Why do regional accents develop, and why is it so difficult to shake one later in life? Valerie Friedman, a linguist at the University of Nevada, Reno, tackles those questions and more in Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents (Bookshop|Amazon). With wit and verve, she traces everything from infant babbling and proto-Indo-European to the settlement patterns that shaped American dialects and explains such things as why snap judgments based on accent happen faster than we’d like to think. Her book is backed by extensive research; the footnotes themselves make great reading. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why We Talk Funny”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
And if you’ve ever wondered how different regional accents came to be, or why it’s so
Hard to master an accent in a second language later in life, or maybe you’ve wondered how
People in colonial America sounded, or for that matter, why so many people hate the word
Moist, have I got a book for you.
It’s called Why We Talk Funny, The Real Story Behind Our Accents.
It’s by Valerie Friedland.
She’s a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada, Reno.
And her book is all about how humans acquire our accents and how our accents affect so many aspects of our daily lives, often without our even realizing it.
Now, of course, Grant, you and I touch on these ideas all the time.
But what I love about her book is that it’s this comprehensive look at the whole topic through the lenses of history and science and psychology.
And she’s a linguist, of course, so she covers everything from the babblings of babies and the evolution of human speech to how incredibly quickly people tend to make judgments today about somebody based solely on their accent.
And she also covers all kinds of history from Proto-Indo-European to the story of how settlement patterns in the U.S. Directly influenced what we recognize as distinctive dialects today.
And she shows how those regional accents are changing and in some cases starting to fade away.
And the book’s also a helpful guide for understanding how linguists talk about all those movements of the lips and tongue to produce various sounds.
And her book is backed up by lots and lots of scholarly research.
She cites study after study to make her points.
And there are wonderful extensive footnotes that are great for drilling down if you want to learn more.
And I’ve already marked several of them myself.
But as you might guess from the title, Why We Talk Funny, it’s also breezy and clear and really entertaining.
In fact, it reminds me of that one memorable teacher you had in school for a tough subject.
You know, the one where everybody’s saying, take Friedland’s class because she makes it fun.
I wonder what her Rate My Professor reviews are like.
Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure.
But anyway, just to sum up, it’s a great introduction to linguistics in general, but also to the idea that accents can connect us, but they can also divide us.
And it’s a great reminder that the idea that there’s only one right way to sound is both historically and linguistically misguided.
Oh, yeah.
That’s a lesson we try to teach all the time.
And the book, again, is?
It’s called Why We Talk Funny, The Real Story Behind Our Accents.
And Valerie Friedland is a professor and linguist at the University of Nevada, Reno.
I know her professionally and I can 100% confirm that she’s the real deal.
So totally looking forward to digging further into this book.
And we will link to it from our website.
And as always, Martha and I love to find out what you’re reading.
What are you reading right now?
What’s the thing you can’t put down?
Let us know.
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