This video was made possible by Curiosity
Stream. When you sign up at CuriosityStream.com/HAI,
you’ll also get access to Nebula—the streaming video platform that HAI is a part of. So let’s say that five an a half years ago
you had this great gig going selling Minecraft servers to middle schoolers and you made $172,000
in one year, which was amazing, but you were a teenager so you didn’t really understand
how taxes worked and, crucially, that you had to pay them, and then a few years later
you started a YouTube channel and it got pretty popular and then a few years after that you
started getting calls from the IRS, which you somehow missed, but then you started getting
knocks on your door, which you also somehow missed, and then you look at the internet
and it tells you that you only have six months left for the statue of limitations to run
out on tax crimes. If that were the case, a good place to go
would be Antarctica. That’s because, during the seven month period
from around March to September, no planes, boats, or anything visit the continent due
to the harsh conditions and so the thousand or so individuals staying there will be totally
and completely isolated. Of course, plenty of countries have research
stations in Antarctica, but we want to talk about those of the British Antarctic Survey—not
because we’re all about that BAS, but rather because they have something strange going
on with their accents. Now, just two of the British stations are
occupied year-round—Halley and Rothera. During summer, Halley will have about 70 inhabitants
while Rothera will have up to 130. In winter, though, staffing is reduced to
the bare minimum needed to keep the facilities running—about 20-30 at Rothera and 10-15
at Halley. As you can imagine, being stuck mostly indoors
with so few people for eight months, the overwinterers get close. Closer than Joe Biden to a women. So close, in fact, that as a group they develop
their own unique accent. This was discovered by a group of researchers
from the University of Munich, so shoutout to you Jonathan, Michele, Mary, and Florian. I’m sure being in an HAI video is the recognition
you always dreamed of. They recruited eleven overwinterers—eight
Brits, one American, one German, and one Icelander—from the British Antarctic Survey and recorded
them saying 28 different words before their departure. Then, these eleven went to Antarctica. Now, what’s interesting about this scenario
is that it’s one of the few ways to simulate the environment of isolation that created
new accents hundreds of years ago. This is basically colonialism, just without
all the pointy hats and killing natives. In the case of the British colonization of
Australia or New Zealand or the US, the accents developed through an isolated group of largely
British settlers slowly altering the way they spoke as a group, in part thanks to different
non-British immigrant groups coming in. At the time of their founding, living in one
of those colonies was just as or perhaps more isolating than overwintering in Antarctica
today. Now, a big way that an American or Aussie
or Kiwi accent differs from that of a British accent is in the vowels. For example, in my super-cool mid-Atlantic
American accent, I pronounce the vowel in trap the same as in bath, however, in most
accents from England, Australia, and New Zealand, the vowel in trap will sound like my trap,
but the bath will sound more like bath. Meanwhile, when I say pin and pen, they sound
completely different, but in New Zealand the vowel would be pronounced exactly the same—it’s
pin and pen. Also, in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand
they would pronounce it as “paid maternity leave” whereas in the US we would say “what?” Given their importance in accents, vowels
are what this study focused on and the 28 words were chosen to be indicative of six
different vowel pronunciations. They included words like keyed, kid, jockey,
code, queued, and cooed. Upon arrival, the recruits were recorded again
every six weeks for the entirety of their eight-month stay, and then the recordings
were plugged into some fancy linguistics analysis software computer sciency electronic something
to make it objective. They then used some fancy data analytics confidence
modeling math numbers something to assure that any changes observed were significant
enough that they could not be explained by chance. But now for the big question: what changed? Well, first of all, the average vowel length
increased by up to 30 milliseconds, which is interesting and significant, but that’s
only sort of an aspect of an accent. What definitely is is vowel pronunciation. It was found that, on average, after the winter
cooped up together, everyone’s vowel pronunciations became more similar—as in, they were shifting
towards one common pronunciation. The biggest example of this was with the “ou”
sound. Now, listen closely, because the difference
is subtle, but they started out saying “food” but by the end, it sounded closer to “food.” What’s changed here is where in the mouth
the vowel is formed. In “food” its further back, whereas in
“food” its further forward so this is evidence of a shift towards what’s called
vowel fronting. Therefore, one of the first aspects of this
Antarctic accent is vowel fronting. Now, the study’s authors are careful to
warn that the results from a small sample size of eleven are hardly conclusive, and
they certainly were influenced significantly by the one German participant learning to
speak English more similarly to a native speaker through exposure, but they still do conclude
that these changes are indicative of the mechanisms through which a common accent begins to form
in an isolated group. For example, one author points out that, when
humans first colonize Mars, a Martian accent will begin to develop in this exact same way
and, given the much longer period humans will be away for such a mission, such an accent
will likely be noticeably distinct within just a few generations. Of course, if you end up popping out to Mars,
you’ll have a long trip, and the best way to fill up that trip is by downloading videos
offline on the Curiosity Stream and Nebula apps. Now, I do have a recommendation for a first
series to start on. It’s called Working Titles and it’s where
a bunch of educational creators go and analyze the title sequences from their favorite TV
shows. For example, City Beautiful—you know, the
guy who makes urban planning videos—just released one on the Parks and Recreation title
sequence, and then there are fourteen others already out. As you probably know by now, the best way
to get access to Nebula is through a subscription to Curiosity Stream. They’re, of course, the streaming site home
to thousands of top-quality nonfiction shows and documentaries, whereas Nebula is home
to original content by your favorite educational internet creators, myself included. The two are available as a bundle deal that
costs as little as $20 a year by going to CuriosityStream.com/HAI, and signing up for
any subscription.
