I'm interested in the processes that occur when human beings form accents.
I want to know what happens between the ear and the brain, between the language we learn and the region of the world we come from and how it makes us sound the way we do.
I am not covering the psychological aspects of accents which involve such concepts as social identity theory or accent bias I am more interested in phonology and prosody.
Several examples come to my mind from personal experiences.
I once knew brothers who had a mother from Denmark and a father from England. Both of them had grown up in Alabama but the elder brother had a neutral sounding American accent while the younger brother had a distinctly British one.
At one of my last DJ gigs I met a guy whose American father had met his Kiwi mother in Christchurch while he worked for Navy as a Antarctic pilot. He spent his childhood moving from U.S. city to U.S. city before his father retired to New Zealand. His accent was a unique hybrid of New Zealander and military brat.
A Kiwi family I worked for had recently returned from a multi-year stint in the U.S. Their middle child had the accent of a Californian while the other two children sounded like the local Cantabrians.
When the NPR and I first arrived in New Zealand we were endlessly amused by the accents of those around us. Now, nearly two years on, I barely hear it.
In much the same way that people who live near pulp mills manage to block out the smell of sulfur over time, my ear has grown used to the New Zealander's particular disregard to the proper pronunciation of vowels.
At the same time I find myself modifying my own English use for the sake of making myself understood as quickly as possible. I now place stress on the word "garage" in the same place as the English and Kiwis do. I only change Alex's diapers when I'm around the NPR, the rest of the time I'm dealing with nappies.
When I speak to my little sister in Alabama I hear the southern twang come out in my speech. In a recent job interview with a Kiwi I was told that my American accent was subtle. An American I met at Willowbank asked if I had lived in New Zealand for a while and said it took him a while to pick up that I was American.
I will be interested to hear how my son's accent turns out. He lives in a home with two Americans, a Kiwi and an Englishwoman. As he grows older the majority of those around him will speak with the Cantabrian accent.
If I were to do research on accents and how they develop in relative isolation I would want to focus my research on the island of Tristan da Cunha.
The island has a tiny population of 297 and is a British oversea territory. It is remote and almost completely free from outside contact and influence.
In the 1960s the entire population was moved to London due to the eruption of a volcano. In England, the islanders became reluctant celebrities and objects of curiosity and most of them chose to return to Tristan as soon as they were able.
All the families on the island are related and there are only eight surnames in use.
I have watched all the YouTube videos available on the islanders so I can hear what hundreds of years of being left alone can do to a person's English accent.
I have discussed varieties of the English accent here but I am also interested in the accents of individuals who have more than one language spoken in the home and the ability of older adults to mimic or acquire native accents in foreign languages.
More later.
I want to know what happens between the ear and the brain, between the language we learn and the region of the world we come from and how it makes us sound the way we do.
I am not covering the psychological aspects of accents which involve such concepts as social identity theory or accent bias I am more interested in phonology and prosody.
Several examples come to my mind from personal experiences.
I once knew brothers who had a mother from Denmark and a father from England. Both of them had grown up in Alabama but the elder brother had a neutral sounding American accent while the younger brother had a distinctly British one.
At one of my last DJ gigs I met a guy whose American father had met his Kiwi mother in Christchurch while he worked for Navy as a Antarctic pilot. He spent his childhood moving from U.S. city to U.S. city before his father retired to New Zealand. His accent was a unique hybrid of New Zealander and military brat.
A Kiwi family I worked for had recently returned from a multi-year stint in the U.S. Their middle child had the accent of a Californian while the other two children sounded like the local Cantabrians.
When the NPR and I first arrived in New Zealand we were endlessly amused by the accents of those around us. Now, nearly two years on, I barely hear it.
In much the same way that people who live near pulp mills manage to block out the smell of sulfur over time, my ear has grown used to the New Zealander's particular disregard to the proper pronunciation of vowels.
At the same time I find myself modifying my own English use for the sake of making myself understood as quickly as possible. I now place stress on the word "garage" in the same place as the English and Kiwis do. I only change Alex's diapers when I'm around the NPR, the rest of the time I'm dealing with nappies.
When I speak to my little sister in Alabama I hear the southern twang come out in my speech. In a recent job interview with a Kiwi I was told that my American accent was subtle. An American I met at Willowbank asked if I had lived in New Zealand for a while and said it took him a while to pick up that I was American.
I will be interested to hear how my son's accent turns out. He lives in a home with two Americans, a Kiwi and an Englishwoman. As he grows older the majority of those around him will speak with the Cantabrian accent.
If I were to do research on accents and how they develop in relative isolation I would want to focus my research on the island of Tristan da Cunha.
The island has a tiny population of 297 and is a British oversea territory. It is remote and almost completely free from outside contact and influence.
In the 1960s the entire population was moved to London due to the eruption of a volcano. In England, the islanders became reluctant celebrities and objects of curiosity and most of them chose to return to Tristan as soon as they were able.
All the families on the island are related and there are only eight surnames in use.
I have watched all the YouTube videos available on the islanders so I can hear what hundreds of years of being left alone can do to a person's English accent.
I have discussed varieties of the English accent here but I am also interested in the accents of individuals who have more than one language spoken in the home and the ability of older adults to mimic or acquire native accents in foreign languages.
More later.
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