were once all one same language called Proto-Germanic. Linguistically isolated from each other for centuries, Proto-Germanic speakers in different regions developed their own codes, which in turn evolved into different languages: English, Dutch, Swedish, and dozens of other Germanic languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning about these\ncommon origins makes it obvious why some languages, such as English and Dutch,\nor Spanish and Portuguese, share so many common linguistic features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isolation and Accents<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The reason why accent and dialect are so much more prominent in the UK, as opposed to the US, Australia, or Canada, is because English has been spoken in Great Britain for more than 1400 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a lot of time\nfor incremental code changes to develop and accumulate, finally taking shape as\ndistinct accents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main contributor\nto this was the isolation of Great Britain\u2019s inhabitants. For most of the 1400\nyears since Anglo-Saxon settlers first brought their language to the UK, the\npopulation was isolated and immobile, with mass transit only becoming popular\nwith the middle classes toward the end of the 19th<\/sup> Century. Working-class\npeople would rarely venture outside of the village they grew up in, meaning\nthat their \u2018code\u2019 also served as a badge of group identity and pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Likewise, there was no\nconcept of \u201cthe media\u201d as we know it prior to the first radio broadcast in the 1920s,\nso, for centuries, direct spoken contact with people from other towns \u2013 and\ntherefore other codes \u2013 was difficult to achieve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isolation over\nsuch a prolonged period led to the spectrum of accents found in the UK today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social Class and Accents<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Social class is another factor that can affect an accent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the late 20th<\/sup>\ncentury, English working-class people in the regions were less able to travel\nand therefore more isolated than the middle classes, allowing for broader accents\nto develop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The accents of the upper-\nand upper-middle-classes, though, are not as dependent on geographical location,\ntheir main influence found in social groups and status. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People in higher social classes use a distinct accent, known as Received Pronunciation<\/strong> (RP). This neutral accent is similar to the Mid-Atlantic accent in the United States, in terms of both prestige and nature, and is commonly heard spoken by politicians in Westminster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The upper social classes are taught RP in schools and mainly socialize with others from the same classes, meaning their accents remain largely uninfluenced by the working classes and their regional dialects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Invasions, Migrations, and Accents<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Invasions, settlements, and migration all have a huge influence on accents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Settlers and migrants\nbring culture and language from their origin countries to their new homes. With\na large enough proportion of migrants in a population, there will be sufficient\nlinguistic influence to cause significant changes to the local accent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the UK, for\nexample, the Danes ruled the East Midlands and surrounding Eastern areas for\naround 250 years between the 9th<\/sup> and 11th<\/sup> centuries AD.\nThis led to a distinctive, flat-vowelled accent in the North and East of the\ncountry. The difference in speech between the Danish-ruled and Anglo-Saxon-ruled\npopulations still exists even today, called the North-South Divide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This phenomenon is\nalso the reason for different accents in American English. Settlers in the New\nWorld came from a range of towns throughout the British Isles and beyond. Those\ntowns \u2013 and the regional accents the settlers had \u2013 founded the basis of the\ndifferent varieties of American English heard today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern Influences<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The 20th<\/sup> Century saw large shifts in many accents. As our lives changed dramatically due to new technology<\/a>, globalization, and wealth, so did the way we speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The primary trend is that strong regional accents are less prevalent now than 50 years ago. Our accent and dialect appear to be leveling out, leaning more towards generic, non-localized versions of English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are various\nreasons behind this shift. Firstly, there has been an increase in the number of\ncollege-educated adults. These adults may have been born into higher social\nclasses where neutral accents are prevalent, or those from working-class\nbackgrounds might try to \u2018lose\u2019 their accent once accepted into college. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondly, access to\nthe rest of the world (and the influence of accents) is easier than ever. Following\nthe explosion of social media and increased access to low-cost travel, more and\nmore people of all classes are stepping outside of their hometown\u2019s linguistic\nisolation to meet and speak to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

London Jamaican English<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not all accent and dialect features are disappearing, though. New language, influenced by urban music, multiculturalism, and immigration is appearing among British youths. Words like \u201csick\u201d, \u201cbae\u201d, \u201cblood\u201d and \u201cbare\u201d have surged in popularity, forming an entirely new dialect known as London Jamaican English<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Future of Accents<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The multiple influences on accents are so varied, that it is easy to see how one language \u2013 Proto-Germanic \u2013 turned into thousands of individual dialects across at least ten modern languages, and across the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the world \u2013 and technology \u2013 develop, we can expect to see more unexpected accents and dialects emerge, like London Jamaican English and the beginnings of the Antarctic accent at the British Geological Survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perfect Your Accent in any Language<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n

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\n

Take the Pimsleur App for a Test Drive – Lesson One is Free!<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Or, start a Free 7-Day Trial<\/a> with unlimited access to all levels in the language of your choice! Afterward, pay as you go from $14.95 \/month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"pimsleur<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Birth of a New Accent – Antarctic English Accents are truly fascinating. A recent study in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America has found the beginnings of a new English accent among the residents of the British Antarctic Survey, a group of researchers who spend months alone in isolation. Over the course Read More >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":29672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,166],"tags":[28,1946,4147,1945],"class_list":["post-16656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-science-of-language","tag-english","tag-news","tag-science","tag-trends"],"yoast_head":"\nWhere Do Accents Come From? | The Pimsleur Language Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How Do Accents Develop - where do they come from? 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