There’s something about hearing your own accent does wrong that sets your teeth on edge. But why does it bother us? Why are some accents so often done badly? And what is Tom Cruise even doing in Far and Away?

Fake Accents

Why do we love some accents and hate others? Why do we talk differently in different situations? Does learning a new language really teach you to think differently? In this linguistics podcast, I examine how the way we talk connects to who we are.

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In this episode, Élaina tells the story of her relationship with her family’s languages: those that were passed on to her by her parents, or those that weren’t.

Élaina's Story

Over the past few years, as well as making Accentricity, I’ve been working on the Manchester Voices research project at Manchester Metropolitan University, with Rob Drummond, Holly Dann, Sarah Tasker and Erin Carrie. As part of this work, we used oral history recordings to explore language change over time, and we’ve recently published a journal article about this work. We’re really proud of this article, but it’s not really that accessible to people who aren’t professional linguists, and we wanted to find a way to share our work with everyone who’s interested, so we made this podcast episode to act as a companion piece to this article.

Special episode: “Really this girl ought to be going to something better”

As well as making Accentricity, I work on the Manchester Voices project at Manchester Metropolitan University, with Rob Drummond and Holly Dann. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we ran a podcasting course and competition for schools called Talking About Voices. This is a special episode announcing the competition winners.

Special episode: Talking About Voices

My mum, Anna, is Polish. But she’s not from Poland - she was born in Edinburgh, and has lived there for most of her life. How can someone who is completely Scottish also be completely Polish? And why does the Polish language play such an important role in her life?

Anna and Sadie's Story

Lisa loved living in Hamberg, so when her boss asked her to move across Germany to Bamberg, in Bavaria, she wasn’t sure she could do it…

Fake Accents

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