A: Humans mimic others speech (unconsciously) in order to fit in. EG: person from country A moves to country B. Both countries speak English. A few years later A moves home. People in country A now hear a country B accent when this person talks.
B: An isolated population’s pronunciation will naturally drift away form that of the seed population. (this is how Latin morphed into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian after the fall of the Roman empire)
In this example you have a population likely to come from several countries with different English pronunciation. While in isolation everyone unconsciously alters their accents to more of a local norm.
Exactly. I don’t see it surprising, but cool as hell. Its neat to see how our language can evolve, and also a reminder that it’s evolving all the time.
A: Humans mimic others speech (unconsciously) in order to fit in. EG: person from country A moves to country B. Both countries speak English. A few years later A moves home. People in country A now hear a country B accent when this person talks.
Yep. As an American who’s lived in Korea for about 10 years, I catch myself doing this all the time when speaking English to Koreans who understand some English. I also find myself doing the same thing to other Americans, and even my family.
I’ve also been told that I speak Korean with a female accent. I’m pretty sure it’s because the majority of my Korean language exposure is from my wife of 18 years, and her friends. I’ve only really started making male friends of my own in the past three years or so.
Closest thing i can think of is valley girl and surfbro accents in the US, though i guess most affluent people in the past had fairly distinct speech between men and women, because sexism!
The valley girl/surfbro divide is also fundamentally sexism but not outright “this is how women/men should be speaking”, it’s just a natural result of people hanging in groups of their own gender.
I’m not sure about other languages in general, but in Korean females tend to use different intonations, pronounce vowels a little differently, and use different verb endings as a means of sounding more cute.
If you’re not familiar with Korean, then perhaps you’ve heard Japanese males speak before. They’re more harsh, sometimes gutteral, whereas females are more gentle when they speak.
I think I picked up the gentleness speech patterns, and I often catch people off guard. Firstly there’s a foreigner speaking Korean, but he also sounds like a hot chick 😂
Exactly. I can’t on earth see why this would be surprising.
Even my middle school had some unique weird speech shit that someone made up and it caught on.
And this was basically before the Internet. The only thing everyone in my generation knew was that Marilyn Manson had his ribs removed so he could suck his own duck.
person from country A moves to country B. Both countries speak English. A few years later A moves home. People in country A now hear a country B accent when this person talks.
When you’re from country A, but move to country B, you don’t feel at home in country B. But when you return to country A, you also don’t feel entirely home in country A. You have a slightly different accent, have had different experiences, likely developed different cultural mannerisms, habits, etc. etc. … You’re perpetually stuck between cultures, hence Third Culture Kid(TCK). Especially true of children who move at a young age. So much so that, if they read a book about TCKs, they soon realise that what they thought were unique personality quirks, strengths or character flaws. are anything but unique among fellow TCKs. Also true for adults but to a lesser degree. Also true for people who moved larger distances within a country, changed schools a lot, etc.
Humans mimic others speech (unconsciously) in order to fit in
No, it’s because the brain uses the speech from others as additional learning feedback when speaking, as explained in the publication. This is why young children, who have zero interest in fitting in, still develop their accents from their social environment — even if that environment changes drastically
Submarines and other such military things are nation state based. While there is accent variation within nations it would be less than on a multi-national science project.
or it could be it has never been tested and there is language drift in long term and isolated military deployments.
I’m pretty sure there’s a stereotypical (slight) difference in how military people talk, though granted it’s probably to a large part because they’re forced to talk in a specific way a lot of the time.
It is not that surprising.
A: Humans mimic others speech (unconsciously) in order to fit in. EG: person from country A moves to country B. Both countries speak English. A few years later A moves home. People in country A now hear a country B accent when this person talks.
B: An isolated population’s pronunciation will naturally drift away form that of the seed population. (this is how Latin morphed into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian after the fall of the Roman empire)
In this example you have a population likely to come from several countries with different English pronunciation. While in isolation everyone unconsciously alters their accents to more of a local norm.
It doesn’t need to be surprising. It’s cool.
Exactly. I don’t see it surprising, but cool as hell. Its neat to see how our language can evolve, and also a reminder that it’s evolving all the time.
Yep. As an American who’s lived in Korea for about 10 years, I catch myself doing this all the time when speaking English to Koreans who understand some English. I also find myself doing the same thing to other Americans, and even my family.
I’ve also been told that I speak Korean with a female accent. I’m pretty sure it’s because the majority of my Korean language exposure is from my wife of 18 years, and her friends. I’ve only really started making male friends of my own in the past three years or so.
Strange how all of that works.
Female accent? Do many languages have male and female accents?
Closest thing i can think of is valley girl and surfbro accents in the US, though i guess most affluent people in the past had fairly distinct speech between men and women, because sexism!
The valley girl/surfbro divide is also fundamentally sexism but not outright “this is how women/men should be speaking”, it’s just a natural result of people hanging in groups of their own gender.
Oh yeah. Excellent example.
I don’t know if it’s sexist or anything. People can talk with whatever accents they want to.
I’m not sure about other languages in general, but in Korean females tend to use different intonations, pronounce vowels a little differently, and use different verb endings as a means of sounding more cute.
If you’re not familiar with Korean, then perhaps you’ve heard Japanese males speak before. They’re more harsh, sometimes gutteral, whereas females are more gentle when they speak.
I think I picked up the gentleness speech patterns, and I often catch people off guard. Firstly there’s a foreigner speaking Korean, but he also sounds like a hot chick 😂
That’s hilarious
Exactly. I can’t on earth see why this would be surprising.
Even my middle school had some unique weird speech shit that someone made up and it caught on.
And this was basically before the Internet. The only thing everyone in my generation knew was that Marilyn Manson had his ribs removed so he could suck his own duck.
In my generation it was David Bowie and Cher that had had their lower ribs removed.
Dave for the auto-fellatio
Cher, to have a tiny waist.
Apparently it was Marilyn Monroe before Cher.
There are no new stories or jokes. Just ones that have had the references updated.
I was so busy imagining Cher trying to lick her own pussy that I almost didn’t see the tiny waist part
do you believe in life after love?
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Same thing with conspiracy theories. They’re all blood libel eventually.
Aliens are blood libel?
You are today’s lucky 10,000!
We also knew that Richard Gere stuck hamster up his ass.
See also: Third Culture Kid and articles about how language influences personality.
When you’re from country A, but move to country B, you don’t feel at home in country B. But when you return to country A, you also don’t feel entirely home in country A. You have a slightly different accent, have had different experiences, likely developed different cultural mannerisms, habits, etc. etc. … You’re perpetually stuck between cultures, hence Third Culture Kid(TCK). Especially true of children who move at a young age. So much so that, if they read a book about TCKs, they soon realise that what they thought were unique personality quirks, strengths or character flaws. are anything but unique among fellow TCKs. Also true for adults but to a lesser degree. Also true for people who moved larger distances within a country, changed schools a lot, etc.
I wonder if this causes TCKs to gravitate toward cultural melting pots like new york/london
No, it’s because the brain uses the speech from others as additional learning feedback when speaking, as explained in the publication. This is why young children, who have zero interest in fitting in, still develop their accents from their social environment — even if that environment changes drastically
Couldn’t that be called subconsciously wanting to fit in?
There are evolutionary benefits to fitting in for social animals, so of course children would subconsciously do that
If it happened there though I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often, eg on submarines…
My guesses:
Submarines and other such military things are nation state based. While there is accent variation within nations it would be less than on a multi-national science project.
or it could be it has never been tested and there is language drift in long term and isolated military deployments.
I’m pretty sure there’s a stereotypical (slight) difference in how military people talk, though granted it’s probably to a large part because they’re forced to talk in a specific way a lot of the time.