I am often asked where accents come from by my clients and I think that’s a very interesting question.

Everyone has an accent and accents aren’t static. Accents evolve over time as people mix with new people who have different accents. Accent change used to take a long time, but with the rapid increase in exposure to many more people, accents are changing rapidly.

People are able to speak to others from all parts of the world very easily, given technical access to apps such as Teams, Skype, Zoom as well as physically travelling to meet and speak in person. We like to speak in a way that helps the other person to understand us and ‘accommodate’ each other, by making small adjustments to our accent. It’s a way of implying that we come from the same group or tribe as it would have been centuries ago.

Where does an accent come from originally?
We all learn how to speak, first of all, by imitating those around us – our parents, grandparents, carers and siblings – and later we are influenced by our teachers, our friends and their parents and so on.

Already you can see that our accent has many influences. We like to ‘fit in’ with those around us and we begin by mirroring the voices we hear. Your voice and how you use it to speak includes tone of voice, intonation and speech patterns, a very complex blend of what you hear.

The way your accent develops is also influenced by what you read and how you interpret writing. This applies to English accents as well as non-English accents and here is an example of a simple word: “book”. Traditionally, in the north of England – this would be pronounced with a long ‘oo’ to rhyme with ‘goose’. The non-regional specific accent would pronounce ‘book’ with a short /ʊ/ the vowel sound in ‘could’.

If you speak English as a second language, you may have learned to speak it with a non-native English teacher demonstrating the speech patterns and pronunciation. Thus the original sounds of the words will carry into the English words and I will give you an example of this.

In Spanish, the letter ‘o’ has a short sound as in ‘orange, honest and opportunity’ which is the British non-regional specific pronunciation of that letter in those words. However, the sight of the ‘o’ appearing in other words like ‘love, move and oat’ will encourage the Spanish speaker to use the short ‘o’ sound instead of the ‘u’ in ‘love’, the long ‘oo’ in ‘move’ and the longer vowel sound /əʊ/ in the word ‘oat’.

Here, the brain has developed to read the ‘o’ sound in one consistent way (Spanish), whereas in English, spelling does not consistently reflect the pronunciation of a sound. Therefore we hear a Spanish ‘accent’ which reflects the sounds the letters represent in that language.

It’s a challenge to change our behaviour; to stop doing what we’ve done for a long time (interpret symbols and make a shape with our articulators) and change to a new set of speech habits.

There is no absolute accent which represents the ‘real’ accent of a country, but many of us want to have an accent that is clear, interesting and easily understood by others.

If you would like help to change your accent, please get in touch for a free consultation.