How Do Accents Work?
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- Опубліковано 7 вер 2024
- Have you ever wondered how accents work? Tune in to this episode of BrainStuff to find out about the ever-evolving accent.
Whether the topic is popcorn or particle physics, you can count on the HowStuffWorks team to explore - and explain - the everyday science in the world around us on BrainStuff.
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I've noticed I tend to subconsciously begin to speak with an accent of the place I'm visiting if I'm there for more than a week. Nearly got into a fight with some Brits because of it, too. I guess they thought I was mocking them. I think it's some sort of survival instinct that my subconscious does to blend in by picking up on local mannerisms and dialects and then emulating them.
That happens to everyone you can't help it people just change there accents to match another one . People subconciously do that
KnightOfGaea I knew a girl in college who had that subconscious trait of mimicking the accent of people after talking with them a bit. She did say in some cases the people thought she was trying to mock them.
KnightOfGaea It would be a poorly formed emulation/replication though which is why it pisses them off.
KnightOfGaea I’m even worse. Since I learned a few different languages from native speakers of said languages I would pick up the accent with the pronunciation. To the point where you can place to the city, where the person who taught me was from. If I’m talking to someone who has a strong accent when they talk I will automatically start mimicking it. I have had to explain on more then one occasion that I’m not mocking them.
I sometimes do that when I’m with friends, but more like the intonation. I think I do it to become better friends with them? My mom and other people in my family do it too....
I'm from Glasgow in Scotland. If I were to type the way I talk you guys would probably not understand me.
How I really sound- Am fae Glaesga in Scotland. If a wus tae type the way a talk yous would probs no underston me.
Well, Claire, I posted in this string that I'm an actor who does accents. I also write in accents sometimes, so I only had a problem with a your written pronunciation of a couple of words. But, I know what you mean.
I remember when I was a kid watching Trainspotting, and thinking "Man, it is really, really hard to understand a lot of what these people are saying" and thought I was speaking clearly. Then I got older and realized if I went there, I would be the one with the crazy accent that everyone would be straining to understand lol.
Lol I've never actually met an American before :P
Claire Carey
The Scottish brogue is one of the very few accents I've never been able to master. I can do it for a few seconds, but I lose it to the Irish brogue too easily. I don't know why because neither accent sounds that much alike. But, I do love to hear to hear both accents.
drivernjax Lol thx xx. I am actually quite bad at accents, the only one i can half do is an American one :P
1:52 Korea is a good exaple of this. The sides have been divided for 50 years and their dialects have grown so unlike each other that there are some words which only exclusively exist in one dialect. There's an interesting video on UA-cam about a defector from N. Korea and a S. Korean speak. They have a hard time communicating but they scrape by.
where* speaking*
where* speaking*
where* speaking*
If they ever unite again, I think the language should be reformed and one dialect abolished.
My family and I live in California, where I was born, but both my parents are from England and have retained their English accents. I end up using both separately with little blending of the two.
As he mentioned in the video, I change depending on who I talk to, without even trying and it's difficult to force myself to change (ex. If I try to talk to one of my school friends, it's difficult/fake if I try to talk in an English accent, and vice versa with family members/others with an American accent)
Cool video, learned lots from it. :P
this happens to me too! when i was little i lived in ireland and then i moved to america and now when i go home to see my whole family (my mum is also irish) i end up speaking with an slightly americanized irish accent completely unconsciously. i also have a lot of irish-isms.
If i have a british accent, i would never shut up.
I'm british
*had
You wouldn't realise as it would obviously just sound like a normal voice as you've always spoke in that accent, im British but i dont have a clue what i sound like to other people around the world haha
had *
Crazy Toffee yay! Another everton fan!
another important source about accents is landscapes..
you are right to say that people cannot judge which accent is perceived to hold more social status.. but judging between city and rural will be easy..
city accents will usually be quicker and sharper with more clipped vowels and defined consonants..
I also found that when learning another language, it can be hard to even hear accents at all. I am learning Mandarin, and my teacher can tell us where certain people are from in China based on the way the speak (like we can do with our language) but I cannot hear a difference AT ALL! They all sound the exact same to me. I asked my friend (who is from Russia) and she said that she had a hard time hearing accents until she moved to the states, and then she started hearing slight accents variations. But I would imagine, a lot of accent and dialect understanding can only come and make sense if it is your native language. Or at least one you studied for YEARS and years.
Ive always wondered why when ppl sing they lose their accent. I have musician friends from Sweden and the Netherlands who talk with their regional accents, but when they sing there is no accent. Ozzy Osbourne is a great example of what I am talking about. But on the other hand, ppl in the southern part of the uS who sing country and western music retain their southern accent.
Dang
There’s always an accent
I loved how living in Spain and befriending a Londoner changed my accent! I spent so much time with her my pronunciation changed in English and living in Spain drastically changed my Spanish accent although when I came back to the US my US-Spanish accent came back. Apparently the Spanish talk really weird according to latinos haha
American accents are actually closer to the original English accent than are British accents. When British colonists came over to America, they brought their accent over, however they were isolated from Britain. During this time England changed their dialect. Thus, the people in the states weren't connected to these changes, and so they kept their original accents. Many Americans moved westward, so they also brought their accents there. Although, as more British began moving to America later on, they brought thereby developed English accents with them, and that's why people on the east coast have a slight British accent.
Amy Platter That makes perfect sense! I love learning about this stuff! What about people in the South? What happened there?
Amy Platter new yorkers it any other east coast states sound British to me at all!
This is true, same with Afrikaans and Dutch.
Actually, west country dialects are closer to the older English accents than American accents are.
That is so on point!!!!👏 so well explained.
What he said about southern accents is pretty spot on . I am from TN and i moved to CA and when i got to CA , i had a strong southern accent and literately everybody i tried to talk to though i was stupid simply because of my accent . I had people come up to me and say hi , and when i said hi back and they heard my accent , they would stop the conversation there and leave . I hate people thinking i have a low I.Q simply because of where i came from and how i talk so i out of necessity , started to mimic how other people around me talk to tone down the southern accent . I feel bad for doing that because i feel like i am disowning my birth place in a way by giving up my accent , but when i cant even have a conversation with someone without them talking to my like i am mentally handicapped or making fun of my accent to my face , or asking me if i married my cousin , a girl has to give up the accent to her people to blend in with the new group of idiots who believe in stereotypes .
+Kimmi If they seriously stopped the conversation after you spoke (based on your accent) they are some serious aholes. I'm from Norcal. I would never stop talking to someone based on that. In fact in the place I work we recently had a transfer from someone in the south and we all love her accent. We find it soothing.
BatmanFanGirl thanks :) They probably were being aholes . i have herd 5 different people say that they believe the south is more than 20 years in the past with everything . i am just like" people in the south have the same technology as everyone else . i dont know where you get that from " .
i have even herd a person say out loud that they wish america would disown the south because there holding america back with the conservative views .
it feels like everyone who has never lived in the south believes that the south is all "swamp people" and they never try to understand that a region your born in to doesn't dictate your intelligence by birth .
I will never understand how people will assume this dumb stereotype. Honestly...
Ever wondered how people get those amazing accents? Ben Bowlin from Stuff They Don't Want You To Know breaks it down!
In El Salvador, the Pipil-Nahua and the Lenca Languages were driven to extinction because the government forced the people to speak only "Western" languages. Even today, in some Latin American countries, being called "Indian" is taken to mean uneducated and poor.
+Kevin Lopez Because 'Indians' were uneducated and poor?
I like how the video is short and explainable
+Samantha F Thank you!
Seventeen! Yaaa me to
I constantly moved in my life so I never developed a regional American accent, just a standard American accent
im from new york raised in a dominican family, and have lived here all my life. somehow i have developed a southern accent that nobody i know has.
But you were supposed to confirm my belief that my accent is the best.
fucc outta here😂
Bro that comment is over half a decade old XD
@@anthonygomez8933 bro haha
How's life?
I'm Filipino and I live in Texas and I think I'm beginning to take on a slight southern dialect!
Every time I meet someone, after a few sentences they always ask me what accent I have. I don't know what it is and no one I've ever met could figure it out either. I guess I'm weird like that.
Im from the south and proud of it !!!
Interesting. But it's a little annoying how the volume changed erratically throughout the video.
Why do we "talk" with our hands?
+Paul Jaglowski We'd love to cover that! Thanks!
Lol
It’s called “gestures”
@@plotsky_ dude its literally 5 yrs lmao
Southern accents may be " looked down upon" but they are the best voices to listen too. Especially Georgia.
That's your opinion and no-one wants to hear it.
Jack Lam I love her opinion no one wants yours
Teresa Nevells yep
"Humans love being in groups" Well, I guess I'm not human because i don't like being around people PERIOD.
vizthex - Actually yes you do. If you don’t have human interaction for a long enough time, you will go insane and crave human interaction
Yes you do. You are in a group now by commenting. It’s virtual interaction but it’s still interaction. I would actually call it a new hybrid of human group formation thanks to technology. You commented to elicit some type of connection. If this wasn’t he case, you wouldn’t have posted anything.
The fact you are here and commenting and receiving responses shows how much you need people. You forget that TV and Internet = People. Take those away and you would go insane. Try it.
Stingy From lazytown me rn
@@stingyfromlazytown8612 Yep, and this is legitimately a biological fact.
I wanted to hear some accent impressions :/
I'm from England. My accent has changed over the past few months. I never really had much of a dialect beforehand, especially one that would link me to where I live in the North. Recently, however, my accent has changed and become more like one of someone from the South of the country. I still speak with a short "a" but words like "her", "work" and "thirty" have changed so I now say words with those vowels in in a way received as more posh.
Thank you for answering the question I posed to Dnews a few months ago!
We talked about dialects, language, and accents in a video last September (for Talk Like a Pirate Day)!
Talk Like a Pirate Day: How Dialects Are Formed
Oh snap! DNews doesn't play that mess. They'll hunt you down even on a different channel and prove you wrong. Testtube Network is serious.
***** DNews lol they hunted his ass down like "hell no, he did not, yo jimmy get me that link to the pirate video"
Lamar Davis
Beautiful.
I live in Uk and have a very articulate family (even my friends that live near me agree). Why is it that some families are more strict on articulation than others?
2019, thanks for the info. It was nice that you simplified it after explaining it, because sometimes I got it and then other times I needed the extra help. Thanx.
Im from New Orleans, and yeah I did sorta pick up a little southern accent. Like for example, I tend to use the word "y'all" alot. But, my teacher, who was from Mississippi, had an even heavier southern accent than I did. And I wondered, why is that, if we were both born and raised in the same area of the U.S.? I guess it's like how he said, each part of the world has their own unique way of speaking. And when you're isolated in a certain area for so long, you pick up that way that everyone else is speaking.
I was totaly thinking of the New Orleans accent when he was explaining that part!!! I live in northern midwest but my mom is from southern Louisiana - cajun country - and thats where most my family lives with part living right by New Orleans ... and I can pick up a New Orleans accent right off! Ive ran into folks in the midwest from New Orleans in like grocery stores and called it right! Ya'll do have your own ... an I LOVE it!
The geico commercial would play before this video 😂 I love that little lizard 🦎
What has happened with the volume at 1:56 ?
Nothing.
***** Yeah...never mind the decrese in volume by at least 30%...Nothing.
***** I just watched it again, and the volume says the same.
***** You either have bad ears or bad speakers.
***** I just tried it on my TV app and the volume there also stayed the same. When I downloaded and played it on WMP, it goes down from 2:01 - 2:10, while peaking to the same level. Whatever you're watching it on isn't using any compression, mystery solved.
Thanks for explaining what the reference variety is; I've been wondering why I don't think I have an accent...
I have a question though: a friend of mine has an accent when he speaks English. When he talks, it sounds like he's from South Africa, or maybe some part of the UK. I was shocked to discover he's actually from PA ("Middle America", as you put it). Is this a speech impediment or do some people grow up sounding British for no apparent reason?
A small phenomenon I've noticed is the difference between Chicano/Pocho dialect of Spanish with Standard Mexican Spanish. Many Chicanos/Pochos may sound Mexican to any Latin American but to Mexicans the way they speak is noticably distinct. Not accent-wise, although chicanos have an easier time pronouncing words in English, they subconsciously leave cues that they didn't grow up in Mexico. One common example is with movement verbs, a common mistake Chicanos make is when the leave or enter somewhere, ej:
En: I'm going outside
ChSp: voy salir pa'fuera
MexSp: voy a salir.
"Pa'fuera" for someone who mostly speaks English would be an acceptable translation for "outside", but for someone who's first and only language is Spanish it would be a redundant word, "salir" conveys the meaning that you're leaving, and if you're inside then the obvious place you're going is outside.
Anyone else constantly getting recommended accent videos? Especially s new York accent videos?
explained perfectly, thank you
Very impressed with how much information you got in there. Oh and by the way, I don't have an accent...but if I did, it would be the BEST accent. Haha. Joking.
Makes perfect sense 👍
As an actor who does accents quite well, I know and understand what you are talking about. I am also a student of accents and have, on more than one occasion, pinpointed where someone was from merely by the nuances of their accent. What a lot of people don't realize is that the "southern accent" is several thousand accents and the change is so subtle that someone driving from, say, Richmond, Virginia to El Paso, Texas wouldn't notice the change. But, if they flew from Richmond to Atlanta to New Orleans to Dallas to El Paso and spoke with natives in each city, they would notice the differences. The same is true in any area of the US and any other country and/or language.
5 stars for "check and mate, skynet". Your channel ROCKS btw, keep up the good work Ben.
I always find the distinction between accents and dialects to be rather funny as they are often misrepresented. An accent is a mode of pronunciation of a language. This mode is dictated by the speakers first language. Hence when someone who is Russian speaking English they have a Russian accent. If you, a speaker of English were to speak Russian, to them you would have an English accent. We know this to be true.
Think about when you are first learning to pronounce a word from an unfamiliar language (be it back in school or perhaps for work), your only frame of reference is your first langue and by default it will dictate how you pronounce and form the words of that language until you study and practice long and hard enough to speak it correctly. Then if you keep practicing/studying it will become second nature and you may perhaps lose your first languages influence on your new langue. If/When this happens you would be considered a fluent speaker of said language you were learning and (fun fact) have a familiar dialect to those you are speaking to in their own language.
Now we come to mistake:
This video gets a big thing wrong. No language has an accent. It is impossible for a language to have an accent. When we are speaking our dominant langue we only have dialects. Just continue reading this comment. You have no means of accurately identifying if this is my first language or not, or if I have an accent or a regional dialect. Am I British? Am I American? Am I Polish writing in English? It does not and can not accurately come across through the text. All you see and hear in your head is you way of reading/speaking this language I am writing. Even when you look at a proper dictionary (urban dictionary doesn't count, nor do the one's that put "y'all" in the A and Y sections either), you can not accurately distinguish a "Southern" accent from the words no more than you could a "Midwestern" or "Northern". But the cool part is that every language has multiple dialects, which the video accurately explains how they can be formed.
So based on this video and what I have written to correct and expand on the subject; remember, an accent only truly exists when a dominant language is affecting the speakers pronunciation of a different language. If their dominant language isn't affecting the pronunciation, then that would make them fluent and they would have a dialect based on how they were taught.
That is the difference between accents and dialects and how they function.
My accent is a mix of where I'm from, my family is from, and where I currently live. My main accent is a California valley girl dialect (where I was born and learned to speak), with a Jersey (where all my family is from) undertone especially when I pronounce words like car, bar, far, ect; and last I have picked up a bit of a Southern twang being in the south now for 19 years.
I bet you sound lovely
Live changing event changes accent. Agreed. Enrolled in a foreign college changed the way I pronounce H. The letter H is pronounce differently .
What *be* a dialect, that's what I *aks* myself.
Fun stuff with accents, this test will narrow down where you're from based on how you say you pronounce certain words or phrases ... www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html
thats pretty cool. ive lived in florida my entire life and it suggests im from CO/CA. lol. ive always been told i dont have a southern accent in the slightest.
Central Texas. It was accurate
Just took a quiz, and my accent apparently sounds like a Seattle/Tacoma/Portland accent. Never been in any of these in my life. Maybe Seattle, for a plane ride. Haha. What kind of accent would it be, then?
lol guess where im from? XD
He's talking about Posh vs Cockney. Can you Imagine Queen Mum speaking in a Cockney accent?
One of my favorite questions
I have no "language" accent that I know of, because I grew up speaking one language at home, speaking another one at school, and another one once again outside of school. Now however, whichever language I speak of the three, people tell me I have a sort of accent. Even in my mother tongue. But nobody knows where I'm from when I speak.
What I think it is, that I pronounce everything correctly, but I haven't mastered the cadence (the tone) and the natural rythm of the languages I speak, because I was constantly using all three while growing up.
I would love a linguist to once identify my problem so I could correct it :(
Was born in the upper mid-west, moved to the mid-south. Friends tell me they can detect a bit of difference in some of my words after moving South. I tell ya, there are many that love the Southern accent, just as many others love other accents. To each their own.
accents also influence body language usage within a culture speaking a language. In Spanish, Colombians, for example seem to speak politely and gentle; while Dominicans, we tend to use our hands a lot and add much more exclamation to statements.
That last point is very interesting.
my result test shows i have New York accent. but i am not a American. but i got most of my words from TV and Video games growing up in Norway.
I would like to know why do certain accents sound the way they do and how did it come to that?
I have thought there might be a connection between the amount of industrialization / agriculture and speech speed.
Many of the programs I watch are BBC and I find myself using their words and catch myself speaking with a slight accent afterwards. Do you think television / internet audio will lead us towards a reduced number of accents / dialects?
You wrote this a long time ago… do you still feel the same
The upper midwest is one of the more distinct american accents. I would say accentless american english would be that of a news anchor.
I'm from Cleveland we don't have no accent
Upper midwest is wisconsin/minnesota
+Tommy Bertrand thought they meant us Canada on the other side of the lake
This was intriguing to learn. Well written and well delivered.
right
This doesn't explain how accents are made just why the differences come about. Why or how, if the one group breaks off into 2 groups on different islands, does one new group begin pronouncing "can"(short a sound) as "cahn" while the other group pronounces it the same as always?
I'm American but I developed a Boston/Irish accent from my grandparents
I speak Finnish as my native language and I speak a hick dialect. I've noticed that I often change to standard Finnish when I speak with people who do not speak the same dialect as me because we might have hard time understanding each other. I have to say that I am pretty glad that dialects are gradually disappearing from Finnish because future generations don't have to deal with this.
***** I'm sure it's a generational thing and it certainly would happen.
I'm kinda sad that accents and dialects in English are dying out..
Actually, I love accents. their cute X3x
I live in Sweden and in Swedish, I have somewhat of a middle-swedish type accent. As in close to "rikssvenska" or basically what some consider "actual" Swedish. But not quite. I don't pronounce "ä" "e" and I know how to use ö properly. I have just a tad of norrlandsvenska, Norrland-Swedish, in my accent. But yeah. In English, I have a pretty British accent, though some words sound like I'm talking in a Swedish accent. Sorta. It's weird.
Probably the best question asked on here
I have relatives that live in Virginia. After visiting them, I usually speak with a touch of a Southern accent for a while. Interestingly, they don't think I sound like I have an accent (mine's pretty close to Standard American), even though their accents are different than mine.
I find it interesting that if you're speaking with someone with a strong accent, They are difficult to understand at first, but you can train yourself to understand them after a few sentences.
I was watching clips from the movie Fargo and thinking that they sounded Swedish not American. Got to thinking about accents and searched this video.😊
I have an English accent like the type that people in London talk 😂
we have a whole bunch of dialects in Arabic.. sometimes it's weird how others use different grammar than you, it might sound funny to you but to his society it's the correct way to speak
does pitch have anything to do with accents? (Excited, down, happy, etc., people sound different (Huge difference in short time limit, under an hour)
As an american i am fond of British and Australian accents. do people from there find american accents a good thing or a bad thing?
I have an accent that doesn't like what's supposed to be my "Native" accent, but also doesn't sound like any foreign accent I ever heard of. I've never even been to other Countries.
I don't know how to explain it... ://
My favorite accent relativity story is about the German language release of the U.S. comedy movie Airplane! One scene involves the specific Black American dialect and a humorously exaggerated portrayal of its difference from standard American English. How to do this in German? The movie's makers said they dubbed Bavarian, or "High German" in a way that contrasted it from Northern or "Low German." You have to be from a nation to understand.
Thank you. This is so helpful
I'm from California, but I have some cousins who live in Arkansas. Every time they come to visit, I always end up speaking in a Southern accent by the end of their stay
This says a lot about society!
My accent changes going back and fourth between Pittsburgh and Chicago.
I live in New Jersey and I don't have the Jersey accent. Most people my age don't really have the accent either. It's more wayy noticable with the older generation though
interesting
FettSpigiel how do you say water?
Even the first baby cry accents differ depend of mother's one! Isn't it great? =)
I'm a foreigner from Lithuania and English is my second language. Every student in my class has a very different accent (and unfortunately i have quite a dumb sounding one) so I really doubt there's an actual general French or Russian accent, it's all stereotypes. (Just adding to the topic of accents, I know it wasn't even mentioned in the video)
My accent is weird. My dad’s from Chicago and my mom’s from SW Texas but her parents are from Oklahoma. And I grew up in SW Texas as well
So this video is all about the UK and USA accents. Interesting. Really.
I'm from a small town in the south-west of the Netherlands, and every time I speak to someone from Holland (the provinces that is), they think I'm a Belgian, while everybody here can hear how different my dialect and that of the Belgians is. I'm wondering, does their 'inability' to hear the difference between these (in my ears) clearly different dialects have anything to do with me hearing both my own dialect and Belgian almost everyday, whilst the people from Holland only hear their own dialects?
“They sound like completely different languages”
*scottish accent has joined the chat*
Is it possible to blend accents? I was born in New York and raised in mississippi. I work in Costumer Service, and everyday people ask me where I am from. I have people ask if I am from Louisiana, Boston, England, and New York. Idk where I got this accent but it is very unique and Idk if I made it up as a kid or if I mixed my Northern/Southern culture together? Can you please help me understand where my accent came from?
ha i was just thinking about this earlier today and just stumbled on this video
Thanks!
Bostonian accents
I too have a strong Boston accent
"The States," finally! Thank you, good video and good channel.
I’m from China and both my parents are Chinese, but I go to an international school in China where 60% of the students and teachers are from western countries so I’ve developed an American accent when I speak English, but when I speak Chinese I have a very strong Chinese accent.
I kind of learned something today.. Cool
I was always told that people from midwestern US didn't have accents. Either it's true, or the accent is indistinguishable. Here in Iowa, it's a rarity to find someone mispronounce a word.
I like to think that the lower status accents are the ones in which the speaker fails to differentiate between certain sounds (pronouncing "with" like "whiff" or pronouncing "jail" like "jell"). The thing I wonder is who decides in a group to begin lazily doing this sort of thing and how does it become seen as a good idea among that population to begin speaking in that way.
I have a southern accent and I find that when I speak to people with different accents, they don't usually look down on me or make fun of me, but rather, they think it's interesting. Personally though, I don't like the accent, (or dialect) because it's so different from standard English that I feel it's kind of a disgrace to the language. Words are often misused or mispronounced and even though I often do it myself, it annoys me.
hey..dun worry about !!
At least it's native :), i moved to Canada 9 months ago,and am still trying hard to speak English properly
:/ , it's hard when i go to some fancy cafe and cant pronounce some words on the menu ,utterly embarrassing.....
"in terms of prestige" mine accent leaves me -9999 , lol.
That's one thing I dislike about English. Words are often pronounced differently from how they are spelled, and there may be different pronunciations in different dialects. Personally, I'm studying Japanese and I like that language because words are always pronounce exactly as they are spelled. It seems much easier to learn, in my opinion.
Amazing video
Subscribed!
How's life?
American is vague .3. I have a Northwestern American accent -3- Ben seems like he does too (but i'm probably wronggg)
Edit: Oh, he mentioned my accent I think x'D Funny!
I really dig Russian, Hispanic, 1930's gangster accents/dialect -///- I'm not sure which is which in this case but in terms of Hispanic, basically Banzai (Cheech Marin) from Lion King. I-I think that's the one I'm looking for, I think... Judging by how different it sounds from its native country, gonna guees it's a bit Americanized.
It seems like someones been altering the volume in this video (or maybe it's just my computer). Had to increase and decrease the volume several times. Bad :(
But the content was good. Thanks BrainStuff! :)
Ben all the waaaay!! Love your videos!
Dang you have big hands
You know what they say. 😉
New England accent with a Texas Twang. From growing up in Texas and spending more time watching Law and Order than actually talking to people.
Part of sociolinguistics examines and theorizes ongoing phenomenas, even controversial issues in regard with accents/dialects. If you are interested in sociolinguistics, you may wanna take a look at the Peter Trudgill's work "SOCIOLINGUISTICS" that explains a general history of sociolinguistics.
I love the different English accents, and Im from Norway. Especially New York, Boston, Mexican American, Indian English, Canada, Russian English, African English, Scottish, Aussie, and the best, New Zeland or Kiwi, where they say I instead of E and vice versa! Its SO funny to listen to! :D "Fesh" is fish, "Diffineshon"-Defenition. Also I notice in allot of English accent, they add an R to the end of a word of name, that does not have an R! Like "AmandaR" WHY???:p