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- Hey, everybody, it's me Ben
and I am speaking with an American accent
but what is an accent, where does it come from?
How does it work?
That's today's question.
First, we'll define an accent.
An accent is a smaller part of a bigger thing
called a dialect.
An accent refers to the way a language is pronounced
but a dialect refers to the way a language is pronounced
as well as the grammatical rules used in speech.
Every single person has an accent.
That's just the way it is.
Your accent is a result of how, when and where
you learned the language that you are speaking in
and it tells other people about you.
No one has a single fixed accent
based just on their experiences.
Actually, we can change our accents
and we do often change them consciously or unconsciously.
People can change their accent based on where they are
or who they're speaking to or even a life changing event
can affect your accent.
But where do accents in general come from?
Well, we know that there are several factors
that can influence an accent
and two big ones would be isolation and human nature.
I know, human nature's kind of vague.
Here's what we mean by this.
Humans love being in groups.
Humans love being part of a larger society
and when you're part of a group,
you behave in a similar fashion,
you exhibit how you belong in the group.
This happens with clothing.
This happens with food culture and language is no different.
So when a group becomes distinct,
their use of language also becomes distinct.
Okay, so imagine this.
There's a single group of people
and they divide into two groups
and there's group A and they're on one island
and there's group B and they're on another island.
They originally speak the same language
but now that they're divided geographically and socially,
they're going to evolve distinct dialects
or distinct accents
and over time, these things might diverge so much so
that they sound like completely different languages.
Humans are a well traveled species
and along the way, we've had so many distinct groups
meet other distinct groups
and their accents reflect these changes.
Some traits get lost.
Some traits get picked up.
Some things get smashed together and melded.
No accent is inherently better than another accent.
While you might hear some folks talk about stuff
like accentless English.
What they're referring to
is stuff like received pronunciation in the UK
or the sort of thing we associate with the upper Midwest
in the United Sates.
General English or standard English even.
These are called the reference varieties
because if you read pronunciation guides
and dictionaries in English,
it'll often be one of those accents
that you're learning to pronounce a word in.
They're also the accents that are often taught
to foreign students who are learning English
but make no mistake, these are accents nonetheless.
There is no accentless speech.
I mean, I guess maybe a robot could do something like that
but then it'd be a robot accent.
Check and mate, Skynet.
So what does your accent say about you?
It depends on who's listening?
Somebody might be able to trace your accent
to a particular part of a country.
For instance, they might say, oh, this guy's from London
or this lady's from Baltimore
or they might just be able to get a more general idea,
a general geographic area
so oh, he's probably from England
or she's probably from the States.
In the vast majority of languages,
different accents or dialects
are thought to have a higher or lower social status.
Let's think of it in terms of prestige.
For example, English speakers in the United States
might look down on a southern accent
but it's kind of exclusive to that part of the world
so someone from Australia or the United Kingdom
might not completely get the stereotypes in play here.
However, they will have their own stereotypes
about other accents or dialects
in their neck of the global woods
and these stereotypes or these judgements
will also not completely carry over
or translate to another English speaking area.
So imagine there's an accent joke of some sort
in a British film or in a TV show,
well, your friends from the United States
might not completely get it.
Another huge point about accents.
This perception of a high or a low status accent,
it's not inherent to the accent or the dialect at all.
We know this because if we play dialects of English
for people who don't speak English,
they have no clue which one is better or worse
than the other one.
Thanks so much for watching.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
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and if you're just hanging out,
we have some other videos as well
all of which are, give me a second,
oh yeah, these are all great.
So stay tuned for our next episode.
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