Your accent… explained

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1:12I speak four languages fluently, Italian, French, Spanish and English, but my Italian accent never went away.

1:22Jonquilyn Hill:So, a couple weeks ago, I asked you for a favor. We want your help with a show we're working on about accents. Have you lost your accent? Or maybe you absolutely love yours. Give us a call and tell us about it. And oh my gosh, y 'all showed out. I'm calling from St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. I am from a very small town in rural Appalachia. The Chicago area. Central Iowa. Miami, Florida. Alabama. I kid you not, we've received the most calls we've ever gotten with your questions and stories about accents. I'm just a chameleon. I can't stick to my accent guns when exposed to other people who talk in other ways.

2:02They'd say, oh, well, you say daughter, but you have to say daughter. You say water, but you have to say water. You want to give me a call back?

2:10Jonquilyn Hill:I can try to get my mom on the phone to tell the story originally. Thanks and good luck with the show. You called in and now it's time for us to hold up our end of the bargain. I'm John Gwynn Hill. This is Explained It to Me from Vox. And this week is all about accents. How we get them, why they change, and if you lose them, how you get them back.

2:33Jonquilyn Hill:Before we get into all that, where did the American accent come from in the first place? If you went back to 1600, you know, 1650, New World, you would probably think, what the hell are you all saying around me? Because I don't understand a thing. Valerie Fridlin is a sociolinguist and author of the book Why We Talk Funny, the real story behind our accents. We start our accent journey in America really with the first British colonists that came. You know, it seems odd because, you know, there are other colonists that were here. There were indigenous languages that were here. So that isn't the first language story of America.

3:09But the most pivotal voices for establishing that original American accent were those early British colonists.

3:22So the original American accent was sort of one that had leveled the playing field of many of the really salient, noticeable British accent features. But by, you know, the 1680s, we start to see a leveling of accents so that while the feeder accents were British, and so there were certainly noticeable British features. So, for example, the R's would have been there with the exception of a few R's that got dropped really early in words like burst and curse, which became bust and cuss. Right. That's actually the origin. Oh, that's why I say cussing. Exactly. It's the British R dropping that came over early.

4:01But so that would be something we shared. So it didn't matter who you were, what class you were from, what kind of job you occupied. The speech was much more similar among people in America or the New World at that time than it was back in Britain.

4:17Jonquilyn Hill:OK, that's interesting that it was uniform because we have so many regional differences now. When did we see those pop up? Think about the way that the Atlantic coast was settled, right? At the very top, you had people coming in from a lot from East Anglia and Southern Britain. And then you had the Quakers from the north of Britain and the Scots-Irish and the German in the Midland. And then the south, you actually had a lot of people also from Southern Britain, a lot of the cavaliers, those that were loyal to King Charles I. And they had a lot of indentured servants and a lot of enslaved people that came with West African backgrounds.

4:53So if you get a sense there of these three different dialect areas getting established early, by 1780, 1800, that's really when we see enough generations have come through and learned the patterns of this new world that they sounded very different from Britain, but also started to sound different from each other. So in the New England area, what it was described as, this is definitely not something I think most New Englanders will love as a description, but it was described as a nasal whiny twang. Dang! At the time. But it was also considered the most prestigious accent, so there you go. And then in the Middle Atlantic colonies, they said words like off, more like off, off.

5:38enough. And then the South, of course, you had actually a lot of commentary on similarity with the slaves talk. So there were a lot of comments on how some of the features of the people that had been brought over from West Africa were influencing the speech, particularly women and children there, which I think goes to the idea that there was a lot of actual interaction and interaction is really what determines what we sound like.

6:05Jonquilyn Hill:Yeah, I want to dig into the Southern accent a little bit more. You know, it's so distinct. It is so like kind of uniquely American, even though it's different in different parts of the South. How did we get that Southern accent? Can you go into that a little bit? Absolutely. In fact, what we really see is the Southern accent as sort of the y 'all, drawl, far instead of fire, the merging of pins and pens. All of that did not come around until after the Civil War. So what it really did is brought together people towards a common sort of enemy and also a common cultural experience that bonded their speech in ways that we find is really conducive to new accent formation.

6:54It's also that the infrastructure of the South changed during the Reconstruction period. And anytime we see a change in the infrastructure, a change in the economy, a change in the transportation networks in an area. We generally see a change in the way they sound as well.

7:14Jonquilyn Hill:That New England accent, that Southern accent, that gets a lot of the shine. But real briefly, like, what are we hearing in the Midwest and out West? Because I think those are the parts of the country where some people are like, oh, these aren't accents, but they are, right? The Midwest and West are quite interesting because, you know, they were all a little later. So the coastal colonies were obviously earlier. And the Midwest had a really unique blending because it was really, it emanated from the Pennsylvania colony. So that's really the heart of the Heartland accent. Over a third of the population of the Pennsylvania colony was the Scots-Irish.

7:50And another third were Germans. You know, when you think about the Chicago accent, da bears. Da bears. That is actually a very German influence accent. There were already a lot of Scandinavian settlers in that area. Minnesota, same thing, the Minnesota accent. Oh, you betcha, yeah. Yeah. Again, that was heavily Scandinavian influence. But by the time they get to the West Coast a century later, they were American, right? So it was Americans resettling. Not that there weren't other countries that had immigrants come in, but the vast majority were resettlers from an American dialectal region. So what you get there is already Americanized speech.

8:30But truly, that's why we think of the Western accent as sort of being accent less is because it had gone through so many cycles of of leveling out some of the more noticeable features from the East Coast by the time they hit it hit it West.

8:43Jonquilyn Hill:so I moved around quite a bit growing up you know I've lived in the Midwest I've lived in the Southwest and I've spent all of my adulthood in DC and I'm just wondering like can you tell how much of these regional dialects have I picked up I'm like oh my gosh what is my accent just from like my quick and dirty assessment of your speech style one thing I'll notice is you do actually have a bit of the pin-pen merger in your speech. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pin and pin are the same to me. Yeah. But that actually can be something that's more prevalent in African-American speech styles. So that's something.

9:24So if you look at what standard African-American English used as the model, right, Southern speech was actually the model because up to 1900, over 90 percent of African-Americans lived in the South. And it's not until the Great Migration of the 20th century between like 1917 and 1970, that we get this mass shift in sort of living patterns where then about 50 % of African-Americans moved to urban centers, predominantly in the North and also Los Angeles. And Washington, D.C. was a big area for that. And you also have quite a bit of vocal fry in your speech. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a girl. I'm a millennial lady.

10:05I love it. I love it. But that's also something that was studied in African-American speech in the Washington, D.C. area, as well as in white women's speech there, too. It was prominent. So not calling you out. I love vocal fry, but it's definitely something I hear in your voice there. And there's also the more Southern intonation pattern that I hear in your speech as well. So I would say while you don't sound Southern per se, you sound mostly more Southern than non than any other accent that I can pick up.

10:37Jonquilyn Hill:Oh, that's so fascinating.

10:45Jonquilyn Hill:The different ways we talk are so cool. And over time, they evolve. That's next.

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12:34Jonquilyn Hill:We're back with more Explain It to Me. I'm JQ. Our accents carry a lot of history and a ton of information about who we are. That's what Nicole Holliday studies at UC Berkeley. She's what's called a sociophonetician. I study how speech sounds operate in society. The easiest way to understand that are like my elevator pitch is usually like, you know, you call your bank or whatever and you get a mental picture of the person you're talking to, the customer service person, like their age, their gender, their race, maybe where they're from. And you do that immediately, like one sound, and you can sometimes make that kind of picture.

13:10But there's something physical in that. There's something about the voice itself and something about the way that you hear the voice. And so what we do is study how you're able to make that kind of judgment and then what it means socially. Our identity is reflected in the way that we sound. And so some of that we have control over the way that we want to be perceived by others, but not entirely.

13:33Jonquilyn Hill:Okay, what kind of societal things influence how much or how little of an accent we have? Yeah. So this is like an intro to linguistics test question. So I'm going to ask the students like, all right, what are the ways that language can vary between individuals or groups? And then the answer is any way that people can vary sort of sociologically. So, you know, we think a lot about region because that's very obvious to us, but like gender, sexuality, race, class, all kinds of stuff, right? Any sort of social variable that we're talking about, I can give you like an example of how the sounds vary.

14:07Within any place, if we look at the difference between white and black speakers, I'm not saying this is true for every person. I'm saying maybe it's true for 80 percent of people in a community that you see these kind of differences. One that's obvious is looking at the R sound. So R is really important in American English historically. The stereotypical like Boston accent, the park the car in Harvard Yard as park the car in Harvard Yard. that's an R phenomena. And we know that patterns of R-lessness, so when you don't pronounce your R when it's at the end of a syllable, have been changing over the last hundred years in places like New York and Boston, indeed.

14:46But New Yorkers got more R-ful, so they started to say park the car. White New Yorkers, faster than Black New Yorkers. So if you talk to older Black people in New York, they're still likely to say like park the car. Not quite like that because it's not my accent. But white people the same age are more likely to say park the car. So you can see those kind of differences that are both regional and ethnolinguistic, like, you know, by ethnicity over time.

15:12Jonquilyn Hill:So we heard from people who describe that thing that happens when you're with certain people like, you know, you go home for Christmas or you get a drink or two in you and that old accent comes back. Why when I go to school up north, my accent kind of just assimilates and it's closer aligned to my school members. And then when I'm home, it's like full blown. I have a southern accent. I'm on spring break right now and I'm home. And the minute someone comments on my accent, I change it. It goes immediately back. So when you're in a situation where you have lowered your inhibitions, like if you're really tired or something like that, less control, then the way that you sound naturally is going to be coming out more and more obvious right so that's why people will notice it for example in that case um but there's also this phenomenon of like convergence or accommodation so even people who are not talking about the way that they used to sound but like if you say oh i went to england and i came back sounding a little british like it could be an affectation and they're just being annoying and bragging about their vacation But it could also be that when you talk to people from a different place, they move towards you and you move towards them.

16:25And this can be like, you know, your vowels got a little more ah versus ah or something like that when you go to one place because you're meeting in the middle. And that actually facilitates effective communication when you sort of meet your listener halfway and they meet you halfway.

16:40Jonquilyn Hill:You know, I think it's natural to want to fit in when you're younger, when you're making your way through life. but then you grow up or you become established. And I think, you know, there are some people who have let their accents go or even got rid of them on purpose who are like, dang, I really miss that. As you can tell, I have a fairly distinct Southern country Appalachian accent. I've lived in the South my whole life. And it's been a huge part of who I am and what people notice about me first, which used to be sort of a source of shame, but now I take a lot of pride in it. But I've noticed through my life, as many others have, that it's really disappearing and lots of people are losing their Southern accents.

17:21So I'm really curious about what can be done to preserve these cultural pieces. So the first thing I would say is if you're worried about it, you're unlikely to lose it. So people lose their ways of sounding because of social pressure, but also when they choose. So we have some research on people that move away versus people that stay in their communities. Basically saying that the more positive orientation you have to where you're from, the more likely you are to continue to sound local in that way. Second of all, like, yeah, being it's the exact same thing we say to people when they say like, oh, I want to learn Spanish.

17:55And we're like, yeah, move to Mexico. Yeah. There's no substitute for being in the place. However, you know, staying in contact with people, even, you know, on the phone, on Zoom, whatever, visiting when you can, like that kind of stuff is good. I wouldn't say so much like the media, because first of all, nobody in the media is like sounding the way that they naturally sound when you're doing something scripted. That's not like the most authentic version. But also the way that we construct our language happens in interaction with other people. So I think we have this idea that like if we just watch enough movies, we'll sound like that person or whatever.

18:34There was a very interesting thing during the pandemic where a lot of American kids were watching Peppa Pig. Okay, George and me will show you how. Oh, yeah! The parents were saying, my kid's developing a British accent. No, your kid's not developing a British accent. They're, like, imitating Peppa Pig. That car is kind of weird. What do we need to get for spaghetti? Tomatoes. But they don't, that kid does not sound like that. Because it's temporary and it's something that they absorb through the media. but it's not something that happened in interaction. So if you're trying to, you know, maintain your original way of sounding, I would say talking to people is probably the best way.

19:19What do you say? Thank you very much, Peppa.

19:27Jonquilyn Hill:Coming up, how to stop worrying and love your accent.

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