Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren voc obam here with another classic episode from our
Speaker 1: erstwhile host, Christian Sagar. This episode sets out to answer
Speaker 1: a question that lots of us around the office, having
Speaker 1: backgrounds in theater, We're curious about how do accents work? Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm Christian Sager and I'm speaking with an American accent?
Speaker 1: But where do accents come from? Not just mine, but
Speaker 1: all of them? First, let's figure out what an accent is.
Speaker 1: Accents are just a part of something bigger called dialects.
Speaker 1: An accent refers to the way a person or a
Speaker 1: group sounds. A dialect refers to the accent and the
Speaker 1: grammatical features inherent in a person's speech. So an accent
Speaker 1: is just a way of pronouncing a language. Every single
Speaker 1: person speaking has one. Your accent results from how, where,
Speaker 1: and when you learn the lane which you're speaking in,
Speaker 1: and it gives impressions about you to other people. No
Speaker 1: one has a single fixed accent determined by his or
Speaker 1: her experience, because we can and do control the way
Speaker 1: we speak, both consciously and unconsciously. In fact, most people
Speaker 1: change the way they speak depending on who's listening. And
Speaker 1: our accents can even change when we have new life experiences.
Speaker 1: But where to accents in general come from. Well, primarily
Speaker 1: two things isolation and human nature. We're social animals, and
Speaker 1: when we're in groups, we like to behave in similar
Speaker 1: fashion and show that we belong, and we do this
Speaker 1: in multiple ways. Language is no different. When groups become distinct,
Speaker 1: the way they speak becomes distinct too. So if a
Speaker 1: single group separates socially and geographically, think of Group A
Speaker 1: going to one island and Group BE going to another,
Speaker 1: then over time they develop distinct dialects. They may eventually
Speaker 1: even sound like two different languages. Humans are widely traveled species,
Speaker 1: and as distinct groups mingled with others, their accents changed,
Speaker 1: combining some traits while losing others. No accent is particularly
Speaker 1: better than another. While you might hear some folks talk
Speaker 1: about accentless English, what they're really talking about our dialects
Speaker 1: like received pronunciation or general American, which are the reference varieties.
Speaker 1: They're transcribed in dictionaries and often taught to foreign English students,
Speaker 1: But they are accents nonetheless, So what does your accents
Speaker 1: say about you? It depends on who's listening. You might
Speaker 1: have an accent that is associated with a particular place,
Speaker 1: like London, for example, but some people may just associate
Speaker 1: that with England. And in all languages, some accents have
Speaker 1: higher or lower perceived prestige, meaning they are often associated
Speaker 1: with a higher social class. For example, Americans have often
Speaker 1: looked down on the Southern US accent. The Southern accent
Speaker 1: is associated with several real stereotypes, but other English speakers,
Speaker 1: say in the UK or Australia, might not share the
Speaker 1: same prejudice. They will, however, have their own stereotypes about accents,
Speaker 1: and these stereotypes won't completely carry over to other English
Speaker 1: groups either. So if there's an accent joke in a
Speaker 1: British film, your American friends might not get it at all.
Speaker 1: These perceptions are not based on anything inherent in the accent.
Speaker 1: If you play recordings of different accents to non English speakers,
Speaker 1: they won't be able to tell which ones are high
Speaker 1: or low prestige. But if you really feel that your
Speaker 1: accent isn't working, then the good news is that you
Speaker 1: can change it. You'll have to work at it, figure
Speaker 1: out exactly how you would like to sound, and then
Speaker 1: expose yourself to that as much as possible, but it
Speaker 1: is possible. Today's episode was written by Ben Bolan and
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Klang. From more on this and lots
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com