The Science Behind: Accents
Everyone has an accent. They may have a British accent, a French accent, or an American accent. But how do people have accents? A person's accent depends on where they come from. But what does location have to do with accents?
First of all, what is an accent? Accent had more than one meaning and as you can already tell I don't mean the one they use in interior designing. Accents refer to the way how the same word can be pronounced in different ways. This is called a dialect. We get our accents from how, when, and where we learned to speak the language. Any person can easily tell where someone is from because of their accent.
Everyone has accents. It may seem like Americans don't have an accent but they do!
Human isolation is when a group of people get divided. Those groups might develop different behaviors and accents than the original group. That answers our next question- what do places have to do with accents? A country's native accent is influenced by groups that have lived there in the past.
The word "Pin" is considered as the word "Pen" in the southern part of America but that is not true in the northern part of America.
Accents don't always have to do with where a person was born. For example, when college students go abroad to study, they usually come back speaking in a different way. This is because they have heard people around them speaking that way for so long, they started speaking that way as well! It isn't until when they come back home that they realize they are talking differently.
Fun Fact: A stroke or traumatic brain injury can cause a person to speak differently and make it seem like they are from a different country. Also, a speech disorder called Foreign Accent Syndrome changes a person's native accent into a strong accent.
Now you know why people have different accents. And always remember one thing: if you move to a different country and you feel like you are different, you will be amazed by what a few months of living there do to you! You will start to sound like the people who you are often around and like the things they like! That is how smart the human brain is!
Thank you for reading this article! Until next time... Love, Anvi