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Language and Culture
Question:
Where do accents come from in languages?
Answer:
Accents exist because people speak. The meaning of "accent" is the way people speak. There are variations in the way any individual produces sounds, or produces the complex combinations of sounds which make up words and word sequences.
Regular Variations
These are regular and systematic, and are noticeable and definable characteristics of human speech. These variations occur with every individual.
Slight variations within groups of closely related individuals can be likewise grouped in a range of characteristics distinct from other definable groups of speakers. All speech forms can be thus analyzed across the whole of humanity.
Thus "accent" is simply one term we use to refer to some noticeable difference in production. The greater the differences, the more difficult it is for certain speakers to hear others. Those who can hear each other we group together and refer to their set of speech forms as a language or dialect of a larger set of speech forms.
Thus accents are not variations from some metaphysical standard handed down from some divine source, but simply a valid form of production of some set of speech sounds within a recognizable set.
Everyone Has an Accent
This means every one who speaks has an accent. To speak is to have an accent. Where do accents come from? Well, accents don't really "come from" anywhere.
Let's ask rather: What does the word "accent" refer to? The word "accent" is the term we apply to the pronunciation of sounds in any certain speech form.
Thus a German sounds a certain way speaking his native speech form. A Hollander sounds a certain way speaking his native speech form. An American sounds a certain way speaking his native speech form. All these speech forms are broadly related, as all can be traced back to a proto form which may be called proto-Germanic.
Some speech forms are more similar so we can call them by one name, such as English, Dutch or German. Or as we zoom in closer, American, British and Australian. Then closer, Cockney, Geordie and Glaswegian, etc.
The patterns learned and internalized when any person learns their first language (called "mother tongue" or "native language") are carried over into the pronunciation and production of a second language. This applies not only to the pronunciation patterns and intonation, but to grammar formats and thought forms as well.
Two Accents
The patterns follow the speaker's mother tongue, enabling us to systematically identify the "accent." Thus one set of native language patterns leads to a German accent in English, an English accent in Swahili, an Italian accent in Arabic.
In multilingual persons, an accent in their third language often reflects the pronunciation of the speaker's second language. I have observed this when a West African from a French-sphere country is speaking English. Though he sounds like an African, he has a French accent in English also. Fascinating!
Likewise, a European in East Africa, who has become proficient in Swahili before learning Kikuyu, might reflect not only an English or Norwegian accent in Kikuyu, but a Swahili one also (if he learned Swahili well).
Overcoming Accents
Some speakers are more able than others to overcome the patterns of their native tongue and thus have less of a foreign accent in another language. This depends on many factors, some of which seem to be related to genetics, others to early life experience.
Thus we can speak of a German accent in English, an American accent in French, etc. This is all a manifestation of the same characteristics we observe in the various "accents" of one range of speech forms we call "English."
OBJ
Originally written April 2001 on an Internet discussion group
Finalized and posted 24 November 2004
Last edited 06 December 2004
Orville Boyd Jenkins, Ed.D., Ph.D.
Copyright © Orville Boyd
Jenkins 2004
Permission granted for free
download and transmission for personal or educational use. Other rights
reserved.
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