Antarctica, a continent known for its frozen landscapes and lack of a stable population, is witnessing the birth of a new linguistic phenomenon. Right here, among a limited group of scientists and support staff who spend months at research stations, a common and unique accent is developing.
During the summer, the Antarctica’s temporary population rises to about 5,000 peoplea number that drops dramatically to 1,000 during the winter months (did you know that speaking with a foreign accent makes us think rationally?).
2019 saw a team from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich investigate how the accents of 11 “winterers” from the British Antarctic Survey it transformed over the course of their stay. The group, composed mainly of Englishmen, also included individuals from the United States, Germany and Iceland.
By recording their voices at the start of the study and then every six weeks, the researchers observed how close contact and isolation promoted significant changes in pronunciationsuch as vowel lengthening and linguistic innovation, with “ou” sounds pronounced more frontally.
Although these changes are subtle, they were acoustically and even measurable predictable through a computational model. This phenomenon is reminiscent of how in the past the English accent has transformed into American, Australian or Canadian variants, albeit on a much smaller scale. This phenomenon will also happen when humans go to Mars.
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