Why do we change accents as we move?

When we move to a place where speak another language, it is logical that it must be learned so that we understand. not so necessary change accent. However, there are people who quickly change their accent as soon as they move either to another country or to another region of the same nation. Others, on the contrary, retain the accent of the place where they grew up for many years. What is it about?

This question was recently answered in an article Talk phonetics teacher Jane Setter, from the University of Reading. According to her, the change of accent is usually something almost unconscious that we do in order to integrate and not lose meaning. a sense of belonging instead of.

It should be noted that our emphasis is forged in the first place when we are small. In this case, those who teach us to speak are the people around us, so it is logical that we speak like them. The same thing happens when we learn a language. For example, when English people learn to speak Spanish in Argentina, they will speak with an Argentinean accent, because everything new they learned was with that accent. Now, if an Argentine moves to Spain, he may or may not change his accent. And this is where the desire to belong that Setter talks about comes into play.

phonetic convergence

In 2006 the psychologist Jennifer Brownfrom Barnard College in New York conducted a study in which he analyzed the accent two people from different backgrounds during a conversation. Only during the time that the dialogue lasted did each of the interlocutors slightly adjust their accent to the other.

It’s something known as phonetic convergence and this has been demonstrated in more cases. For example, he was also seen with roommates in the dorm. And interestingly, the shift in emphasis is more intense when there is appreciation from other people. That is, phonetic convergence occurs more easily between classmates when they get along with each other.

Now both Pardo and the Setter and other people who have studied the accent agree that this is an unconscious change that varies greatly from person to person. need to belong to a group It is something common to all people. After all, we social animals. It is this need that may even lead us to maintain habits that we do not like, such as drinking alcohol.

But not everyone acts in the same way when faced with such a need. As Setter explains in his article, those people who most quickly change their accent want to feel accepted. It may be conscious, but also unconscious. Sometimes it happens to make us understand, but other times it just happens to make us feel integrated.

Having said that, it’s worth asking why, no matter how much time passes, there are people who never lose their accent. According to Setter, this is because they are people with a more developed sense self. They enjoy their individualism and their roots and don’t feel the need to conform to others. Of course, this does not mean that those who change their accent are not proud of their origin. They may even be more. But they have a great need for communication and a sense of integration.

foreign accent syndrome

A very different case is people who suddenly change their accent to the accent of a place where they have never been. This condition, known as foreign accent syndrome, usually results from brain injury. This lesion affects the areas involved in speech, so patients change the way they pronounce words. They don’t necessarily speak with the exact accent of another country, but seeing that they speak differently, IThey unconsciously feel that they have an accent from somewhere outside.

The setter explains that these people sometimes feel disadvantaged because they appear to be from another country. And that would justify why there are those who need to adapt their accent. Actually in the article Talk He also cites a study that concluded that a quarter of workers in the United Kingdom were chosen because of their accent. Discrimination is sometimes unconsciouslike changing the accent.

A change that can also be quickly adapted by simply replacing the speaker. For this reason, if we do not live in our city, perhaps our accent has changed, but in chat on the phone with our parents or any other loved one from our place of origin, let’s return to our original focus. This is because we are in front of people who do not judge us and with whom we already feel more than united.