Where do accents come from?

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Now, you're going to translate the following sentence. Let's go for a walk.

Oh, I know this one.

Err, ah, ah, ah, ah, thanks. I've been working on it.

Now translate this. There's a bush. I'm going to pee on it.

Err, ah, ah, ah, ah. I know that's a tough one.

Hey, sandan, and penellopey, poodle. What you doing?

Oh, hey, Molly, hey, Zasha. I'm using these tapes to work on my BSL.

You're what? You know, BSL, barking as a second language.

Penellopey is helping me work on my accent.

No, no! No! I know! It's terrible, but hey, your language is really hard Penelope!

And I know I'm not even close to nailing the accent yet!

Next, translate the following, please, can I have your peanututters?

Uh, oh, I think it's uh...

I think she's seen it more like

No, you must find out in the second house. It's

You're listening to brains on for APM Studios. I'm Molly Bloom and my cohost today is Sasha from Oxford, England,

and the high Sasha. Hi, Molly. I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am to be here.

I'm doing my excited face right now, so it's just as well. No one can see me.

I would love to see what your excited face looks like, but I am also very excited to hear.

So I'm making my excited face, which you can't see.

So, Sasha, this episode was inspired by a question that you sent to us.

You wanted to know how accents develop.

So an accent is basically different ways of pronouncing the same words.

So for instance, I say this water glass is half full.

And Sasha, you say this water glass is half full.

Sounds a little different, right?

Some words are pronounced very differently,

especially between England, where Sasha lives, and in the United States, where I live, like,

vitamin, vitamin, schedule, schedule, tomato, tomato.

And depending on where you live in the UK or the US,

you might pronounce these differently than Sasha and I do.

Or maybe you live in Australia or India or Zimbabwe.

Your pronunciation is probably pretty different too.

So today we're going to look at why there are so many different ways to pronounce the same words

and where our accents come from.

And we should mention that you can have different accents in many different languages, but we're focusing on English today.

So, Sasha, I'm curious.

What made you think of this question?

Well, I was reading a science magazine and it had a couple of pages about accents,

but I really didn't think it dealt deep enough and I really wanted to find out more.

So, when you first talked to me about this, you said your accent,

the sort of a model of different accents.

So, can you tell me what your accent is a mix of?

It's sort of a mix of north and south English.

So, for people who are not familiar like me,

what are some of the differences that you've noticed in those two accents?

Well, so sometimes I say things like plant grass, bath, which is like sort of Yorkshire.

Sometimes I say grass, path, bath, glass, which is where Oxford comes in, which is where I live.

I hear a model of different vowels every day, so I say a model of different vowels every day.

And right now, you're in Poland visiting your mom's family and friends, because she's from Poland originally.

So, when you speak Polish, do you feel like your accent is different than the native speakers around you?

Well, actually, I didn't, but someone pointed out to me that my accent is a little bit more sing song,

and it goes up higher at the end than native Polish speakers sentences.

And I think that's something to do with my English accent, like maybe like same melody.

That's really interesting. Could you do a little example of like what it might sound like?

When you speak a Polish sentence and what, maybe the other Polish speakers are picking up on?

We accent, to be honest, are you speaking English?

That's how you would say it.

I like that a lot, because sometimes I don't know what to say, so I kind of say, but, and this thing, instead of the actual word, that's really interesting.

So, Sasha, your accent has hints of both of your parents, but you mostly sound like people from Oxford, which is a specific kind of British accent,

and it makes sense because you live there in lots of your friends speak with that accent.

And humans are wired to want to fit in with friends and neighbors.

We are social animals, and that means we love being part of a group.

Millions of years ago, as we were first evolving, being a part of a group, kept us safe.

We kept an eye out for predators, hunted for food together, shared the berries we gathered, working as a team helped us thrive.

And that's affected the ways that we tool can act today.

As soon as we're old enough to go to school, we want to fit in with the group.

The pot of that is talking like everyone else.

Even if you don't notice it, your brain is trying to get you to fit in with all of the other kids.

Over time, your accent will become similar to theirs.

So, if you're at a school where everyone has a Minnesota accent, soon enough, you'll sound Minnesota too.

Even if your parents are from New York, I lived in Brooklyn until I was six years old, and there are some home movies of me from when I'm about five.

I haven't had this little New York accent, but then we moved to Minnesota, and it started to fade as I wanted to sound more like the other kids my age.

But sometimes, if you learn a language later in life, it's hard for you to shed the sounds you grew up with.

So you may still have an accent.

So Zasha, can you roll your arms?

Yeah, I can, actually, because I know both Polish and French pretty well.

I can speak them, read them, understand them, and rolling your arms is like a key element of both of those language.

So if I say this little phrase in Polish, Yaki Barbará, I'd be doing a Roll Ver.

Ver, Verusław, you're amazing.

What does that phrase mean?

Me and Barbara are going on our bikes in Verusław, which is a Polish city.

Very nice.

Yes, so I learned Spanish when I was in school, and it was hard for me to roll my arms, I did not grow up with that sound.

And I can kind of do it now, but I will never sound like someone who grew up speaking Spanish or Polish.

Like you.

The cool thing about accents is that they're full of history.

Right.

The accents we have today took generations to develop and changed over time as different groups

of people moved around and learned how to pronounce things from each other.

So in a way, your accent tells the story of you,

who your ancestors are all the places they lived and where they moved.

Plus, the story of where you grew up, which groups of people lived there and how their language

is combined to influence the way you speak today.

We have a special guest here to answer some of our questions about accents.

His name is Eric Singer.

He works with actors who need to change their accent for a role in a play, TV series or movie.

Welcome, Eric.

Hi.

So how do you help people learn to do different accents?

Well, the first thing we do is we always want to start with the model.

You know, we never want to kind of go, this is accent X.

Because there's no such thing.

You know, accents are ultimately, we can draw big circles around groups of people.

But ultimately, they're a really individual thing and they're so tied to identity.

And every aspect of our felt identity and group belonging,

I'm breaking it down into the various elements.

So we have all the individual specific sounds.

But we also have kind of the shapes that the mouth and the jaw and the tongue and the lips make.

And then the music, the musicality, the intonation, the rise and fall of pitch and sort of stress and rhythm and things.

Because that's also a really integral part of an accent.

And then we practice and practice and practice and practice and practice.

Okay, so can you help us learn each other's accents?

And what's a good sample sentence to kind of like practice with?

Well, this is a fun one.

I think going both directions is the following sort of little, sort of little ditty little saying.

All right, so I'm going to say it first in an American accent.

So I guess Sasha, let's start with you and we'll do a piece by piece.

All I want.

All I want.

Good, so we're going to go, ah, for want.

All I want.

All I want.

Much better.

Is a proper cup of coffee.

Is a proper cup of coffee.

That was excellent.

Very good.

Molly, you want to give that a go?

I want.

All I want.

Very nice.

Is a proper cup of coffee.

Is a proper cup of coffee.

You guys, geniuses.

This is great.

All right, we're going to go on from there then.

So all I want is a proper cup of coffee.

Maid from a proper cup of coffee pot.

So Molly will keep going with you for now.

So maid from a proper cup of coffee pot.

Maid from a proper cup of coffee pot.

You're doing really well.

Getting those ours out there and getting that sort of slightly that all vowel sound,

which is it's featured heavily in this little saying.

So let's go back to Sasha.

So now, of course, that same sound, that all sound in all those words.

In American English, it's just, ah, right?

It's a very simple plain open a sound.

So maid from a proper cup of coffee pot.

Maid from a proper cup of coffee pot.

Pretty good.

We're going to try it one more time, Sasha.

And so this time coffee is a little bit lip rounded,

whereas proper and proper and pot.

They're all just that awesome.

So let's see if we can make that difference.

Proper, copper, coffee pot.

Proper, copper, coffee pot.

That was really good.

Do you have a favorite accent to help people learn or to do yourself?

I really love Northern Irish accents.

I really love Swedish accents because that's, you know,

that's my mom and some of my childhood.

Could you give an example of a Swedish accent?

So Swedish accent, I mean, obviously individual.

So, you know, one of the things we need to know is the sweet that we're talking about

is their main model for their English.

Is it American English or is it British English?

Because these are going to be different things.

But there's certain things that are always going to be the case,

which is that, for example, you really can't do the sounds

because it doesn't exist in Swedish.

So this and that and those, it's always a nice.

And Eric, I, I was wondering to you, you talked a little bit earlier about sort of the musical

intonations.

Are there other sort of musicalities that you've noticed in different accents that you like to highlight?

Somebody who is speaking English is a second language.

Let's say Russian is their first language.

But there's just a little bit of something that you can tell that it's not quite

actually a native speaker.

So I'm actually going to try to lighten up some of these vowel sounds and things

to get even more proficient with American English.

But there's something about the intonation that you can hear that's a little bit.

You might not even be able to tell exactly where it's coming from.

But it's coming from Russian because if I do stereotypical and we talk about squirrels

right, we've got that kind of music.

But yeah, it's about going up and going down and it's about how we accent things,

how we stress and highlight the important bits of what we're saying,

so that people can latch on to them.

And there are a million different ways to do that.

And each language and each accent has its own characteristics set of doing them.

Thank you so much.

Bye, Eric.

Bye, bye.

Alright, asasha, let's give our tongues a rest for a bit and turn to our ears

because it's time for the mystery sound.

It sounds like either a hoova or leaf blower.

Very very almost certainly, I think it's like a hoova.

The hoova is going back in the stank.

Yeah, yeah, definitely sounds like there's a motor happening.

I don't know what this one is either, so I have no idea.

Yeah, some motor rise thing is happening, so Hoover or leaf blower.

Yeah, so it sounds like air coming out of something like hot air.

Interesting.

But I think yeah, air comes out of hoova. Oh, that came.

Very good.

Well, we're going to hear it again and get another chance to guess after the credits.

We're working on an episode all about our super duper Nito imaginations and we want to hear from you.

Have you ever had an imaginary friend?

Tell us about them.

So asasha, I'm wondering, have you ever had an imaginary friend?

Yep, I had one when I was maybe full or five.

His name was Oki. He was a costume character.

I got super angry when people sat on him in the bus.

I told some of my friends about him.

But at the end of the year, they were all claiming he was their friend as well.

All of my friends.

Oh, man.

Oki, did you mind sharing Oki with them?

No.

It was okay.

What did Oki look like?

I don't really remember.

I think he looks like one of the teletobees, but he wasn't a teletobe.

I really don't remember.

But you remember Oki and that you did not want people to sit on him.

Listeners, please record yourself telling us about your imaginary friend and send it to us.

At brainson.org slash contact.

We'll play some of your answers on that episode.

And while you said, you can always send us your mystery sounds, drawings and questions.

Like this one.

My name is Margo. My question is, do your eyes close all the way every time you blink?

You can find it answered to that on the moment of on podcast.

It's a dose of fabulous facts every weekday.

Just search for a moment of on wherever you listen to brainson.

And keep listening.

You're listening to brainson from APM Studios.

I'm Zosha.

And I'm Molly.

So this is something I've always wondered.

You and I both speak English, Zosha.

And the reason I speak English is that British people colonize this land hundreds of years ago.

So I don't have a British accent like yours.

I can help answer that.

It's producer Rosie G. Blonds.

Hi Rosie.

Hi Zosha.

Hi Molly.

So I think accents are a bit like the vegetable soups my grandmother used to make.

Whenever I'd go over to her house for lunch, she'd be whipping up a new one.

And even though she claimed they were all the same, she'd always throw in different types and amounts of veggies.

So every soup was totally unique.

Just like my grandma's veggie soup, we tend to lump British accents into one big group.

But really, there are around 40 different accents in the UK.

And every individual in the UK has their own special unique accent because there are so many different ingredients in each one.

So each British accent has a slightly different recipe.

Exactly.

So in order to answer the question, why don't Americans sound like British people?

We have to talk about British and American accents in general.

For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be talking about the most well known British accent, which is called RP or received pronunciation.

And the typical American accent, which is called GA or general American.

And I actually got Eric to record some examples for us.

So here's an example of RP or received pronunciation.

It's what you might hear on a news channel like BBC, especially something like BBC 4.

And here's a GA accent or a general American accent, which is often incorrectly thought of as being no accent at all.

That's not a thing.

The biggest difference between those two accents is whether or not you can hear the R sound.

Let's hear those R's in action.

Star, star, clear, clear.

Can you hear the difference, Sasha?

I can.

Very, clearly.

There is a special word for pronouncing the R sound.

It's called Rotic pronunciation.

Rotic.

Exactly.

In general, Americans pronounce their R's.

So they have Rotic accents and British accents are mostly non Rotic.

Meaning they don't say all of their R's.

Let's hear it one more time.

Father, father, pork, pork.

Very different, right?

So here's the strange thing.

A few hundred years ago, British people pronounced their R's much like Americans do today.

To understand what happened, we have to go back in time to 1607 before the US was even a country.

When a bunch of Englishmen sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and landed in what is now Virginia.

These British colonists settled on land already inhabited by Powhatten people and built a settlement called James Town.

Over the next 175 years, as more and more British people came over the Atlantic to North America,

they brought their Rotic accents with them.

So most early American English speakers said all of their R's.

Then in the late 1700s, there was a big war called the American Revolution.

Where colonists living in North America fought for independence and kicked the British government out.

Give me liberty or give me death, but preferably liberty because I like being alive.

So British people were still pronouncing their R's then, like Americans do now.

Well, around this time, back in London, another British accent, one that drops the R sound in the middle and at the ends of words, was becoming popular.

London was the center of culture and influence, and so over the next 150 years, this nonrotic, no A accent spread throughout the British empire.

But this tried never really reached America, so most Americans just kept saying that A's.

For the most part, yes, but there are a few exceptions.

Like that veggie soup I was talking about, there are a ton of different accents in America too.

And nonrotic, no R ones. In Boston, for example, a lot of folks drop their R's like this.

Hey, back at Khan, haven't yet.

The English spoken in the Boston area was influenced by Algonquin Indians, Quakers, and Puritans, but no one knows exactly why it became a Bostonian thing to drop the R sound.

Some people think it's because a lot of British folks with nonrotic accents were spending time in Boston during the 19th and 20th centuries.

But accents are influenced by so many things it's hard to say.

And that's the story from most accents in the U.S.

Immigrants from lots of other countries bring their own accents with them, so what we think of the American accent is always changing.

Cool. Thanks for that bit of history, Rosie.

Anytime. Catch you later.

Brains, Brains, Brains, Brains, Brains.

When we started researching this episode, we noticed something strange.

We were looking for information on all of the unique accents that exist among English speakers and how those accents developed and changed over time.

Instead, though, a lot of what we found was pages advertising to fix your accent or get rid of your accent.

Why was someone wants to change their accent? Everyone has one.

Some are based on where you live, others might also be unique to your racial or ethnic group.

Has someone's face can be a very important part of their identity.

But just like other aspects of identity, sometimes people believe untrue and unfair things about people based on accents.

To learn more about this, we spoke to Nicole Holiday.

Nicole is a professor at Pomona College and she's interested in sociolinguistics.

Sociol means the study of society and linguistics means the study of language.

So basically, I'm very interested in questions about how people hear other people and then make social judgments about them.

Nicole explained that sometimes when people point out that someone has an accent, they're just sort of noticing it.

Like you say tomato and I say tomato.

Exactly.

But other times, it's more negative, like a complaint.

Because what they're saying is this person is different for me and I'm not necessarily comfortable with that.

This isn't fair, right? It's a prejudice.

A prejudice is a judgment someone makes about another person without getting to know them first.

Like deciding you don't like someone because of how they look or what they believe.

And research is found people up prejudice against certain types of accents.

Yep.

For example, researchers at the University of Chicago found that when a person with a noticeable foreign or regional accent set a true but sort of surprising statement.

Like, did you know that your ass can actually last longer without drinking water than camel's cam?

Listeners were less likely to believe them.

But if someone with a more common American accent said the same thing, they'd be quicker to think they were telling the truth.

It's not fair.

And most people don't want to think this way.

But it usually happens without us realizing that we're doing it.

And it can still cause major problems for people.

An African American researcher named John Baugh designed an experiment to study whether people treated you differently depending on your accent.

In the experiment, he responded to newspaper advertisements for apartments.

He would call each phone number three times.

And he always said the same thing.

But he used three different accents.

Here's John Baugh demonstrating the African American accent he used.

Hello, I'm calling about the apartment you have advertised in the paper.

And the so called standard English accent.

Hello, I'm calling about the apartment you have advertised in the paper.

And finally, the Latino accent he used.

Hello, I'm calling about the apartment you have advertised in the paper.

When he spoke with an African American or Latino accent, he was usually told the apartment was no longer available.

But when he telephoned using what he calls professional standard English, he was often invited to tour the apartments.

This is just one example of how our prejudice against an accent can affect a person's life.

Right.

And that's why some people with certain accents might want to change how they talk.

Here's Nicole again.

Because the accents that we would their stigmatizer sort of looked down upon are ones that are frequently attached to people that have less kind of social power.

But Nicole says people shouldn't have to change how they talk because of this.

Instead, we should change how we listen.

Right.

Listeners should be careful not to make assumptions or judgments based on how someone talks.

Instead of speakers having to change the way they talk.

The burden to change should not be on the person doing the talking.

It should be on the person doing the listening.

Because in fact, humans are really good at adapting to other people's voices when we want to.

So instead of sort of stigmatizing or being prejudice against some varieties or accents,

really we should sort of celebrate, but this is part of the human experience language always has this variation built in.

And it's useful for us to know who people are in part of what their life story is.

So next time you hear someone who might have a different accent than you.

Just think about how you're really being told a story.

A story about the past's life, but also about their ancestors.

And about how people have moved around the world for thousands of years.

Thousands of years of history in each word.

That's pretty amazing.

Most languages have many different accents or different ways of pronouncing the same words.

The accent you have is based on a couple different factors.

One is that we want to fit in with the people around us.

Every accent tells the story of how groups of people have moved around the globe,

like why Americans and British people sound different than each other.

Some people have prejudices against us in accents.

So sometimes people try to get rid of their accents.

But your accent is beautiful and tells the story of you.

So that's it for this episode of Brain Zon.

This episode was produced by Molly Blame, Rosie G. Phones, Anna Goldfield, Ruby Guthrie,

Matt Sanchez, and Mikho Gonzalez Wistler.

Our editors are Sand and Totten and Taylor Farzon.

We had engineering help from Jess Berg and Yon Pelchard.

Our executive producer is Beth Perlman and the executives and charge of APM Studios,

our Chandrakafadi, Joanne Griffith, and Alex Shaffer.

Many special thanks to John Baw and Sai and Yola Hood.

Brain Zon is a non profit public radio program.

If you like the show, there are lots of ways you can support us,

like fireworks, donate to the show.

Follow your friends about us.

We'll send in your drawings.

BrainZon.org is the place.

Okay, Zasha.

Now back to that mystery sound.

You ready?

Yep.

Hmm.

What are your new thoughts?

I actually don't have any thoughts.

I still think it's a vacuum or a Hoover, as I would say.

Or a leaf blower, I'm going to go with the one I think.

It's most likely, which is a Hoover stroke vacuum.

Okay.

I have no better guess than that.

Yeah, I agree.

Sounds like air moving with a motor.

All right, ready?

Do you hear what the answer is?

Yep.

I think.

All right.

Here it is.

Hi, BrainZon.

I'm Eve Lynn.

And that was a sound of a paper shutter,

shooting paper.

Oh.

A paper shredder.

Have you seen one of those before?

I have seen one.

I have seen a Hoover stroke vacuum.

And I have had a Hoover stroke vacuum.

Yes, because, you know, you could only imagine what you've heard before.

Yep.

So you've never heard a paper shutter.

Yeah.

I haven't heard one.

And I still found that very hard to guess.

That was a tricky one.

Yes, I guess the motor was shredding the paper.

So sucking in paper rather than air.

Yeah.

That was tricky one.

Now it's time for the brains honor role.

These are the incredible kids who send us their questions.

Ideas, mystery sounds, drawings and high fives.

Summer and Lori from Vodkaville, California.

Avery from White Coffee, Jersey.

Arthur from Clifton Springs, New York.

Sebastian and Noah from Cookville, Tennessee.

Riker from Regina Saskatchewan.

Nathan from Evanston, Illinois.

Holly from San Jose, California.

Cameron from Dallas, City, California.

Jacob from Marlboro, Massachusetts.

Wilbur from Regina Saskatchewan.

Zoe from Santa Cruz, California.

Nate Maya and Sylvie from New Jersey.

Lily from California.

Faith from Toronto.

Maple from Taiwan.

Tabitha from Birmingham.

Alabama.

Elise from Salt Lake City.

Eevee from Houston.

Quinn and Corps from New Prage, Minnesota.

Teague from Kenowic, Washington.

Owen and Charlie from Potomac, Maryland.

Adaline from Oak Park, Illinois.

Leo from Seattle.

Sean from Los Angeles.

Maya from Tel Aviv.

Israel.

Cavaya from Brampton, Ontario.

Avery from Wendell, North Carolina.

Dan and Barrett from Reading, Connecticut.

Sydney from Incino, California.

Charlotte Natalie and Genevieve from Lawrence, Kansas.

Part done.

Sadana from Austin, Texas.

Vera and Reia from Vienna.

Virginia Ivy from San Jose, California.

Jackson from Clark, Tennessee.

The Anna from Macau.

Matthew from Dubai.

Owen from Bradwood, Australia.

David from Colmer, Indiana.

Ashlyn from Watertown, New York.

Crystal from Powell, Tennessee.

Extremely from Los Angeles.

Camden from Front Royal.

Virginia, Molly from Haslet, Texas.

Devin, Carson, and Jacob from Alberta.

Hose from Carbon, Dale, California.

Adam from Samamish, Washington.

Claire from Mandela, Illinois.

Eleedy from Edinburgh, Scotland.

Grayson from Severn, Maryland.

Zoe from Canada.

Willow from Camden, Pennsylvania.

Marcel from New Orleans.

Liam and Julian from Louisville, Kentucky.

Alden from Washington, DC.

Ada from Spokane, Washington.

Walden from San Francisco.

Iowa Rose from Cranford, New Jersey.

Thea from Brooklyn, New York.

Holden from Prescott, Arizona.

Emma from San Francisco.

Zachary from Kirkland, Washington.

Claire from Doha, Qatar.

Andrew and Sadie from Spotsalvania.

Virginia.

Evie from Asheville, North Carolina.

Sparing Spencer from Washington, DC.

So lay Rosalie from Petaluma, California.

Christopher from Asheville.

Virginia, Peregrine from Woodenville, Washington.

And Jubil and Billy from all of Hill, Kentucky.

Will be back next week with more answers to your questions.

Thanks for listening.