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Something that has puzzled me for a while are people's accents, why is it that a human from australia sounds different to a human from england?
or an african american and an african?
or even as narrow as one town to another (as in the uk)?

MY guess is it's origin lies in different languages.

For example, Gaelic, much like German, is very guttural, with the sounds being generated in the throat. Thus, when the language died out, the Scots pronounced said words with the same guttural vowels, and that was the origin of that accent.

And as Colonies were formed, and people from different countries mingled, pronounciation switched to common denominators, and a new accent slowly forms.

Thats my take anyways.

Evolution of words and phrases by isolation and experience. Further that people in proximity begin to imitate each other in pronunciation, if you've ever stayed with folks elsewhere you might have noticed your own accent changing.

I'll see 'e dreckly yus? Proper Job sure'nuff

MeanGreenStompa wrote:Evolution of words and phrases by isolation and experience. Further that people in proximity begin to imitate each other in pronunciation, if you've ever stayed with folks elsewhere you might have noticed your own accent changing.

I'll see 'e dreckly yus? Proper Job sure'nuff

i know this but that doesnt explain where they first came from

The origin for accents is different languages. Seems obvious enough.

In linguistics, an accent is a manner of pronunciation of a language.

Along the same lines...
Why do people have accents in foreign languages?
For example: a Frenchman may "yew awe stoopied"
But when they were taught words they hear sounds. Why do they not imitate the sounds form the original language? They are physically capable of make the same sound, but don’t. Why is that?

Sime rasin we new zilinders can't pronince i's 'nd ea's cirrict*

Or why I cant say oef (Off)

lingil drift changes vowel (or sometime consonet) sounds, which then get stuck in our heads as the way the letters are pronounced



*(Same reason we new zealanders cant pronouce i's and ea's correct)

I always smile when the principal of the school I work at says, in English, "No clapping!" at school assemblies.

I also smile when some one from New Zealand says 'Fish and chips'.

I have noticed that Australians have two accents. There's the rather irritating 'outback' accent, which it seems a lot of bogans have. This is the stereotyped accent you hear in cartoons and whatnot. Then there's the accent that I have, which sounds closer to English but with a distinct spin on it. It's really quite hard to explain for me. There's a documentary on the Australian accent that was on TV a while ago that you might find interesting, but I can't seem to find it streaming online anywhere.

Haha, all Australians talk like the Outback Steakhouse guy.

It really annoys me that the rural accent is the one used to portray Australians in other countries. We're not all like Steve Irwin, you know.

O rly? We're not all like Walter Cronkite or Andy Griffith either.

I know what you mean about accents.

Its like Liv Tyler in LoTR...her elvish has a terrible american accent.

And then at the Trek convention, there was a Klingon wannabe that didnt realize speaking Klingon with a southern drawl is part of an obscure religious rite involving nudity and stuffed animals.

Seriously though, accents are partially a neurological process based on the first language you learn- and the ingreained muscle memory that develops from its use. Its jsut a pattern. You cant always pick up a new pattern with some remnants of the previous one having an influence.

My wife is from east Texas, by the Louisiana border, and half her brothers and sisters speak with a wicked thick Southern accent. The other half don't really have an accent anyone from the north could pick out.
When I took her to Maine to meet my family, one of the first she met was my brother in law, who's a "Down Easter." It took a couple of sentences from him before she realized he was speaking English.

You see, the less intelligent a person is, the less their accent sounds like yours, it's a tool god gave us to separate the good people from that bad people.

Lol, some people I know actually seem to believe this. I hate living in a red state.

Canonness Rory wrote:Lol, some people I know actually seem to believe this. I hate living in a red state.

Living in a red state has nothing to do with it. There are vast numbers of douchebags worldwide. I hope you don't think that simply leaving a red state is going to solve that problem. If you are, be prepared for some major disappointment.

What surprises me is the fact that when you are speaking you don't detect your own accent. When talking among friends it's fine, but sometimes I wonder, what do I sound like? Do certain people not understand me?

Ah, another of lifes little mysteries.

The OC-D

I'm told I sound English, but I can't hear it in my own voice.

Gen. Lee Losing wrote:Along the same lines...
Why do people have accents in foreign languages?
For example: a Frenchman may "yew awe stoopied"
But when they were taught words they hear sounds. Why do they not imitate the sounds form the original language? They are physically capable of make the same sound, but don’t. Why is that?

Its a matter of drill. Just as a football player's body will change to fit the position he plays, your vocal chords (and the synapses which control them) will alter themselves to be better suited to your most common pronunciation. For example, try pronouncing a trill consonant (the double are in perro is a good example). You probably won't be able to do it. Most English speakers are unable to without significant practice.

Cheese Elemental wrote:I'm told I sound English.

I'm told to *&@# off (but that may not be because of my accent)

Cheese Elemental wrote:It really annoys me that the rural accent is the one used to portray Australians in other countries. We're not all like Steve Irwin, you know.

It isn't good, but at least the Australian stereotype is kinder than most countries get. I rather the Australian stereotype of rugged outdoorsman to the UK upperclass twit, US loud, obnoxious idiot, or the arrogant Frenchman. They're all ridiculous, but ours is kind of a nice ridiculous.


Meanwhile, I think accents to some extent come from cultural values. A culture that is very stratified, that places strong importance on form and appearance will tend to maintain the full form of words, with every vowel properly pronounced. A society that doesn't value those things will tend to drop parts of words and shorten vowel sounds. Another part would be the kinds of languages that mix together in a region, in New Orleans the number of people with French as a native tongue affected the way English was spoken. But exactly why Australians and New Zealanders, with largely the same cultures and same types of colonists, would develop noticeably different accents is a god question.

It's also interesting that right now we're generating all kinds of new dialects, but because these dialects are being formed on the internet they are divided by age, not geography.

dogma wrote:

Gen. Lee Losing wrote:Along the same lines...
Why do people have accents in foreign languages?
For example: a Frenchman may "yew awe stoopied"
But when they were taught words they hear sounds. Why do they not imitate the sounds form the original language? They are physically capable of make the same sound, but don’t. Why is that?

Its a matter of drill. Just as a football player's body will change to fit the position he plays, your vocal chords (and the synapses which control them) will alter themselves to be better suited to your most common pronunciation. For example, try pronouncing a trill consonant (the double are in perro is a good example). You probably won't be able to do it. Most English speakers are unable to without significant practice.

I can roll my R's with no difficulty... im english

EDIT: damn autocorrecter turned my R into an are

Accents can really be troublesome. I am from Kansas City, where nearly everybody talks in a sort of flat southern drawl, but I was raised by my mother and grandmother, who were born and raised in Maine, so I spoke like them. Because of that, I had to spend three years in grade school after hours taking speech therapy classes. Because of that, I to this day have problems pronouncing certain words right, and if I'm too excited I break down into incomprehensible babbling. Things would be a lot simpler if we all spoke exactly the same, like they do on Star Trek.

i somehow managed to dodge having a southern accent, and apparently sound primarily like my relatives from around maryland

sebster wrote:

Cheese Elemental wrote:It really annoys me that the rural accent is the one used to portray Australians in other countries. We're not all like Steve Irwin, you know.

It isn't good, but at least the Australian stereotype is kinder than most countries get. I rather the Australian stereotype of rugged outdoorsman to the UK upperclass twit, US loud, obnoxious idiot,WITH GUNS or the arrogant Frenchman. They're all ridiculous, but ours is kind of a nice ridiculous.

Fixed it for you.

Accents do come from language though and once a child is old enough and exposed to only one, they gain that accent. Like the japanese inability to say "r" correctly. Because there are no "r"s in the language and by the time they've mastered japanese they've lost the ability to sound it.

Mistress of minis wrote:I know what you mean about accents.

Its like Liv Tyler in LoTR...her elvish has a terrible american accent.

And then at the Trek convention, there was a Klingon wannabe that didnt realize speaking Klingon with a southern drawl is part of an obscure religious rite involving nudity and stuffed animals.

Seriously though, accents are partially a neurological process based on the first language you learn- and the ingreained muscle memory that develops from its use. Its jsut a pattern. You cant always pick up a new pattern with some remnants of the previous one having an influence.

This is quite true.

Bilingual children (like my daughter) are very lucky because they learn both sets of language sounds naturally from their parents.

Adults can learn correct pronunciation in foreign languages and it helps to have "an ear" for it.

Different accents in the same language probably result from "drift" away from the parent accent in isolated circumstances.

Modern nations are losing their local dialects thanks to mass communication spreading the dominant accent. Sometimes, foreign imports, such as Australian "upspeak" gets picked up through the medium of popular TV shows.

Im not one to speak here, since ive got a pretty typical south london accent