Will our accents change now?

A British team spent four months in Antarctica in 2017. Linguists said that, in isolation, they began to develop their own very slight, but still distinguishable accent.

So what happens when an entire nation, or every single nation, isolates itself for two years?

That’s a question linguists hope to answer.

People acquire their accents from the people around them, which is why everyone didn’t start speaking like Walter Cronkite in the 1950s, despite his status as the most famous voice in the country.

According to University of Munich linguist Jonathan Harrington, accents develop when populations are isolated. First as very subtle differences, and then, after long isolation, dialects emerge.

Finally, new languages arise.

Linguists don’t think we are looking at new languages or even new dialects, but accents could change. It would take long isolation for the changes to stick, however.

Harrington told Atlas Obscura that, given real isolation over a long period of time, new accents could emerge and stick despite the influences of social media and other mass communication.

What would happen if we sent people on a long voyage to another planet, like Mars?

“They would develop a Martian accent. Can you imagine that?” Harrington said.