Neutralaccent.com - An Accent The World Understands. Why Accents Are Hard to Unlearn. Photo: gullevek (flickr) Accents can be hard to understand, but it seems to be a type of language evolution. Why is it so hard to disguise or unlearn an accent? As an intellectual problem, it seems pretty easy. For example, you might coach a New Yorker to simply pronounce his r’s–”New York,” not “New Yawk”–but moving from theory to practice is often difficult.
How come? The answer has to do with the way we learn language in the first place. After we’re six years old, it becomes harder to learn new ways of making sound. Changing your accent isn’t an intellectual problem at all, it’s a matter of learning a whole new set of muscle controls.To expect someone to quickly learn a new accent would be like expecting them to quickly master a perfect backhand swing if they’ve never played tennis before. 43 Things. Linguistic Geography of the United States. Traditionally, dialectologists have listed three dialect groups in the United States: Northern, Midland, and Southern--although some scholars prefer a two-way classification of simply Northern and Southern, and one may also find significant difference on the boundaries of each area.
The map shown above represents a synthesis of various independent field studies this century. These are in chronological order: the Linguistic Atlas fieldwork begun under the direction of Hans Kurath in the 1930's; the informal but extensive personal observations of Charles Thomas in the 1940's; the DARE fieldwork of the 1960's under Frederic Cassidy; and the Phonological Atlas fieldwork of William Labov during the 1990's. Although it may seem that a great amount of data has been collected over a short time span, the shifts in American dialects this century have been rapid enough to outpace the data collection.
The New England Dialects The New York Dialects The Great Lakes Dialects The Upper Midwest Dialects. How our brain controls our accent - Times Online. Seven: When Good Actors Do Bad Accents - Cinematical. Speech Accent Archive : Cognitive Daily.