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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey, I'm

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Speaker 1: Christian Sager and I'm speaking with an American accent. But

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Speaker 1: where do accents come from? Not just mine, but all

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Speaker 1: of them? First, let's figure out what an accent is.

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Speaker 1: Accents are just a part of something bigger called dialects.

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Speaker 1: An accent refers to the way a person or a

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Speaker 1: group sounds. A dialect refers to the accent and the

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Speaker 1: grammatical features inherent in a person's speech. So an accent

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Speaker 1: is just a way of pronouncing a language. Every single

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Speaker 1: person speaking has one. Your accent results from how, where,

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Speaker 1: and when you learn the language you're speaking in, and

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Speaker 1: it gives impressions about you to other people. No one

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Speaker 1: has a single fixed accent determined by his or her experience,

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Speaker 1: because we can and do control the way we speak,

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Speaker 1: both consciously and unconsciously. In fact, most people chang change

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Speaker 1: the way they speak depending on who's listening, and our

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Speaker 1: accents can even change when we have new life experiences.

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Speaker 1: But where to accents in general come from. Well, primarily

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Speaker 1: two things isolation and human nature. We're social animals, and

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Speaker 1: when we're in groups, we like to behave in similar

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Speaker 1: fashion and show that we belong, and we do this

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Speaker 1: in multiple ways. Language is no different. When groups become distinct,

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Speaker 1: the way they speak becomes distinct too. So if a

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Speaker 1: single group separates socially and geographically, think of Group A

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Speaker 1: going to one island and group BE going to another,

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Speaker 1: then over time they develop distinct dialects. They may eventually

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Speaker 1: even sound like two different languages. Humans are widely traveled species,

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Speaker 1: and as distinct groups mingled with others, their accents changed,

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Speaker 1: combining some traits while losing others. No accent is particularly

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Speaker 1: better than another. While you might hear some folks talk

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Speaker 1: about accentless in Ish, what they're really talking about our

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Speaker 1: dialects like received pronunciation or general American, which are the

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Speaker 1: reference varieties. They're transcribed in dictionaries and often taught to

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Speaker 1: foreign English students. But they are accents nonetheless, So what

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Speaker 1: does your accents say about you? It depends on who's listening.

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Speaker 1: You might have an accent that is associated with a

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Speaker 1: particular place, like London, for example, but some people may

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Speaker 1: just associate that with England. And in all languages, some

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Speaker 1: accents have higher or lower perceived prestige, meaning they are

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Speaker 1: often associated with a higher social class. For example, Americans

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Speaker 1: have often looked down on the Southern US accent. The

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Speaker 1: Southern accent is associated with several stereotypes, but other English speakers,

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Speaker 1: say in the UK or Australia, might not share the

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Speaker 1: same prejudice. They will, however, have their own stereotypes about accents,

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Speaker 1: and these stereotypes won't completely carry over to other English

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Speaker 1: groups either, So if there's an accent joke in a

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Speaker 1: British film, your American friends might not get it at all.

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Speaker 1: These perceptions are not based on anything inherent in the accent.

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Speaker 1: If you play recordings of different accents to non English speakers,

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Speaker 1: they won't be able to tell which ones are high

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Speaker 1: or low prestige. But if you really feel that your

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Speaker 1: accent isn't working, then the good news is that you

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Speaker 1: can change it. You'll have to work at it, figure

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Speaker 1: out exactly how you would like to sound, and then

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Speaker 1: expose yourself to that as much as possible, but it

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Speaker 1: is possible. Check out the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and

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Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com.