Questão de Língua Inglesa

Valerie Fridland, a linguistics professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, writes in her new book, Why We Talk Funny: the Real Story Behind Our Accents, that humans instinctively use accents to categorize those around us. “We learn to recognize other people as being like us through the way that they sound,” Fridland says. It happens early: studies suggest small children, when choosing friends, favor those who share their accent. Awareness of accents begins almost as soon as someone arrives on the planet. “By about a year old, babies have already figured out the sounds that are prevalent in the languages around them,” the professor says. Research shows one-year-olds respond to sounds that exist in their languages and not to those that are absent. Over the next few years, they pick up language from their parents and others around them. But it’s not until about age five that their own accents really emerge. At that age, she says, children lose interest in their parents’ speech and decide: “‘Let’s go talk to these cool peers at school, because they’re way, way more fun.’ And that is when the accent starts to really intensify.” Once people have their accents, and especially once they reach adulthood, the way they talk is extremely difficult to change. Even in their own languages, changing their accents is challenging. “When people are long-term residents of a dialect area that’s not their own, something called speech accommodation happens, which is where they move closer to the norms of that region without actually replicating the norms very well,” Fridland explains. They don’t sound quite like a local in their new hometown, but they don’t sound like a local from their birthplace, either. Ultimately, Fridland says, the way people talk is rooted in a universal experience. They start with the same equipment — their mouths and their minds — and are driven by the same thing: the need for social belonging. (Matthew Cantor. www.theguardian.com, 13.05.2026. Adaptado.)