People who speak the same language often do it in a very different way, depending on where they are. British English is different from Australian English or American English, but if an American were to watch a lot of British movies, the accent becomes easier to follow over time. But how those accents arise in the first place is a continuing study for linguists. A mini-experiment presented itself in Antarctica with a group of people who were isolated together for just four months.
Two years ago, on a very, very cold March day in Antarctica, 11 people sat down to go over a list of simple words. Cooed. Food. Queued. Backhoe. It wasn’t free association, but rather the words are considered important markers in a larger effort among linguists to discern what happens to language when a group is separated from rest of the world—specifically, how quickly they begin to develop their own accent. Slowly, imperceptibly, the Antarctica group’s speech changed, as they all began to sound a bit more like one another and less like people on the other six continents.
Given enough time, they might have developed their own dialect. Read about the ways isolation spurs the rise of accents at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Jerzy Strzelecki)