How we determine who has a complex question of accent

How do you tell if someone has a special accent? This seems obvious: You hear words that someone pronounces in a different way than “normal” and connects them to someone else in a specific place.

But a new study shows that this is not the case.

“People may not know who hears someone talking and thinking, ‘Well, it sounds fun’ – although sometimes it feels like we do that.” Associate Professor of Linguistics at Ohio State University.

Campbell Gibler said accents may be more of what we learn culturally.

The study was recently published online Journal of Sociolinguistics.

The study is part of a long-term project by Ohio State University researchers at the Center for Science and Industry (COSI), the Columbus Museum of Science.

In this study, the researchers asked visitors to visit the museum to participate in a study on accents. Finally, 1,106 people aged 9 and older (mainly Ohio) competed.

All participants heard a series of recordings, each with a speaking speaker saying several words, all with the same vowel.

Campbell Gibler said: “Americans often listen to vowels to tell how many accents someone has.”

For example, some people may pronounce “pen” in order to say “PIN” to others.

Participants heard words from 15 spokespersons such as “Pass,” “Food,” and “Pen.”

Participants took each speaker’s evaluation from “not stressed at all” to “very stressed.”

Although participants were not told at the time, all speakers grew up in one of three regions of Ohio, with linguists coded as special accents: Northern Ohio (an accent of the Inland North) and Southern Ohio (the South) accent).

After rating the accents of the people they heard, participants were asked to rate the level of stress they thought the speech was stressed from 0 (no stress) to 100 (very stressed) in various parts of Ohio. Based on the similarity of the answers, Campbell-Kibler was able to pour them into three categories in the north, central and southern Ohio.

Generally speaking, museum visitors believe that people from southern Ohio have the strongest accent, about 60 to 70 in scale. Participants said that central Ohio residents didn’t have much accent and scored averages between 20 and 25. They are not sure what Northern Ohio residents score, with Ohio residents scoring close to 50.

The results show that Ohioans need to fully absorb these beliefs about different stresses in the state until they are adults. The 9-year-old participant didn’t have much difference in the perception between the North and the South—the beliefs didn’t escalate until the age of 25.

However, this is the most interested Campbell-Kibler’s opinion on the results.

If one report that northern Ohio has a strong, compelling accent overall – saying they scored them 90 on a scale of 0-100 – you would expect them to hear recordings from northern Ohio, They will be very rated. stress.

But this did not happen. Those who think northern Ohio have strong accents and don’t think the actual Northern Ohio spokespersons they hear are more stressful than those from other parts of the state.

The same goes for other parts of Ohio.

“Just because people highly value the accents of people in southern Ohio, that doesn’t mean they are good at hearing the difference in vowels in southern Ohio,” Campbell-Kibler said.

So if people can’t hear accents directly, how do they understand them?

“It’s confusing. We don’t know the full answer to why we do this,” Campbell Gibler said.

But part of the answer might be that we know the accent through other people and through TV shows and movies.

Campbell Keborough said: “We might hear friends say their aunt in Akron is funny, or hear people on TV or Alabama or UK movies speak differently than what we say. ”

“We may not recognize the exit sound – we only know that something is because friends are telling stories, or that we hear characters on TV.

“We also need to learn more about how accents arehave in our brains,” she said.