Accent (sociolinguistics)

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Accent refers to the typical suprasegmental (prosodic) features underlying every language or dialect/regiolect and the resulting - mostly unconscious - transfer of pronunciation habits of the dialect or regiolect to the umbrella language or the transfer of pronunciation habits of the first/mother tongue or the primarily used language to a foreign language learned later.

The deviations concern phonetics, intonation, stress patterns and sentence rhythm.

A large proportion of people who learn the umbrella language or a foreign language only as teenagers or adults speak it with their individual accent.

For example, a native German speaker usually recognizes a dialect speaker, a German-speaking Frenchman or Italian by their accent. One speaks of "High German with a Bavarian accent", "German with a French accent", "German with an Italian accent", "English with a German accent", etc. It is primarily the prosodic features of individual pronunciation that give the impression of an accent, rather than the inability, resulting from lack of use of the relevant muscles, to produce sounds that are lacking in a speaker's native language (e.g. the umlauts "ö" and "ü", nasal vowels or the English "th") in a sound-pure manner (dyslalia).

People who use a foreign language far more than their native language due to special life circumstances often develop an accent in their native language as well. This often occurs with migrant children, but also with adults who live abroad for decades with a foreign partner with whom they communicate in the national language. In this case, the pronunciation habits of the foreign language are unintentionally transferred to the mother tongue. Relatively rarely, the "foreign language accent syndrome" occurs, in which an illness, an operation or the like changes the way natives speak in such a way that they are mistaken for foreigners.

Sometimes the terms dialect and accent are confused with each other. Thus one hears statements like "She speaks with a Bavarian dialect", although it should correctly read "with a Bavarian accent".

Accent and language teaching

Language learning methods that pay systematic attention to the avoidance of an accent include audiolingual methods such as the Pimsleur method.

Questions and Answers

Q: What is an accent?

A: An accent is the way a person speaks, which can be different from other people. It usually comes from where the person was a child and the other people they live near.

Q: How do accents differ between countries?

A: People in different countries that speak the same language may pronounce words differently. Usually they can understand each-other, but they will notice that they sound a little different.

Q: Can you tell what city someone lived in by their accent?

A: Yes, sometimes you can tell what city someone lived in when they were a child by the way that person speaks. For example, someone with a New York City accent might say "bwoll" (/ˌbwɔːl/) instead of ball (normally /ˌbɑːl/ in America).

Q: Is it possible to learn another language without having an old accent?

A: Yes, if someone can learn another language well enough, then they may not have the old accent anymore and may get a new accent in the new language.

Q: Can learning multiple accents be confusing for learners of a new language?

A: Yes, it can be confusing for people learning a language if there are more than one common accents. If you're learning English but hear a mix of British, American, Canadian and Australian people often like at school or on the Internet, it might confuse you when you hear them say the same sounds or words differently.

Q: Is it better to learn one particular accent when studying a new language?

A: Sometimes people think it's better to learn the language with one particular accent so you can be less confused and when you're good enough at the language then start to tell apart different accents from different countries have.