“Is That British?”
In my mind, one of the most fascinating things to the human ear is an accent different than your own. Unfortunately, I am from Washington DC and there isn’t much of a “DC Accent.” So upon coming to Penn State, and talking to people with all different accents, especially those super cool one of a kind New Zealand accents, made me think about what it all started. What is the root of all the accents? While this question may sound rather trivial, I wanted to know how it all started. How did Pittsburgh English become different than British or New Zealand English? So I did some research.
One article talked about New Orleans. If you spend one day on the streets of the French Quarter you would be able to hear a very unique accent. The cause of this is that 1). Many different countries inhabited New Orleans originally, thus causing a unique form of dialect that was adopted over time. 2.) More isolated areas, such as New Orleans, have more unique vernaculars, because there was no contact with other regions when the language was being developed.
This would also make sense for Australians and New Zealanders, who are completely secluded from any of form of English, thus it was easy for them to adapt a new form of English that was different than the British and American forms of the language.
Now that answered my question as to why different areas have different accents, but how was such a drastic change in accent created between British and American English… After all, the first Americans were British themselves.
One article claims that education plays a large roll in the different accents. This is the point that I most agree with. It makes sense that lower income areas, where education is less valued, there would be a larger language barrier. More people didn’t learn the proper forms of English and therefore just picked up different words and phrases from those around them, creating slang. That would explain why different places around the United States have different types of accents.
Ultimately, there are multiple different causes to why accents have been created for the English language, and one reason cannot get all the credit. I think The education cause makes the most sense, and It was interesting to find out a little about the origin of accents.
I think your article just touched base on a question that I myself have questioned. I did understand from your article that your education and the region in which you reside play a large part in forming our present day understanding of accents. What still is not clear to me from your article is how exactly migrating to a different location effected how they talked and how it stuck today. How if we migrated from British did our English “flatten” out our language to what it is today. How can it be that we in the United State have different accents if we are on the same country. What is it about the region of the south that makes the language different than in Boston or California? I would be interested to know your thoughts on this because I am still curious after reading your article if there are still questions that could be answered.
I know studies on the human brain have been done to understand the critical time period of when you start to develop the accent you will have. This reading from CNN gives an idea of how the process of speech and accent and brain connect: http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/23/from-brain-to-language-to-accent/
This topic is personal to me because my father lived in Louisiana for a large period of his childhood and moved to Pennsylvania when he was 13 years old. He describes to me that it took until high school for him not to have a noticeable accent and if you hear him speak today, you would never guess he had this background. At on point in my life, I learned that a child will develop the accent they will have by the age of 8. It would be interesting if you looked further into this matter of the manipulation of an accent.
I hope this helps give you some inspiration for your next blog!
I think it is very interesting how different regions in our country have different accents. I feel like out west there isn’t a very distinctive accent, but there is a midwest accent, and southern accent, a Boston accent, and where I am from a “Buffalo” accent, which uses a very distinctive flat a. Being in college, I love to try and figure out where people are from based on the way they talk. I guess it all depends on when that region of the country was developed, and who it was developed by. I also agree that the schooling has a big influence on accents and the way people talk. As children we pick up things that we are exposed to and so if you had a kindergarten teacher with a southern accent, you might pick up the tone from that teacher. I guess it just depends on the environment you grow up in that will determine your “accent”