Antarctic Isolation Leads to Subtle Accent Shifts Among Research Team
-
Scientists wintering in Antarctica developed subtle changes to their accents after being isolated together for 6 months. Researchers analyzed their speech over time and found small shifts in some vowel sounds.
-
The experiment aimed to replicate how groups become isolated, leading to diverging accents and even new languages, like between American and British English.
-
The winterers came from diverse backgrounds like American, German, Welsh. Modeling showed this diversity initially exaggerates accent changes.
-
Residents at Antarctic research stations have developed a unique slang vocabulary over time, like "dingle day" for a nice day or "fod plod" for picking up litter.
-
For brand new accents to fully form takes a generational change, as children strongly pick up speech habits. But Antarctica won't see a baby boom for science.