John Glen Hill (2:14)

You called in. And now it's time for us to hold up our end of the bargain. I'm John Glen Hill. This is Explain it to me from Vox. And this week is all about accents. How we get them, why they change, and if you lose them, how you get them back. Before we get into all that, where did the American accent come from in

Valerie Fridlin (2:37)

the first place, if you went back to 1600, you know, 1650 New World, you would probably think, what the hell are you all saying around me? Because I don't understand a thing.

John Glen Hill (2:48)

Valerie Fridlin is a sociolinguist and author of the book why We Talk. The Real Story Behind Our Accents.

Valerie Fridlin (2:56)

We start our accent journey in America, really with the first British colonists that came. You know, it seems odd because, you know, there are other colonists that were here. There were indigenous languages that were. So that isn't the first language story of America. But the most pivotal voices for establishing that original American accent were those early British colonists. So the original American accent was sort of one that had leveled the playing field of many of the really salient, noticeable British accent features. But by the 1680s, we start to see a leveling of accents, so that while the feeder accents were. And so there were certainly noticeable British features. So, for example, the Rs would have been there, with the exception of a few Rs that got dropped really early in words like burst and curse, which became bust and cuss. Right. That's actually the origin.

John Glen Hill (3:55)

Oh, that's why I say cussing.

Valerie Fridlin (3:56)

Exactly. It's the British R dropping that came over early. But so that would be something we shared. So it didn't matter who you were, what class you were from, what kind of job you occupied. The speech was much more similar among people in America or the New World at that time than it was back in Britain.

John Glen Hill (4:16)

Okay, that's interesting that it was uniform, because we have so many regional differences now. When did we see those pop up?

Valerie Fridlin (4:24)

Think about the way that the Atlantic coast was settled right at the very top. You had people coming in from a lot, from East Anglia and Southern Britain. And then you had the Quakers from the north of Britain and the Scots, Irish and the German in the Midlands. And then in the south, you actually had a lot of people also from southern Britain, a lot of the Cavaliers, those that were loyal to King Charles I, and they had a lot of indentured servants and a lot of enslaved people that came with West African backgrounds. So if you get a sense there of these three different dialect areas getting established early, by 1780, 1800, that's really when we see enough generations have come through and learned the patterns of this New world that they sounded very different from Britain, but also started to sound different from each other. So in the New England area, what it was described as, as. This is definitely not something I think most New Englanders will love as a description, but it was Described as a nasal, whiny, twang, dang at the time, but it was also considered the most prestigious accent. So there you go. And then in the middle Atlantic colonies, they said words like off. More like off. And then the south, of course, you had actually a lot of commentary on similarity with the slaves talk. So there were a lot of comments on how some of the features of the people that had been brought over from West Africa were influencing the speech, particularly women and children there, which I think goes to the idea that there was a lot of actual interaction, and interaction is really what determines what we sound like.

John Glen Hill (6:04)

Yeah, I want to dig into the Southern accent a little bit. More. So distinct. It is so, like, kind of uniquely American, even though it's different in different parts of the South. How did we get that Southern accent? Can you go into that a little bit?

Valerie Fridlin (6:22)

Absolutely. In fact, what we really see is the Southern accent as sort of the y' all drawl far instead of fire, the merging of pins and pens. All of that did not come around until after the civil War. So what it really did is brought together people towards a common sort of enemy and also a common cultural experience that bonded their speech in ways that we find is really conducive to new accent formation. It's also that the infrastructure of the south changed during the reconstruction period. And anytime we see a change in the infrastructure, a change in the economy, a change in the transportation networks in an area, we generally see a change in the way they sound as well.

John Glen Hill (7:14)

That New England accent, that Southern accent, that gets a lot of the shine. But real briefly, like, what are we hearing in the Midwest and out West? Because I think those are the parts of the country where some people are like, oh, these aren't accents, but they are. Right.

Valerie Fridlin (7:27)

This Midwest and West are quite interesting because, you know, they were all a little later. So the coastal colonies were obviously earlier. And the Midwest had a really unique blending because it was really. It emanated from the Pennsylvania colony. So that's really the heart of the heartland acc. Over a third of the population of the Pennsylvania colony was the Scots Irish, and another third were Germans. You know, when you think about the Chicago accent. Da Bears.

Caller with Southern/Appalachian accent (7:56)

Da Bears.

Valerie Fridlin (7:56)

That is actually a very German influence accent. There were already a lot of Scandinavian settlers in that area. Minnesota, same thing. The Minnesota accent.

Cece Joyner (8:06)

Oh, you betcha.

Valerie Fridlin (8:07)

Yeah.

Nicole Holliday (8:08)

Yeah.

Valerie Fridlin (8:08)

Again, that was heavily Scandinavian influence, But by the time they get to the west coast, a century later, they were American. Right. So it resettling. Not that there weren't other countries that had immigrants come In. But the vast majority were resettlers from an American dialect region. So what you get there is already Americanized speech. But truly, that's why we think of the Western accent as sort of being accentless is because it had gone through so many cycles of leveling out some of the more noticeable features from the east coast, by the time they hit it West.

Cece Joyner (8:43)

Ugh. As if.

John Glen Hill (8:45)

So I moved around quite a bit growing up. You know, I've lived in the Midwest, I've lived in the Southwest, and I've spent all of my adulthood in D.C. and I'm just wondering, like, can you tell how much of these regional dialects have I picked up? I'm like, oh, my gosh, what is my accent?

Valerie Fridlin (9:02)

Just from, like, my quick and dirty assessment of your speech style, one thing I'll notice is you do actually have a bit of the. The pin pen merger in your speech.

John Glen Hill (9:12)

So you said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pin and pin are the same to me.

Valerie Fridlin (9:15)

Yeah. But that actually can be something that's more prevalent in African American speech styles. So that's something. So if you look at what standard African American English used as the model, right. Southern speech was actually the model because up to 1900, over 90% of African Americans lived in the South. And it's not until the Great migration of the 20th century, between, like, 1917 and 1970, that we get this mass shift in. In sort of living patterns where then about 50% of African Americans moved to urban centers, predominantly in the north, and also Los angeles. And Washington, D.C. was a big area for that. And you also have quite a bit of vocal fry in your speech.

John Glen Hill (10:01)

Yeah, yeah. I'm a girl. I'm a millennial lady.

Valerie Fridlin (10:05)

I love it. But that's also something that was studied in African American speech in the Washington, D.C. area, as well as in white women's speech there too. It was prominent. So you're not calling you out. I love vocal fry, but it's definitely something I hear in your voice there. And there's also the more Southern intonation pattern that I hear in your speech as well. So I would say while you don't sound Southern per se, you sound mostly more Southern than non. Than any other accent that I can pick up.

John Glen Hill (10:36)

Oh, that's so fascinating. The different ways we talk are so cool. And over time, they evolve. That's next.

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Brene Brown (12:01)

Hi, I'm Brene Brown.

Narrator/Host (12:02)

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Brene Brown (12:03)

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place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning.

Brene Brown (12:11)

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John Glen Hill (12:16)

And we're always learning.

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John Glen Hill (12:30)

We're back with more Explain it to Me. I'm jq. Our accents carry a lot of history and a ton of information about who we are. That's what Nicole Holliday studies at UC Berkeley. She's what's called a sociophonetician.

Nicole Holliday (12:45)

I study how speech sounds operate in society. The easiest way to understand that, or like my elevator pitch is usually like, you know, you call your bank or whatever, and you get a mental picture of the person you're talking to, the customer service person, like their age, their gender, their race, maybe where they're from. And you do that immediately, like one sound. And you can sometimes make that kind of picture. But there's something physical in that. There's something about the voice itself and something about the way that you hear the voice. And so what we do is study how you're able to make that kind of judgment and then what it means socially. Our identity is reflected in the way that we sound. And so some of that, we have control over the way that we want to be perceived by others, but not entirely.

John Glen Hill (13:29)

Okay, what kind of societal things influence how much or how little of an accent we have?

Nicole Holliday (13:36)

Yeah, so this is like an intro to linguistics test question. So I would ask the students, like, all right, what are the ways that language can vary between individuals or groups? And then the answer is, any way that people can vary sort of sociologically. So you know, we think a lot about region because that's very obvious to us. But like gender, sexuality, race, class, all kinds of stuff. Right. Any sort of social variable that we're talking about. I can give you like an example of how the sounds vary within any place. If we look at the difference between white and black speakers, I'm not saying this is true for every person. I'm saying maybe it's true for 80% of people in a community that you see these kind of differences. One that's obvious is looking at the R sound. So R is really important in American English historically. The stereotypical Boston accent, the park the car and Harvard Yard as pak the ka and Havid yad, that's an R phenomena. And we know that patterns of R lessness, so when you don't pronounce your R when it's at the end of a syllable have been changing over the last hundred years in places like New York and Boston. Indeed. But New Yorkers got more rful, so they started to say park the car. White New Yorkers faster than black New Yorkers. So if you talk to older black people in New York, they're still likely to say like pac the car. Not quite like that. Cause it's not my accent. But white people the same age are more likely to say park the car. So you can see those kind of differences that are both regional and ethnolinguistic, like, you know, by ethnicity over time.

John Glen Hill (15:08)

So we heard from people who describe that thing that happens when you're with certain people. Like, you know, you go home for Christmas or you got a drink or two in you and that old accent comes back.

Caller with Southern/Appalachian accent (15:22)

Why? When I go to school up north, my accent kind of just assimilates and it's closer aligned to my school members. And then when I'm home, it's like full blown. I have a southern accent, I'm on spring break right now and I'm home. And the minute someone comments on my accent, I change it, it goes immediately back.

Nicole Holliday (15:43)

So when you're in a situation where you have lowered your inhibitions, like if you're really tired or something like that, less control, then the way that you sound naturally is going to be coming out more and more obvious. Right. So that's why people will notice it, for example, in that case. But there's also this phenomenon of like convergence or accommodation. So even people who are not talking about the way that they used to sound, but like if you say, oh, I went to England and I came back sounding a little British. Like, it could be an affectation, and they're just being annoying and bragging about their vacation. But it could also be that when you talk to people from a different place, they move towards you and you move towards them. And this can be like, you know, your vowels got a little more ah versus ah or something like that, when you go to one place because you're meeting in the middle. And that actually facilitates effective communication when you sort of meet your listener halfway and they meet you halfway.

John Glen Hill (16:36)

You know, I think it's natural to want to fit in when you're younger, when you're making your way through life. But then you grow up or you become established. And I think, you know, there are some people who have let their accents go or even got rid of them on purpose who are like, dang, I really miss that.

Caller with Southern/Appalachian accent (16:53)

As you can tell, fairly distinct Southern country, Appalachian accent. I've lived in the south my whole life, and it's been a huge part of who I am and what people notice about me first, which used to be sort of a source of shame, but now I take a lot of pride in it. But I've noticed through my life, as many others have, that it's really disappearing, and lots of people are losing their Southern accents. So I'm really curious about what can be done to preserve these cultural pieces.

Nicole Holliday (17:23)

So the first thing I would say is, if you're worried about it, you're unlikely to lose it. So people lose their ways of sounding because of social pressure, but also when they choose. So we have some research on people that move away versus people that stay in their communities, basically saying that the more positive orientation you have to where you're from, the more likely you are to continue to sound local in that way. Second of all, like, yeah, being. It's the exact same thing we say to people when they say, like, oh, I want to learn Spanish. And we're like, yeah, move to Mexico. Yeah, yeah. Being in the. There's no substitute for being in the place. However, you know, staying in contact with people, even, you know, on the phone, on zoom, whatever, visiting when you can. Like, that kind of stuff is good. I wouldn't say so much like the media, because first of all, nobody in the. In the media is, like, sounding the way that they naturally sound. When you're doing something scripted, that's not the.

Patricia Juarez (18:16)

Like, the.

Nicole Holliday (18:16)

The most authentic version. But also the way that we construct our. Our language happens in inter with other people. So I think we have this idea that, like, if we Just watch enough movies, we'll sound like that person or whatever. There was a very interesting thing during the pandemic where a lot of American kids were watching Peppa Pig.

Patricia Juarez (18:36)

Okay. George and me would show you how.

Nicole Holliday (18:40)

Oh, and then the parents were. The parents were saying, like, my kid's developing a British accent. No, your kid's not developing a British accent. They're, like, imitating Peppa Pig. That car.

Patricia Juarez (18:52)

It's kind of weird. What do we need to get for spaghetti tomatoes?

Valerie Fridlin (18:58)

But they don't.

Nicole Holliday (18:59)

That kid does not sound like that because it's temporary. And it's something that they absorb through the media, but it's not something that happened in interaction. So if you're trying to, you know, maintain your original way of sounding, I would say talking to people is probably the best way.

Valerie Fridlin (19:16)

What do you say?

Patricia Juarez (19:17)

Thank you very much, Peppa.

John Glen Hill (19:23)

Coming up, how to Stop Worrying and Love youe Accent.

Cece Joyner (19:34)

Sean Ramistorm, let me ask you a question.

Valerie Fridlin (19:36)

Which journalistic endeavors do you pay money to support?

Narrator/Host (19:40)

Oh, my gosh. Which? Or, like, how many? Let me think. That one and that one and that one. A bunch of public radio stations, a big newspaper that I can think of some stacks. So many newsletters. I don't know if they're substacks. But, like, I was trying to count the other day. Cause someone asked me, and I think it's like, six newsletters at least. Dang, Like, a lot. How about you? Are you in the newsletter camp, too?

Valerie Fridlin (20:02)

All of that.

Cece Joyner (20:02)

Not so much newsletters.

Valerie Fridlin (20:04)

A lot of podcasts on Patreon.

Narrator/Host (20:06)

Heck, yeah.

Valerie Fridlin (20:08)

Which reminds me.

Narrator/Host (20:09)

Oh, yeah, you were like, yes. And ing me. Okay, you, dear listener, can support this show today explained. And in doing so, support Vox, which makes this show possible by going to Vox.com members. There's benefits. You get to listen to the show without ads. You get little perks. Check it out.

John Glen Hill (20:32)

And thank you.

Version History Host (20:35)

In 1984, Apple launched maybe the most consequential computer ever. It was not a good computer, particularly. There was actually a lot wrong with it. But the Macintosh had all of the right ideas about what computers would become, and it kind of changed everything. This week on Version History, our chat show about the best and worst and most interesting products in tech history were telling the story of the Macintosh and why, again, despite not being very good, it managed to change everything. Anyway, that's version history on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts,

John Glen Hill (21:12)

It's explained it to me. I'm jq, and I told y' all earlier that we got a ton of calls about Accents. It seemed like it hit a nerve. I mentioned that to our socio phonetician, Nicole Holliday, and she was like, of course it did.

Nicole Holliday (21:27)

It's so deeply entrenched the way that we sound, deeply connected with our family, with all of our experiences as kids, with who we want to be in the world. But also we live in this complex sociological universe where we know that other people don't necessarily feel about us or about where we're from, the way that we feel about that place. And so we feel this kind of tension. Like, you know, I want to be authentic to myself by sounding the way that I sound, but I also know that out here in the world, the way that I sound is not necessarily accepted in all situations. So it creates a sort of, like, conflict within us between being ourselves and being who we want to be in the world.

Cece Joyner (22:11)

To me, the main word from Central Jersey Shore is W A T E R. Like the way someone says water tells you everything you need to know.

John Glen Hill (22:20)

This is a listener named Cece Joyner

Cece Joyner (22:22)

Sierra, but I go by Cece. I've taken a little bit of all the places that I've lived and made this, like, ridiculous accent. So born and raised in Jersey, so definitely have some Jersey words use them. But then I went to college in Florida, Tampa, Florida, which doesn't really have much of an accent, but definitely some Southern, like, essences. And also, I think, like, just getting tidbits from other people that I met. Like, my first college roommate was from Kentucky, then I lived in New Orleans. And what's all about accents?

John Glen Hill (22:51)

In college, Cece majored in communications.

Cece Joyner (22:53)

I thought I was gonna be Oprah. I mean, there's still time. I was in a class. And our professor, this is the early odd. So you gotta remember. Gotta remember where we were at the world, right? My professor was basically just went down the line and talked to many of us about, like, how our accents were not going to make us marketable, especially if we were thinking about going into television, radio. But really even just professionally, like, you cannot talk like that. So that was the first time I was like, whoa, this accent is strong. And I made a conscious effort because I was like, well, I want to make it. Let's just talk about Jersey. Like, then Jersey had this, like, total. Like, everyone hates it, or like, is just intrigued by it, or things were weird.

Caller with Southern/Appalachian accent (23:33)

What's your nickname?

John Glen Hill (23:34)

Snooki.

Valerie Fridlin (23:35)

Snooker. Snooker. Nobody calls Snookies.

Patricia Juarez (23:38)

What line of work are you in?

John Glen Hill (23:40)

Waste management consultant.

Cece Joyner (23:41)

If so, it's like, I don't want this. How's this gonna help me in life?

John Glen Hill (23:45)

Yeah. How did that make you feel to hear him be like, okay, so that accent has gotta go.

Cece Joyner (23:50)

First off, I was like, what accent? Like, what are you talking about? Like, I don't have an accent. I was, like, blown. I'll be honest. I want people to like me. I want to be likable. I don't want people to cut me off, like, in their perceptions about me. People already think so much about you by the way you look. And so I'm not trying to get no exes.

Caller with Southern/Appalachian accent (24:07)

Mm.

Cece Joyner (24:08)

Mm. I'm gonna come in here non regional. I don't need you to know where I'm from.

John Glen Hill (24:11)

Yeah. Did you try to get rid of your accent? How did you go about that? What did that version of you sound like?

Cece Joyner (24:17)

So.

Valerie Fridlin (24:17)

Oh, well.

Cece Joyner (24:18)

So the funny thing was, during this time, I have something called graves disease, so my voice got really raspy. It was actually low key, kind of sexy, and people tell I should go on the radio. So this was at the time, though, I was trying to get rid of it, so I can't even do it. It was like. Cause it was, like, really low and, like, raspy. And I would. I would have to talk really slowly to make sure that I didn't, like, go into my accent. And that's not sustainable.

John Glen Hill (24:42)

Yeah. You know, it's funny.

Cece Joyner (24:43)

My.

John Glen Hill (24:45)

One of my best friends, she's always. She always says, like, I'm from Jersey. We pump our fists. We do not pump our gas.

Valerie Fridlin (24:49)

Yes.

John Glen Hill (24:50)

And I just wonder, what's your relationship with your accent now? How do you think of it?

Cece Joyner (24:58)

I like her. She gets me where I need to go. She starts good conversations. She makes me. People are interested. They want to hear things. Everyone thinks they know something about me before. I like that. And so I think of just my relationship with my accent is like, we're in this together. I also do love. One thing I love about my accent is all the different things I've picked up, because I think, like, not to be poetic, but I feel like it's like a love letter to my life. I use Yiddish terms, and I use terms I've learned in New Orleans and now North Carolina. Oh, that's a whole other accent. Right.

Nicole Holliday (25:31)

And.

Cece Joyner (25:31)

But I think it's like a little love letter to my life and to everything that makes me me.

Patricia Juarez (25:41)

Well, my accent now, I think it's a mixture of what I learned in Argentina. We learn on British English, but also with some Italian accent, because the Spanish that we speak in Argentina is heavily accented towards Italian. Because of the immigration. So it's not the Spanish that you would actually hear in Spain or Mexico. My name is Patricia Juarez and I am from Argentina. I came to the United States over 30 years ago.

John Glen Hill (26:19)

Patricia came for a PhD program at UCLA and she stayed.

Patricia Juarez (26:24)

I do Latin American history. That's my specialty. One of the first things that happened when I started in grad school was that I realized my fellow grad students, they were making fun, laughing or, you know, giggling every time I would say certain words. They used to call me the short lady. I'm 5ft tall, maybe 5ft short. The short lady with an accent. When I realized that, so I tried to fix the accent. And then as soon as I got a full time job at csun, I decided that was going to also, you know, fix my height. So I started wearing stilettos to school. So I was, I was hoping not to be the short lady, the short professor with an accent. It was really hard. It was me practicing at night at home, memorizing, for example, when I was a teaching assistant, memorizing the lectures and the ways to pronounce it. So it was me with dictionary reading, you know, phonetics and trying to understand how to pronounce it was, it was so much work. There were so many levels of insecurities added to that. It was painful.

John Glen Hill (27:41)

And then about 10 years ago, she decided to drop that new accent and the stilettos. She was done with fighting to fit in.

Patricia Juarez (27:49)

I think two things changed. First was, you know, getting to full professor, thinking, okay, I made it. It's not only I not only got tenure, but I, I made it all the way up. So that really helped me with my self care esteem as an academic. But also we brought my daughter home and I didn't want to fake anything, you know, consciously I made a decision to just stop faking it because it felt that I was, that I was a poser. Right? I mean, and I, I didn't want to feel like that.

John Glen Hill (28:25)

Do you ever wish you would have, like, come to embrace it sooner?

Patricia Juarez (28:29)

Oh my God, yes. I wish I had never tried to fake it because it was a painful experience. But, you know, I guess I'm the result of those efforts too. So in a sense, it's part of me embracing who I am right now. Don't change your accent. It is who you are. And your accent, in a sense, is part of, you know, what you are bringing into the world because it is the result of your, you know, where you were born and your experiences and your whole identity. Just if somebody gives you a hard time, just that means that person is not worth your time or your accent. So I would. I would say just. Just, you know, keep it, embrace it, and just be who you are.

John Glen Hill (29:37)

That's it for this week. Special thanks to the University of Georgia's John Forest. Also thanks to each and every one of you that called in and shared your story with us.

Patricia Juarez (29:46)

Us.

John Glen Hill (29:47)

You really helped make this show. Speaking of which, we've got another assignment for you, and this one might be more of a challenge. So the world is kind of a bummer right now, to put it mildly. Where do you find hope? Are there ways that you're staying optimistic? Give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or send a voice memo to askvox.com

Valerie Fridlin (30:13)

another

John Glen Hill (30:14)

way to help the show out, become a VOX member. As a VOX member, you get access to our Patreon, where you can find even more interviews with VOX podcast hosts. Just head over to Vox.com members to learn more. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru. It was edited by Ginny Lawton, fact checked by Melissa Hirsch and engineered by Patrick Boyd. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy, and I'm your host, John Glen Hill. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you soon. Bye.

Caller with Southern/Appalachian accent (30:46)

Talk to you later. Bye. Bye. Bye. I hope you all have a great day. Have a good one. Bye.

Patricia Juarez (30:50)

Bye. Bye.