Today, Explained - Your accent… explained

Episode Date: March 29, 2026

How you talk reveals where you’re from and who you’d like to be. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru, edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. A still from the movie "Clueless". Photo by CBS via Getty Images. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email [e-mail]. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Once upon a dismal day, Bob's ice cream van looked gloomy and gray. Although he had big ambitions, his socials lacked creative vision. Ugh, that bad? Maybe vamped epitaph? I have an idea. Bob launched Canva and got into gear. Create the video in the vampire team and make it the funny as I mean. It went viral.

Bob's business? A revival. Now, imagine what your dreams can become. When you put imagination to work at Canva.com. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the Power Move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate launch. The real Power Move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new Power Move. I come home staying.

Oh yeah, my dad and I took the boat out this weekend. I really do say I park my cat and have a yard. I speak four languages fluently, Italian, French, Spanish and English, but my Italian accent never went away. So a couple weeks ago, I asked you for a favor. We want your help with a show we're working on about accents. Have you lost your accent? Or maybe you absolutely love yours.

Give us a call and tell us about it. And oh my gosh, y'all showed out. I'm calling from St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. I am from a very small town in rural Appalachia, the Chicago area. Central Iowa. Miami, Florida, Alabama. I kid you not, we received the most calls we've ever gotten with your questions and stories about accents. I'm just a chameleon. I can't stick to my accent guns when exposed to other people who talk in other ways.

They'd say, oh, well, you say daughter, but you have to. to say daughter. You say water, but you have to say water. You want to give me a call back? I can try to get my mom on the phone to tell the story originally. Thanks and good luck with the show. You called in, and now it's time for us to hold up our end of the bargain. I'm John Gwyn-Hill. This is explaining to me from Vox, and this week is all about accents. How we get them, why they change, and if you lose them, how you get them back. Before we get into all that, Where did the American accent come from in the first place? If you went back to 1600, 1650, a new world, you would probably think, what the hell are you all saying around me?

Because I don't understand a thing. Valerie Fridlin is a sociolinguist and author of the book Why We Talk Funny, the real story behind our accents. We start our accent journey in America, really, with the first British colonists that came. You know, it seems odd because you know there are other colonists that are. were here, there were indigenous languages that were here. So that isn't the first language story of America, but the most pivotal voices for establishing that original American accent were those early British colonists. So the original American accent was sort of one that had leveled the playing field of many of the really salient, noticeable British accent features. But by, you know, the 1680s, we start to see a leveling of

accent so that while the feeder accents were British, and so there were certainly noticeable British features. So, for example, the R's would have been there with the exception of a few R's that got dropped really early in words like burst and curse, which became bust and cuss, right? That's actually the origin. Oh, that's why I say cusses. Exactly. It's that the British R dropping that came over early. But so that would be something we shared. So it didn't matter who you were, what class you were from, what kind of job you occupied. The speech was much more similar among people in America or the New World at that time than it was back in Britain. Okay, that's interesting that it was uniform because we have so many regional differences now.

When did we see those pop up? Think about the way that the Atlantic coast was settled, right? At the very top you had people coming in from a lot from East Anglia and Southern Britain. And then you had the Quakers from the north of Britain and the Scots-Irish and the German in the Midland. And then the south, you actually had a lot of people also from southern Britain, a lot of the cavaliers, those that were loyal to King Charles I. And they had a lot of indentured servants and a lot of enslaved people that came with West African backgrounds. So if you get a sense there of these three different dialect areas getting established early, by 1780, 1800, that's really when we see enough generation. have come through and learn the patterns of this new world that they sounded very different from

Britain, but also started to sound different from each other. So in the New England area, what it was described as, this is definitely not something I think most New Englanders were love as a description, but it was described as a nasal whiny twang. Dang! At the time, but it was also considered the most prestigious accent, so there you go. And that in the Middle Atlantic colonies. They said words like off, more like luff, waf. And then the south, of course, you had actually a lot of commentary on similarity with the slaves talk. So there were a lot of comments on how some of the features of the people that had been brought over from West Africa were influencing the speech, particularly women and children there, which I think goes to the

idea that there was a lot of actual interaction. And interaction is really, what determines what we sound like. Yeah, I want to dig into the southern accent a little bit more. You know, it's so distinct. It is so, like, kind of uniquely American, even though it's different in different parts of the South. How did we get that southern accent? Can you go into that a little bit? Absolutely.

In fact, what we really see is the southern accent as sort of the yawl, draw, far instead of fire, the merging of pins and pens. All of that did not come around until after the Civil War. So what it really did is brought together people towards a common sort of enemy and also a common cultural experience that bonded their speech in ways that we find is really conducive to new accent formation. It's also that the infrastructure of the South changed during the reconstruction period. And anytime we see a change in,

in the infrastructure, a change in the economy, a change in the transportation networks in an area. We generally see a change in the way they sound as well. That New England accent, that southern accent, that gets a lot of the shine. But real briefly, like, what are we hearing in the Midwest and out West? Because I think those are the parts of the country where some people are like, oh, these aren't accents, but they are, right? The Midwest and West are quite interesting because, you know, they were all a little later. So the coastal colonies were obviously earlier.

And the Midwest had a really unique blending because it was really, it emanated from the Pennsylvania colony. So that's really the heart of the heartland accent. Over a third of the population of the Pennsylvania colony was the Scots-Irish. And another third were Germans. You know, when you think about the Chicago accent, De Beirs.

The Bears. That is actually a very German influence accent. there were already a lot of Scandinavian settlers in that area. Minnesota, same thing, the Minnesota accent. Oh, you betcha, yeah. Yeah. Again, that was heavily Scandinavian influence. But by the time they get to the West Coast, a century later, they were American, right?

So it was Americans resettling. Not that there weren't other countries that had immigrants come in, but the vast majority were resettlers from an American dialect region. So what you get there is already Americanized speech, but truly that's, That's why we think of the Western accent as sort of being accentless is because it had gone through so many cycles of leveling out some of the more noticeable features from the East Coast by the time they hit it west. Oh, as if. So I moved around quite a bit growing up. You know, I've lived in the Midwest.

I've lived in the Southwest. And I've spent all of my adulthood in D.C. And I'm just wondering, like, can you tell how much of these regional dialects have I picked up? I'm like, oh my gosh, what is my accent? Just from like my quick and dirty assessment of your speech style, one thing I'll notice is you do actually have a bit of the pin-pen merger in your speech. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pin and pen are the same to me. Yeah. But that actually can be something that's more prevalent in African-American speech styles.

Oh. That's something. So if you look at what standard African-American English used as the model, right? Southern speech was actually the model because up to 1900, over 90% of African Americans lived in the South. And it's not until the great migration of the 20th century between like 1917 and 1970 that we get this mass shift in sort of living patterns where then about 50% of African Americans moved to urban centers predominantly in the north and also Los Angeles. And Washington, D.C. was a big area for that. And you also have quite a bit of vocal fry in your speech. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm a girl. I'm a millennial lady. I love it. I love it. But that's also something that was studied in African-American speech in the Washington, D.C. area, as well as in white women's speech there, too. It was prominent. So you've been, yeah, not calling you out.

I love vocal fry, but it's definitely something I hear in your voice there. And there's also the more southern intonation pattern that I hear in your speech as well. So I would say, well, you don't. sound southern per se. You sound mostly more southern than none, than any other accent that I can pick up. Oh, that's so fascinating. The different ways we talk are so cool. And over time, they evolve. That's next. When Westcham first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion. Inline skates were everywhere. And two out of Three women rocked, the Rachel.

While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Where are my gloves?

Come on, heat. Any day now. Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be. This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your grocery online at walla.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. We're back with more explain it to me. I'm JQ. Our accents carry a lot of history and a ton of information

about who we are. That's what Nicole Holliday studies at UC Berkeley. She's what's called a sociophonitian. I study how speech sounds operate in society. The easiest way to understand that or like my elevator pitch is usually like, you know, you call your bank or whatever, and you get a mental picture of the person you're talking to, the customer service person, like their age, their gender, their race, maybe where they're from. And you do that immediately, like one sound and you can sometimes make that kind of picture. But there's something physical in that. There's something about the voice itself and something about the way that you hear the voice. And so what we do is study how you're able to make that kind of judgment and then what it means socially.

our identity is reflected in the way that we sound. And so some of that we have control over the way that we want to be perceived by others, but not entirely. Okay, what kind of societal things influence how much or how little of an accent we have? Yeah, so this is like an intro to linguistics test question. So I would ask the students like, all right, what are the ways that language can vary between individuals or groups? And then the answer is any way that people can vary sort of sociologically. So, you know, we think a lot about region because that's very obvious to us, but like gender, sexuality, race, class, all kinds of stuff, right? Any sort of social variable that we're talking about, I can give you, like, an example of how the sounds vary.

Within any place, if we look at the difference between white and black speakers, I'm not saying this is true for every person. I'm saying maybe it's true for 80% of people in a community that you see these kind of differences. One that's obvious is looking at the R sound. So R is really important in American English historically. The stereotypical like Boston accent, the Park the Car and Harvard Yard is Park the Ka and Harvard Yad. That's an R phenomenon. And we know that patterns of arlessness, so when you don't pronounce your R when it's at the end of a syllable, have been changing over the last hundred years in places like New York and Boston indeed.

But New Yorkers got more ourful, so they started to say park the car, white New Yorkers, faster than black New Yorkers. So if you talk to older black people in New York, they're still likely to say like, park the car. Not quite like that because it's not my accent. But white people the same age are more likely to say park the car. So you can see those kind of differences that are both regional and ethno-linguistic, like, you know, by ethnicity over time. So we heard from people who describe that thing that happens when you're with certain people, like, you know, you go home for Christmas or you got a drink or two in you and that old accent comes back? Why, when I go to school up north, my accent kind of just assimulates and it's closer aligned to my, like, school members? And then when I'm home, it's like full-blown. I have a southern accent.

I'm on spring break right now and I'm home. and the minute someone comments on my accent, I change it. It was immediately back. So when you're in a situation where you have lowered your inhibitions, like if you're really tired or something like that, less control, then the way that you sound naturally is going to be coming out more and more obvious. So that's why people will notice it, for example, in that case. But there's also this phenomenon of like convergence or accommodation.

So even people who are not talking about the way that they used to sound, but like if you say, oh, I went to England and I came back sounding a little British. Like, it could be an affectation and they're just being annoying and bragging about their vacation. But it could also be that when you talk to people from a different place, they move towards you and you move towards them. And this can be like, you know, your vowels got a little more a versus a or something like that when you go to one place because you're meeting in the middle. And that actually facilitates effective communication when you sort of meet your listener halfway and they meet you halfway. You know, I think it's natural to want to fit in when you're younger, when you're making your way through life. But then you grow up or you become established.

And I think, you know, there are some people who have let their accents go or even got rid of them on purpose who are like, dang, I really miss that. As you can tell, I have a fairly distinct southern country Appalachian accent. I've lived in the South my whole life. And it's been a huge part of who I am and what people notice about me first, which used to be. sort of a source of shame, but now I take a lot of pride in it. But I've noticed through my life, as many others have, that it's really disappearing and lots of people are losing their southern accents. So I'm really curious about what can be done to preserve these cultural pieces. So the first thing I would say is if you're worried about it, you're unlikely to lose it.

So people lose their ways of sounding because of social pressure, but also when they choose. So we have some research on people that move away versus people that stay in their communities, basically saying that the more positive orientation you have to where you're from, the more likely you are to continue to sound local in that way. Second of all, like, yeah, it's the exact same thing we say to people when they say like, oh, I want to learn Spanish. And we're like, yeah, move to Mexico. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no substitute for being in the place. However, you know, staying in contact with people, even, you know, on the phone, on Zoom, whatever. visiting when you can, like that kind of stuff is good.

I wouldn't say so much like the media because, first of all, nobody in the media is like sounding the way that they naturally sound. When you're doing something scripted, that's not like the most authentic version. But also the way that we construct our language happens in interaction with other people. So I think we have this idea that like if we just watch enough movies will sound like that person or whatever. There was a very interesting thing during the pandemic where, A lot of American kids were watching Peppa Pig. Okay, George and me would show you how.

Oh, yeah. The parents were saying, like, my kids developing a British accent. No, your kid's not developing a British accent. They're, like, imitating Peppa Pig. That car is kind of weird. What do we need to get for spaghetti? Tomatoes. But they don't, that kid does not sound like that.

Because it's temporary and it's something that they absorb. or through the media, but it's not something that happened in interaction. So if you're trying to, you know, maintain your original way of sounding, I would say talking to people is probably the best way. What do you say? Thank you very much, Papa. Coming up, how to stop worrying and love your accent. At Desjardin, our business is helping yours.

We are here to support your business through every stage of growth, from your first pitch to your first acquisition, Whether it's improving cash flow or exploring investment banking solutions, with Desjardin business, it's all under one roof. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk. Business.

You don't need AI agents, which may sound weird coming from service now, the leader in AI agents. The truth is, AI agents need you. Sure, they'll process, predict, even get worked on a business. autonomously. But they don't dream, read a room, rally a team, and they certainly don't have shower thoughts, pivotal hallway chats, or big ideas. People do. And people, when given the best AI platform, they're freed up to do the fulfilling work they want to do. To see how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

It's explained it to me. I'm JQ, and I told y'all earlier that we got a ton of calls about accents, it seemed like it hit a nerve. I mentioned that to our sociophonetician Nicole Holliday, and she was like, of course it did. It's so deeply entrenched the way that we sound, deeply connected with our family, with all of our experiences as kids, with who we want to be in the world. But also, we live in this complex sociological universe where we know that other people don't necessarily feel about us or about where we're from the way that we feel. about that place. And so we feel this kind of tension, like, you know, I want to be authentic to myself by sounding the way that I sound, but I also know that out here in the world, the way that I

sound is not necessarily accepted in all situations. So it creates a sort of like conflict within us between being ourselves and being who we want to be in the world. To me, the main word from Central Jersey Shore is W-A-T-R. Like the way someone says water tells you everything you need to know. This is a listener named St. CC Joyner. A Sierra, but I go by CC. I've taken a little bit of all the places that I've lived and made

this, like, ridiculous accent. So born and raised in Jersey, so definitely have some Jersey words, use them. But then I went to college in Florida, Tampa, Florida, which doesn't really have much of an accent, but definitely some southern like essences. And also, I think, like, just getting

tidbits from other people that I met. Like, my first college roommate was from Kentucky. Then I lived in New Orleans. And we're talking about accents. In college, CC majored in communications. I thought I was going to be Oprah. I mean, there's still time. I was in a class and our professor, this was the early odds.

So you got to remember where we were. That's the world, right? My professor was basically just went down the line and talked to many of us about how our accents were not going to make us marketable, especially if we were thinking about going into television radio, but really even just professionally. Like, you cannot talk like that. So that was the first time I was like, whoa, this accent is strong.

And I made a conscious effort because I was like, well, I want to make it. Let's just talk about Jersey. Like then Jersey had this like total like everyone hates it or like it's just intrigued by it or things were weird. What's your nickname? Snooky. Snooker. A snooker. Nobody calls Snickies.

But why no work are you in? Waste management consultant. And so it's like, I don't want this. How's this gonna help me in life? Yeah. How did that make you feel to hear him be like, okay, so that accent is gotta go? First off, I was like, what accent? Like, what are you talking about?

Like, I don't have an accent. I was, like, blown. I'll be honest. I want people to like me. I want to be likable. I don't want people to cut me off. Like, in their perceptions about me, people already think so much about you by the way you look.

And so I'm not trying to get no exes. I'm going to come in here. Now I'm regional. I don't need you to know where I'm from. Yeah. Did you try to get rid of your accent? How did you go about that? What did that version of you sound like?

So, oh, well, so the funny thing was, during this time, I have something called Graves disease. So my voice got rid of. really raspy. It was actually low-key, kind of sexy. And people told me I should go on the radio. So this was at the time, though, I was trying to get rid of it. So I can't even do it. It was like, because it was like really low and like raspy. And I would, I would have to talk really slowly to make sure that I didn't like go into my accent. And that's not sustainable. Yeah, you know, it's funny. One of my best friends, she's always, she always says, like,

I'm from Jersey. We pump our fists. We do not pump our gas. And I just wonder, what's your relationship with your accent now? How do you think of it now? I like her. She gets me where I need to go. She starts good conversations. She makes me, people are interested. They want to hear things. Everyone thinks they know something about me before. I like that. And so, like, I think of just my relationship with my accent is, like, we're in this together. I also do love. One thing I love about my accent is all the different things I've picked up. Because I think, like, not to be poetic, but I feel like it's like a love letter to my life. I use Yiddish terms and I use terms I've learned in New Orleans and now North Carolina, oh, that's a whole other accent, right? And but I think it's like a little

love letter to my life and to everything that makes me me. Well, my accent now, I think it's a mixture of what I learned in Argentina. We learn British English. But also with some Italian accent, because the Spanish that we speak in Argentina is heavily accented towards Italian because of the immigration. So it's not the Spanish that you would actually hear in Spain or Mexico. My name is Patricia Juarezzeppe and I am from Argentina. I came to the United States over 30 years ago. Patricia came for a PhD program at UCLA and she said, stayed. I do Latin American history. That's my specialty. One of the first things that happened when I

started in grad school was that I realized my fellow grad students, they were making fun, laughing or, you know, giggling every time I would say certain words. They used to call me the short lady. I'm five feet tall, maybe five feet short, the short lady with an accent. When I realized that, so I tried to fix the accent, And then as soon as I got a full-time job at C-Sons, I decided that I was going to also, you know, fix my height. So I started wearing stilettos to school. So I was hoping not to be the short lady, the short professor with an accent. It was really hard. It was me practicing at night, at home, memorizing, for example, when I was the teaching assistant,

memorizing the lectures and the ways to pronounce it. So it was me with dictionary reading phonetics and trying to understand how to pronounce. It was so much work. There were so many levels of insecurities added to that. It was painful. And then about 10 years ago, she decided to drop that new accent and the stilettos. She was done with fighting to fit in. I think two things changed.

first was, you know, getting to a full professor thinking, okay, I made it. It's not only, I not only got tenure, but I made it all the way up. So that really helped me with my self-esteem as an academic. But also, we brought my daughter home. And I didn't want to fake anything, you know, consciously. I made a decision to just stop faking it because it felt that I was, that I was a poser, right? I mean, and I didn't want to feel like that. Do you ever wish you would have like come to embrace it sooner? Oh my God, yes. I wish I had never tried to fake it because it was, it was a painful experience. But you know, I guess I'm the result of those efforts too. So in a sense, it's part of me embracing who I am right now.

Don't change your accent. It is who you are. And your accent, in a sense, is part of what you are bringing into the world because it is the result of where you were born and your experiences and your whole identity. Just if somebody gives you a hard time, just that means that person is not worth your time or your accent. So I would say just, you know, keep it, embrace it, and just be who you are. That's it for this week. Special thanks to the University of Georgia's John Forrest.

Also, thanks to each and every one of you that called in and shared your story with us. You really helped make this show. Speaking of which, we've got another assignment for you. And this one might be more of a challenge. So the world is kind of a bummer right now, to put it mildly. Where do you find hope? Are there ways that you're staying optimistic? Give us a call at 1-800-618-8-55 or send a voice memo to AskVox at Vox.com.

Another way to help the show out? Become a Vox member. As a Vox member, you get access to our Patreon where you can find even more interviews with Vox podcast hosts. Just head over to Vox.com slash members. to learn more. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru. It was edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch,

and engineered by Patrick Boyd. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy, and I'm your host, John Gulen Hill. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you soon. Bye! Talk to you later. Bye.

Bye. I hope you all have a great day. Have a good one. Bye-bye. Bye.