What your accent says about you with linguist Valerie Fridland

1. 0:00 – 0:38

   Oxford comma humor and why ambiguity rarely derails understanding

   1. AGAdam Grant0:00

      There are all those memes that you, I'm sure you've seen, about sentences that are horribly misunderstood without an Oxford comma.

   2. VFValerie Fridland0:06

      Yes.

   3. AGAdam Grant0:07

      Could you give an example of one of those?

   4. VFValerie Fridland0:08

      So the one that I use in my class says, "Let's eat Grandpa," because there's no comma, right?

   5. AGAdam Grant0:15

      [laughs]

   6. VFValerie Fridland0:15

      And that's not an Oxford comma, but the truth is-

   7. AGAdam Grant0:17

      [laughs]

   8. VFValerie Fridland0:17

      ... when my students are writing on a topic I gave them, it's rare that I'm gonna misunderstand that they wanna eat grandpa or something like that, right?

   9. AGAdam Grant0:25

      [laughs]

   10. VFValerie Fridland0:25

       I mean, it's just, I, I-

   11. AGAdam Grant0:26

       Or is it?

   12. VFValerie Fridland0:27

       [laughs] Yeah. It depends on the, the topic I've assigned them.

   13. AGAdam Grant0:31

       [laughs]

   14. VFValerie Fridland0:31

       When we get to family drama, maybe less so.

   15. AGAdam Grant0:33

       [laughs] [upbeat music]

2. 0:38 – 3:03

   Pet peeve #1: “Bumping this to the top of your inbox” and what it signals

   1. AGAdam Grant0:38

      I actually have some linguistic pet peeves.

   2. VFValerie Fridland0:41

      Oh, great. I love pet peeves. That's my favorite. [laughs]

   3. AGAdam Grant0:45

      Good. Well, I was originally hoping that you would just explain to me why they bother me so much, but I have a feeling you might also try to talk me out of them.

   4. VFValerie Fridland0:53

      Oh, you know, we'll see. It depends on what the pet peeves are. You know, some I think are fair, but I think we can all learn to be a little more graceful with our judgment on language, so I probably will, but we'll see where we go. [laughs]

   5. AGAdam Grant1:06

      All right, here we go. I've got, I've got a list of them for you. I came up with four, for starters. I think the one that bothers me most is when somebody resends a message and says, "I'm bumping this to the top of your inbox," my first reaction is, "Thanks, but I prioritize my own inbox." Like, what level of entitlement leads somebody to think that it's their place to tell me what belongs at the top of my inbox?

   6. VFValerie Fridland1:27

      [laughs]

   7. AGAdam Grant1:28

      You've immediately just, you've just sank yourself to the very bottom of my inbox.

   8. VFValerie Fridland1:32

      I know ex- okay, I will never use that with you, for sure. You know, I lo- I actually, I'm not gonna argue out of that one because I think there is a whole genre of email etiquette and email guidelines that we have somehow thrown out the window, and I am a proponent of spoken discourse and the way that language evolves there. I think it's very different when we get into written genres because they are, the whole idea of writing is it's based on conventions. If we didn't have learned conventions with writing, we wouldn't have writing, which is very different than speech. If we didn't have, you know, prescriptive rules about speech, speech would still exist, and it did for 150,000 years before we ended up writing it down. So it's a completely different animal. But I am absolutely with you on the whole lack of email etiquette, and email is a little bit l- like a mix between this immediacy of spoken interaction and the formality, non-timeliness of writing, where it's sort of not in real time. And this whole bumping it up in your ema- inbox is sort of like, "Hey, you're not paying enough attention to me," and I think that's why it peeves you, and I 100% agree with you with that. I think there are ways that we need to sometimes be able to prod someone because people forget or they haven't gotten back to us, but then I think you need to s- take the onus on yourself of saying, "Hey, I'm just checking in. I have this deadline that I need to meet," or, "I have this, this thing that I, I need to meet, and if you have time, I would appreciate a response," or

3. 3:03 – 7:14

   “You’re welcome” vs “no problem” vs “my pleasure”: politeness and imposition

   1. VFValerie Fridland3:03

      something like that where it's recognizing that it's an imposition on you. What's really, really interesting, I think, about this pet peeve is in spoken language we see the opposite. So, um, I don't know how you feel, this might be on your list, about how someone says the response to thank you. What do you say if I said, "Oh, thank you, Adam"? You would say ...

   2. AGAdam Grant3:22

      Well, I would say, "You're welcome," but I don't love it when people say, "No problem."

   3. VFValerie Fridland3:27

      Well, and you know what's interesting with no problem is it's kind of the opposite of what you're getting irritated about in the email format, Matt, because when you say, "No problem," what that's acknowledging is this idea of imposition and that we recognize that putting an imposition on someone is disfavored. And so when someone says, "Oh, it's no problem," that means, "I'm, I'm letting you know that I really did not mind the imposition because you're such a good person or you're such a good friend or I value you in some way." So it's actually a really nice thing because you're recognizing that there was imposition and dismissing it as a concern, which is the opposite, kind of, of what irritates you on that email-

   4. AGAdam Grant4:02

      Yeah

   5. VFValerie Fridland4:02

      ... which is like, "I'm not really paying attention to this imposition." So I, I, you know, it's really funny. In spoken language we're actually moving to a culture with younger people, Millennials and, and younger, where imposition is what drives our politeness. But on email it seems to be the opposite, which is what you're-

   6. AGAdam Grant4:17

      Yeah

   7. VFValerie Fridland4:17

      ... you're getting irritated with.

   8. AGAdam Grant4:19

      So interesting. Okay, so two reactions to that. The first one is I think this is why I prefer, instead of you're welcome or no problem, my pleasure, which says, "Actually, I was happy to help. It wasn't just no big deal. I actually enjoyed it," or, "It mattered to me to be able to support you." So I would, I would go that route. That's-

   9. VFValerie Fridland4:35

      I love it

   10. AGAdam Grant4:36

       ... that's the opposite end of imposition.

   11. VFValerie Fridland4:36

       That's very 18th and 19th century of you. [laughs]

   12. AGAdam Grant4:39

       Well, I, I-

   13. VFValerie Fridland4:39

       Because that was actually something that people said a lot more [laughs] in that era. I love it.

   14. AGAdam Grant4:44

       Now, now you're the, you're the second person, and the only one who's not a teenager, to call me old today.

   15. VFValerie Fridland4:48

       [laughs]

   16. AGAdam Grant4:49

       Check.

   17. VFValerie Fridland4:49

       I'm not calling you old, I'm tall- calling you classic.

   18. AGAdam Grant4:52

       Ah, I like it.

   19. VFValerie Fridland4:53

       [laughs]

   20. AGAdam Grant4:53

       Always wanted to be classic. Never, never modern, never contemporary, never in vogue.

   21. VFValerie Fridland4:57

       [laughs]

   22. AGAdam Grant4:58

       Okay. The second thing is I really like your alternatives to, to, email-wise, to bumping this up to the top of your inbox, just saying, "Hey, I'm stressed" or, "I have a deadline," because it, you're right, it, it, it does signal, "Hey, I'm respecting your time and, and realizing that I'm, I'm putting something on you." I always think the easiest one is just, "Wanted to make sure you got this." [laughs]

   23. VFValerie Fridland5:17

       Right, or just checking in.

   24. AGAdam Grant5:18

       Yeah. Just, I mean, which I like the, like, just making sure this came through because sometimes email gets accidentally filtered to spam. Sometimes it gets stuck in an outbox. And you're not making any assumptions about the other person, as opposed to- Kind of sending the message, "Hey, you're not prioritizing me, and I should be number one on your list."

   25. VFValerie Fridland5:38

       Right, which I think is something we see a lot more, I mean, and we can talk about it with how it relates to language and how language is evolving, but this idea of sort of the subjectivity of me being, um, omnipresent in, in the way that people interact now, and that has changed a lot. That doesn't mean I think that people are more me-focused necessarily, but in terms of what our culture is prioritizing, it can be that. One thing I actually think that's interesting with the bumping this up in your email box or your inbox, have you noticed that that happens a lot with spam emails? I've noticed that that seems to be one of the taglines-

   26. AGAdam Grant6:12

       [laughs]

   27. VFValerie Fridland6:12

       ... that almost every spam email I get, which I haven't responded to, sends too, which also makes me hate it all the more. So see, I did not talk you out of that pet peeve. Just, I just-

   28. AGAdam Grant6:22

       Yes

   29. VFValerie Fridland6:22

       ... want that known, because the rest I probably will. [laughs]

   30. AGAdam Grant6:25

       Well, you, you actually talked me more into it, because you helped me understand the rationale for it, which is this is to me the way that a taker communicates, not a giver. And having spent most of my career trying to help people operate more like givers than takers, it seems like a violation of my values. But you're right, I think probably of all the unwanted pitches that we get for guests on this very podcast, approximately 84% of them have a follow-up the next day saying, "Bumping this up to the top of your inbox."
4. 7:14 – 14:49

   Pet peeve #2: “Can I pick your brain?” as metaphor, context, and intent

   1. AGAdam Grant7:14

      There will be. Okay. I'm, I'm gonna give you another pet peeve-

   2. VFValerie Fridland7:16

      Okay

   3. AGAdam Grant7:16

      ... then, which is, this one is much more mild, but I don't like the phrase can I pick your brain, because number one, it's gross. I, I don't want my brain picked. [laughs] The, the image itself-

   4. VFValerie Fridland7:27

      Right, the, the image it brings up is not attractive. I will agree with you on that one.

   5. AGAdam Grant7:31

      No. Secondly, it suggests that I'm just a passive receptacle, and you're gonna come and extract things, when what you're really asking is you're asking for me to spend some time getting to know you and trying to understand what your goals are and what you're hoping to learn, and then figure out if I have something worth sharing or teaching, and that requires energy and effort from me. And that could be a cost to your earlier point about imposition, but it also is an active conversation, not a passive one, and why not invite me to share some knowledge, to teach? Those are things I love doing, as opposed to giving me this visceral image of-

   6. VFValerie Fridland8:07

      [laughs]

   7. AGAdam Grant8:07

      ... like sitting in a, in a dentist chair, and then you're kinda opening up my head and just pulling out the things that you want, and I'm just sort of a, an unwanted witness to the whole thing.

   8. VFValerie Fridland8:17

      [laughs] You're just a victim.

   9. AGAdam Grant8:20

      Yeah.

   10. VFValerie Fridland8:21

       Right? Okay.

   11. AGAdam Grant8:21

       I am a victim of my brain being picked.

   12. VFValerie Fridland8:23

       Okay, so that one I'm gonna argue with a little bit, that there's another perspective that one could take.

   13. AGAdam Grant8:28

       Please do. I wanna rethink this one.

   14. VFValerie Fridland8:31

       Okay. I am empathetic to the idea that sometimes there are certain images we get and associations we have with words, and those are extremely valid, that make us particularly as a person not really enjoy hearing them, even though it's, there's nothing actually wrong with that term, and I think this is one of those. When we talk about language evolving, a lot of times what people don't understand is that most of what we use with language is a metaphorical extension of something. So we don't just walk around talking in literal words all the time. I mean, we literally do talk in words, [laughs] but we're not using the literal meaning of those words a lot. So for example, if we're walking somewhere and I say, "Wait a minute," what I'm usually meaning is not stop and time yourself for a minute and wait there, which is what the literal meaning of that is. It's actually a metaphorical extension of this idea of pausing, and I'm saying, "Oh my gosh, I just had a flash of something that means we need to go back and think about it again." So it's a metaphorical use of this idea of waiting a minute. I would say picking your brain is very much a similar thing. So the idea of th- there is this repository in which we can pick the things that delight us or the things that inform us or the things that create new knowledge for us, and that we get to, you know, have this wonderful experience of being able to pick out something that helps us in some way, and that this is a metaphorical extension of that. Rather than looking at you as this passive recipient of being picked, it's looking at me as the person that gets this opportunity when I have this, you know, cornucopia of brilliance in front of me to-

   15. AGAdam Grant10:10

       [laughs]

   16. VFValerie Fridland10:10

       ... get some new knowledge. [laughs]

   17. AGAdam Grant10:13

       Uh, flattery will get you nowhere, Valerie.

   18. VFValerie Fridland10:15

       [laughs]

   19. AGAdam Grant10:15

       So you're saying I should be saying thank you for thinking that my brain is worthy of picking.

   20. VFValerie Fridland10:20

       Exactly. Now, I think from your perspective, the reason you don't like it is because [laughs] of the way that that word pick has been used in your experience more often, where picking-

   21. AGAdam Grant10:28

       Yeah

   22. VFValerie Fridland10:28

       ... is not necessarily an attractive thing, and one of those, a- anybody who's had toddlers [laughs] will instantly-

   23. AGAdam Grant10:34

       [laughs]

   24. VFValerie Fridland10:34

       ... come to mind a different meaning of pick.

   25. AGAdam Grant10:37

       Yeah, I also-

   26. VFValerie Fridland10:38

       As the mother of a toddler who did that quite often, and I'm not saying which of my children it was so they don't hate me later, but, um, picking became a really, a, a horrible word in my household for a while because, um, one of my children was a big picker. [laughs]

   27. AGAdam Grant10:52

       Oh, no. Yeah, I also, I think of the Seinfeld episode, "If we pick, do we not bleed?"

   28. VFValerie Fridland10:56

       [laughs]

   29. AGAdam Grant10:57

       And also being a pick me is undesirable, so-

   30. VFValerie Fridland11:00

       Right
5. 14:49 – 16:26

   Why language pet peeves stick—and how speech patterns relate to judging people

   1. AGAdam Grant14:49

      I think that's right. I think that, that's helpful context, and [laughs] that makes me think, speaking of context, that before I, I do my other two pet peeves for you to react to. I should say, the last time I, I might have aired some grievances about linguistic pet peeves not too long ago, and some people got upset and said I was nitpicking or I should be focusing on more important things. And, like, "You might be overthinking this" was a common reaction. And I, I had two thoughts on that. The first one was, "Since when have I under-thought anything, ever?" Like, I overthink-

   2. VFValerie Fridland15:18

      [laughs]

   3. AGAdam Grant15:18

      ... things for a living. That's my job as a psychologist.

   4. VFValerie Fridland15:21

      That's why-

   5. AGAdam Grant15:21

      And secondly-

   6. VFValerie Fridland15:21

      That's why I get paid the big bucks, right? [laughs]

   7. AGAdam Grant15:23

      Secondly, and maybe more importantly, as a psychologist, language is an extremely important clue for me to somebody's thoughts, feelings, and actions. And the patterns of speech that, that people use are often the first and sometimes the only signal I get about what their values and intentions are. And I don't take a thin slice of somebody's speech and then immediately judge their entire character. I do, though, raise my eyebrows a little bit if somebody uses a series of patterns that in the past I've, you know, I've learned through evidence and/or experience [laughs] might be associated with a habit of selfishness. And I guess I, I'm curious about where you draw the line on that.

   8. VFValerie Fridland16:00

      I, I think, you know, my as- association with language is I have pet peeves. Everybody does. And for anybody to accuse you of being more pet peevish than they are is probably just because you're more out in the public than they are, and I'm sure at home with their wife or, uh, husband or children or whoever they're spending time with, there's a lot of pet peeves-

   9. AGAdam Grant16:19

      Exactly

   10. VFValerie Fridland16:19

       ... that get aired. So please don't email Adam-

   11. AGAdam Grant16:22

       [laughs]

   12. VFValerie Fridland16:22

       ... and tell him [laughs] that he's, he's too narrow-minded on language after this episode.

6. 16:26 – 18:39

   Oxford comma debate, prescriptivism vs flexibility, and what writing reveals

   1. AGAdam Grant16:26

      Uh, well, even if you do, I will continue defending the Oxford comma.

   2. VFValerie Fridland16:30

      [laughs] All right. You and I disagree on that one, I'm gonna say, but, uh, that's okay.

   3. AGAdam Grant16:34

      Wait, you don't like the Oxford comma?

   4. VFValerie Fridland16:36

      I, you know-

   5. AGAdam Grant16:36

      What kind of linguist-

   6. VFValerie Fridland16:37

      I, uh-

   7. AGAdam Grant16:37

      ... doesn't love the Oxford comma, Valerie?

   8. VFValerie Fridland16:39

      Well, okay, I'm not a prescriptivist, so I think-

   9. AGAdam Grant16:42

      [laughs]

   10. VFValerie Fridland16:42

       ... that's the difference. But, well, I'm joined by many, actually, these days that seem to say the Oxford comma is a negotiable thing. I just find that I actually don't tend to do it, and when I was writing, I was co-authoring a, a book with a, a colleague of mine, a linguistics tech, so you know, the 10 people that read it, you know who you are. And what we found is he used the Oxford comma and I didn't, and so what, that, that would tell you exactly, if you went back and read that book, the copy editor caught it, but it would tell you exactly what sections he wrote and what I did and what I did because you could tell by the Oxford comma patterns. And so just getting to what you were talking about, how you speak and how you write and these behavioral things you do are very revealing of things about you personally. And in that case, you could actually tell who the author was simply by our pattern of comma use, which I think is just such a wonderful metaphor sort of for what I do. [laughs]

   11. AGAdam Grant17:33

       [laughs]

   12. VFValerie Fridland17:33

       But I, you know, I'd really stress this with all aspects of language because people are always saying things like, "Well, you know, they're, it's imprecise. Uh, I don't like it when people are imprecise with language." Well, the whole point of language is that it is imprecise so that we have a lot of flexibility with it. And um, you know, there's, there w- there are uses, for example, like "like" where people complain about, well, if you use too many likes, you can't understand what someone means. But there are really rare occasions when that is actually true.

   13. AGAdam Grant18:01

       Mm-hmm.

   14. VFValerie Fridland18:01

       Oh, okay, if you're talking to a 13-year-old, perhaps, because we do find what we call an adolescent peak in their like use, so it can feel like all they say is like. But I, I would doubt there are many examples of a 25-year-old that's misunderstood because of their like use, and I think that's similar to the Oxford comma.

   15. AGAdam Grant18:17

       Okay. In light of that, I'm amending my philosophy. I am Team Oxford Comma. By that, I mean I believe it is sometimes necessary, maybe occasionally necessary, to your point, and the rest of the time, I just prefer it because I think it makes for a better looking and sounding sentence.

   16. VFValerie Fridland18:34

       I will absolutely agree with that. Exactly. Exactly. See, now-

   17. AGAdam Grant18:38

       I am not letting-

   18. VFValerie Fridland18:38

       ... now we're on the same page.

7. 18:39 – 21:30

   Valerie’s pet peeves: adverb “-ly” disappearing, “naked” language, and evolution

   1. AGAdam Grant18:39

      Yeah. Yeah, we are, actually. Um, so okay, I'm not letting you off the hook so easily. You mentioned that you have linguistic pet peeves. What are they?

   2. VFValerie Fridland18:47

      One thing I, I will say I'm kind of sad about is the demise of the L-Y on adverbs. So you know, when they walk slow Instead of slowly

   3. AGAdam Grant18:57

      Oh, yeah, that grates

   4. VFValerie Fridland18:58

      You know, my kids really just don't use the L-Y, and that's a growing tendency, um, that it's going to kind of go the way of the dodo. And, you know, if I had a prediction for 50 years, I'd say that probably L-Y won't be around. That and the subjunctive, right? Those are two things I think are, are definitely gonna be dead in 50 years. But I also realize that this is the evolution of language, and it's just because to me it sou- it makes it sound naked. You know, like, when someone says they walk slow, it just, it feels to me like there's some, you know, old guy naked walking across the street very slowly.

   5. AGAdam Grant19:30

      [laughs]

   6. VFValerie Fridland19:30

      I don't ... That's the image in ... You know? [laughs]

   7. AGAdam Grant19:33

      That's so, that's so funny because when I was picturing a sentence without an Oxford comma, I almost described it as a naked sentence.

   8. VFValerie Fridland19:39

      [laughs]

   9. AGAdam Grant19:39

      Like, oh, oh, no, put on some clothes.

   10. VFValerie Fridland19:41

       [laughs] Exactly. That'd be, oh-

   11. AGAdam Grant19:42

       I don't wanna see that

   12. VFValerie Fridland19:43

       ... it's so, so if you're-

   13. AGAdam Grant19:43

       We're not at the beach

   14. VFValerie Fridland19:44

       ... this is the pet peeve. [laughs] So I think this is-

   15. AGAdam Grant19:47

       [laughs]

   16. VFValerie Fridland19:47

       ... the realm of the world of pet peeves, right? It makes us feel like we're exposed in a way that we don't enjoy. [laughs] Yeah, so our, obviously, our comfort with nakedness is our problem here, Adam. [laughs]

   17. AGAdam Grant19:58

       [laughs] So okay, so wait, if you think the, the ... If you think adverbs are going away, does that mean that as-

   18. VFValerie Fridland20:03

       No, adverbs aren't going away. The L-Y that, you know, is like, "Hey, I'm an adverb," it ... When you say, "Go slow"-

   19. AGAdam Grant20:09

       Right, okay

   20. VFValerie Fridland20:10

       ... the use is still adverbial, but it's-

   21. AGAdam Grant20:12

       Right

   22. VFValerie Fridland20:12

       ... just not marked with an L-Y.

   23. AGAdam Grant20:14

       Right, 'cause I, I was starting to formulate a sentence like, you know, sadly, that might be true. They're not gonna say, "Sad, that might be true," right?

   24. VFValerie Fridland20:21

       Right. Well, that's a sentential adverb, so that's a little different.

   25. AGAdam Grant20:24

       Right.

   26. VFValerie Fridland20:24

       And we t- those do still seem to have them, but these kind of i-

   27. AGAdam Grant20:28

       Got it

   28. VFValerie Fridland20:28

       ... you know, one word, they're verbal in their modification rather than sentential. They tend to, like, he went slow, he drove quick. But those seem to be fading off, and one of the reasons is because you don't really need them, right? They're additional, and, and if, to be fair, if you go back in history, the L-Y that marks adverbial is actually from the word like that got shortened. So when you say, you know, he was similar to ape-like, then it slowly would be apely.

   29. AGAdam Grant20:59

       Oh

   30. VFValerie Fridland20:59

       ... resembling an ape.
8. 21:30 – 22:52

   Lexical gaps: “disgruntled” without “gruntled,” and “inept” without “ept”

   1. AGAdam Grant21:30

      Love it. Okay. Two other quick pet peeves before we go to accents, 'cause I wanna talk about accents. First one is I've always been bothered ... Well, let me say this a little differently. I have always felt a little disgruntled at the word disgruntled, because why is there no gruntled?

   2. VFValerie Fridland21:43

      [laughs] You know, I, I don't know the history of that word, but I guarantee you that one time there probably was a gruntled-

   3. AGAdam Grant21:49

      Okay, can we bring it back?

   4. VFValerie Fridland21:50

      ... that we dissed at some point. I, you know, I d- I think that you could start a trend.

   5. AGAdam Grant21:55

      I would be very gruntled if we brought this word back-

   6. VFValerie Fridland21:57

      Well-

   7. AGAdam Grant21:57

      ... 'cause it would eliminate my pet peeve around disgruntled.

   8. VFValerie Fridland22:00

      I, I have the same one, so ept. We don't use ept. You can be inept, but you can't be ept.

   9. AGAdam Grant22:04

      Oh.

   10. VFValerie Fridland22:05

       Right? And, and-

   11. AGAdam Grant22:06

       Wow

   12. VFValerie Fridland22:06

       ... that's always been my, um, disgruntled, right? That's always like, "Where'd the, where'd the ept go?" And historically, usually those were words that then got a prefix or a suffix added to them. But then we lost the use of the original-

   13. AGAdam Grant22:20

       Right

   14. VFValerie Fridland22:20

       ... form, and so it's just ... It leaves what we call in linguistics a lexical gap, meaning it's a noticeable omission of a word that should exist but doesn't. And most of the time it's just because it did exist at one point, and so pr- what happened is the frequency of use of disgruntled was clearly ... We were more often disgruntled than gruntled. And, you know, that's what we tend to find, is that the more frequent terms tend to stay, and whatever didn't get used that often got replaced by something else.

   15. AGAdam Grant22:49

       Well, that's a cultural commentary.

   16. VFValerie Fridland22:51

       Yeah, exactly.

9. 22:52 – 27:06

   When accents emerge in kids: peers, school, and the ‘cool friends’ effect

   1. AGAdam Grant22:52

      Okay, so I wanna talk about accents, because that is a hot topic for you right now. I guess the first thing that, that I'm curious about is when do accents emerge? Like, I remember when we were living in England, a colleague friend of mine had young girls who had moved. They had been in Australia, England, and the US, and you could almost tell where they were when they learned each word, because they would say things like, "Mommy, I would like a hamburger."

   2. VFValerie Fridland23:18

      [laughs]

   3. AGAdam Grant23:18

      And [laughs] their accent would change word by word, and it was hysterical to listen to. And it, it was ... I think it was the first time I really wondered, do we actually learn each word with an accent, or is there a critical period for accent development like language development? So can you enlighten me-

   4. VFValerie Fridland23:34

      Oh, sure

   5. AGAdam Grant23:34

      ... on how all this works?

   6. VFValerie Fridland23:35

      Okay. So, so many things in what you just said that are both fascinating, exciting, controversial. I mean, there's all, there's all- so much, so much to talk about. But okay, let's, let's go first to just childhood and accents, and kind of the emergence of accents in a child that would be in one place, because you kinda have this more complicated example where these children have been moving around. But for most of us, our accent emerges by age four or five. We're really starting to use local accent variants, and the, uh, reason it waits till four or five is simply because our capacity for language is very limited until then. And so while we probably already have some understanding at some level of the social nuances of language for our local group or our community, articulating it is a little tricky before we can actually say, you know, "I want cookies." [laughs] So you have to be able to want cookies verbally before you can really throw in any accent spot. So by four or five when kids start going to school, they start something called vernacular reorganization, which is a big fancy word to simply mean they start talking like their peers. So whatever group they're a part of, that will be the way they start to learn to talk. So the more local accents they hear in school, and the more they identify with that from a sort of personal level, uh, the group that they wanna play with, the cool kids that they wanna hang out with, the more they will acquire those specific features. In terms of whether they learn it on a word basis or a- ... more phonetic basis. That's actually a really controversial topic in linguistics. So I'd say what r- I think, as with many things, it's a little bit of both. What we find is that children and adults acquire systems, so they will acquire a sound system. So they'll acquire-

   7. AGAdam Grant25:25

      Mm

   8. VFValerie Fridland25:25

      ... a vowel category that is in a certain range as a group. So every word with that vowel in it, so cat, bat, sat, rat-

   9. AGAdam Grant25:34

      Yeah

   10. VFValerie Fridland25:34

       ... that will be learned in that range as, okay, all these words have that category, and they're all going to produ- be produced in a certain way for this group that I'm in. So, you know, for example, if I were British, I, I, I would say aunt. If I were American, I would say aunt. Some Americans may not say it that way, but most people do.

   11. AGAdam Grant25:53

       [laughs]

   12. VFValerie Fridland25:53

       So that would be your kind of group that you're learning that accent from. Your friends would say aunt, so you would be very unlikely to show up for school and start saying, talking about your aunt. Um, however, say you have British parents, and you're that five-year-old, and you have spent your life in this new place, like, so you, you moved with your British parents when you were one, and moved to, you know, Tennessee, for example. Like, in my case, that's where my parents moved to. They would say aunt. You might show up in school saying aunt, but by day one, when your little friends started teasing you about it, you would switch to aunt. So then you would have this, you know, kind of weird system where you have f- a few words that were learned from somebody with a different accent or in a place with a different accent that you still use that accent for until there's enough social pressure in your new place to, um, make you want to adapt or make you notice that you need to adapt or not notice at all and never adapt. So I think that's what you're seeing with those kids. They were probably still pretty young, and so they just were in that transitory period where they hadn't done that yet, if that makes sense.

   13. AGAdam Grant27:00

       Got it. Yes. It makes perfect sense. Thank you. That's, that's enlightening. I, I mean, it raises a ton of other questions.

10. 27:06 – 28:51

    How early we ‘hear’ accents: in utero exposure and newborn listening patterns

    1. VFValerie Fridland27:06

       Yeah. I think with another part of what you had asked before is sort of when we just acquire our accents as normal people, and that, that's a little different of an answer.

    2. AGAdam Grant27:16

       When do we develop our accents?

    3. VFValerie Fridland27:17

       Generally speaking, from birth, we're acquiring the language of our environment, and if you are born to speakers of a different language in a community that speaks a different language or a different dialect, you almost always go with the community and not with your parent. So unfortunately for parents, we don't have that much of an influence on our children's speech, because from birth, as soon as they start interacting with those way cool friends, the not-so-cool parents kind of fade into the background, and the way cool kids become-

    4. AGAdam Grant27:47

       Yep

    5. VFValerie Fridland27:47

       ... their model. And so really, by the time we're in school, we are speaking with our accent. Um, and really, really cool, uh, is sort of this research on when we hear with an accent, because we often think of accents as something in spoken language in terms of how we produce sounds, but accents are really about how we hear sounds first. So we get accents in the way we listen before we have accents in the way we talk, and by two or three days from after birth, we show, see evidence that children have already acquired the ability to listen with an accent.

    6. AGAdam Grant28:17

       Wow. How do we know that?

    7. VFValerie Fridland28:19

       Well, it, it ... At that point, of course, you know, children's hearing doesn't develop until late in pregnancy, but they can hear in utero, and what they hear the best is their mother's voice. And we find that if you play babies the b- sort of sounds that are in the melody of their native language versus those that are in the melody of a different language, they are much more attentive to the melody of their native language, which suggests they've already been attuned to it and recognize it and are more favorably inclined towards it from listening to their mother's voice in utero.

11. 28:51 – 33:37

    Accent detective game: diagnosing Adam’s region through vowel tests

    1. AGAdam Grant28:51

       Mm-hmm. You write a lot about regional accents and have spent a lot of time thinking about them and studying them. I have some regional questions for you, but let me start by asking, what do you know about me from my accent?

    2. VFValerie Fridland29:03

       Okay, so I'm going to challenge you to a little accent test-

    3. AGAdam Grant29:08

       Okay

    4. VFValerie Fridland29:08

       ... so that we can maybe play a little game. So I'm gonna spell a couple words, and I want you to say them for me.

    5. AGAdam Grant29:14

       I'm ready.

    6. VFValerie Fridland29:15

       Okay. And so the first word is spelled C-O-T.

    7. AGAdam Grant29:19

       Cot.

    8. VFValerie Fridland29:20

       Okay. And the second word is spelled C-A-U-G-H-T.

    9. AGAdam Grant29:24

       Caught.

    10. VFValerie Fridland29:24

        Okay. Say them together.

    11. AGAdam Grant29:26

        Cot, caught.

    12. VFValerie Fridland29:27

        All right. So you actually have a slight distinction in those words. So for me, they're different words, but the same pronunciation. So I say cot caught.

    13. AGAdam Grant29:34

        Oh, wow.

    14. VFValerie Fridland29:35

        And this is actually something that's, uh, really widespread in American English today, but there are a few dialect regions in which it doesn't happen, and the key dialect region whi- in which the cot caught merger does not happen, which is a dialect region that would probably define you, is the Inland North.

    15. AGAdam Grant29:54

        Oh.

    16. VFValerie Fridland29:54

        So I would predict, just on the way you say those words, that you are from a Northern dialect region, because most other speakers, even in the South, especially in the Gen X and younger generations, um, no longer distinguish between those, those sounds. People that do that are people usually from the Inland North.

    17. AGAdam Grant30:14

        Okay.

    18. VFValerie Fridland30:15

        So then, um, let's think about the a vowel. So let's ... I want you to say a word like C-A-T.

    19. AGAdam Grant30:22

        Cat.

    20. VFValerie Fridland30:23

        Okay. And then say B-A-G.

    21. AGAdam Grant30:26

        Bag.

    22. VFValerie Fridland30:27

        Okay. And then say B-A-N.

    23. AGAdam Grant30:29

        Ban.

    24. VFValerie Fridland30:30

        Okay. Now I want you to say those three together.

    25. AGAdam Grant30:32

        Is this a test? [laughs]

    26. VFValerie Fridland30:33

        Yeah. Say B-A-T, B-A-G, and B-A-N together.

    27. AGAdam Grant30:36

        Bat, bag, ban.

    28. VFValerie Fridland30:38

        Oh, now interesting. You have a split nasal system there. So when you say those three words, they actually have historically the same vowel class, the a vowel.

    29. AGAdam Grant30:46

        Oh?

    30. VFValerie Fridland30:46

        But in certain dialect regions, in the North particular, or the Mid-Atlantic, they're called a split a system, which means that certain words are said with a lax a, more like, um, sort of bat, and then some with a tense a, bag.
12. 33:37 – 34:55

    Accent change over life: moving regions, and why adults pick up words more than systems

    1. AGAdam Grant33:37

       I'm glad. Well, I ... So this actually raises another question that I had for you about accents, which is, so I've lived almost exactly to date half my life in Michigan, and then all the rest has been on the East Coast. And I noticed that I lost some of my Michigan accent in the time that I've lived in Boston and Philly and North Carolina. And not all of it, but I notice when I talk to people who stayed in Michigan through their 20s, for example, I hear them say pants as pyants.

    2. VFValerie Fridland34:06

       [laughs]

    3. AGAdam Grant34:06

       So why, why did mine go away? And why, why does it seem that other people's don't if they leave at a different point? How much of that is life stage versus individual difference in accent susceptibility? How do, how do you explain all that?

    4. VFValerie Fridland34:20

       What you tend to do is you kind of acquire, um, a slightly different version of the accent you have that moves away from the place you left and towards the new place you're in, but never realizes that completely, but moves away from their native accent enough that it no longer sounds like that. So what we seem to see adults do is that they pick up some features, and when you had a-

    5. AGAdam Grant34:47

       Right

    6. VFValerie Fridland34:47

       ... talked about children picking up certain words, adults do that even more. So children tend to pick up systems. Adults tend to pick up words.

13. 34:55 – 36:48

    Why some people pick up accents fast: musical ear, perception, and brain differences

    1. AGAdam Grant34:55

       Okay, so a quick follow-up question. Do you know anything about individual differences in susceptibility? Our oldest, Joanna, for example, like, if she's in a foreign country or even around people who speak with a different language for a day or two, she picks up the accent very fast. What, what is that about?

    2. VFValerie Fridland35:10

       We absolutely find that there are differences in individual ability and sensitivity to picking up different sounds. So also the same thing with the people that are able to pick up other languages are often really good at imitating accents. Um, so a couple of different things we think might be driving that. Um, one is does your daughter have a, a really good musical ability? Is she able to hear t- tone really well?

    3. AGAdam Grant35:37

       Yeah.

    4. VFValerie Fridland35:37

       Um, because we do find a relationship. People that are really good with hearing tone differences in music, so they sort of have-

    5. AGAdam Grant35:43

       Yep

    6. VFValerie Fridland35:43

       ... an in- innate musicality in terms of how they hear things also seem to be very good at picking up languages. We also find that we look at studies of brain activity. People that are really good at picking up languages, or multilingual, um, tend to have greater brain activity in certain regions, and that seems to suggest there might be actually some differences in sort of the cognitive resources that they're marshaling for-

    7. AGAdam Grant36:09

       Yeah

    8. VFValerie Fridland36:09

       ... doing that. So there, there could easily be really substantive differences in the way their brains are wired, and the, you know, sort of neural connectivity that help them command languages more quickly. It also just seems to be something about their sensitivity to hearing different nuances, which would translate both in music and speech.

    9. AGAdam Grant36:29

       That's so interesting. So you work on your, your musical ear, and you also improve your linguistic ear.

    10. VFValerie Fridland36:35

        Right. And another really fascinating thing is there's research that suggests children that are exposed to a lot of languages or to a language often as a child, even if they don't learn that language, seem to get a passive benefit if they c- then later decide to learn that language.

14. 36:48 – 40:51

    Rapid-fire accent perceptions: British prestige, Irish warmth, and what shapes ‘smart-sounding’ speech

    1. AGAdam Grant36:48

       Okay, I have a bunch of rapid-fire questions for you. We're aiming for one sentence max on answer to each of them.

    2. VFValerie Fridland36:54

       Oh, my gosh. Have you learned nothing about me in our conversation? [laughs]

    3. AGAdam Grant36:58

       No, you can do it. I have confidence in you. Okay, first question is why do British accents sound so smart?

    4. VFValerie Fridland37:07

       That's colonial superiority in a nutshell, and our sense of colonial inferiority.

    5. AGAdam Grant37:14

       Are you saying if somebody who had never heard American or British English before were exposed to the two, they wouldn't think British sounds brighter?

    6. VFValerie Fridland37:23

       No. No. No, we have actually done research-

    7. AGAdam Grant37:25

       Oh, wow. I thought that was a linguistic feature.

    8. VFValerie Fridland37:27

       No, no, actually, I mean, okay, so you said one sentence. I'm trying to be good about that. But no-

    9. AGAdam Grant37:31

       [laughs]

    10. VFValerie Fridland37:31

        ... we have actually a lot of good evidence that, um, familiarity is the biggest driver of our likes and dislikes, and then the sort of social hierarchy we have with those accents that we're familiar with, and the hierarchy has always been, right, British English is sort of where we come from, and it long dominated American or, or the new world in terms of the linguistic model. And up through the early 20th century, the transatlantic accent was modeled on the, you know, prestige British accent. So both from the fact that we are a colonial nation, and often colonial models stick around as what's considered good, and that for a long time, the cultural model of London was considered very elite and prestigious. That has really shaped the way we think about the British accent. But if you, and we have actually research that does this, if you take a speaker of a language that is not English, and they've never heard the different accents of English, and you play them these different accents, they do not pick, you know, a prestige accent, American English either-

    11. AGAdam Grant38:32

        Wow

    12. VFValerie Fridland38:32

        ... as being more prestigious. They-

    13. AGAdam Grant38:34

        Mind blown.

    14. VFValerie Fridland38:35

        They instead will pick random things, and there's not really a prediction we can make about what drives their, their knowledge.

    15. AGAdam Grant38:42

        That is so surprising. I did not know.

    16. VFValerie Fridland38:44

        It's funny you say that because, uh, you know, if that, if that were the basis, if we were gonna go on, on sort of linguistic science to determine what sounds we like, there are ... There is some research on phono aesthetics, so what we find beautiful in sounds, and it would tell us that actually all English is ugly. [laughs] That would be the, that would be the fundamental message.

    17. AGAdam Grant39:03

        Okay.

    18. VFValerie Fridland39:03

        And that we should all speak Italian. I mean, that, that's really ... If you look at what ... So what we like linguistically in that sense is to ... We, we like what we call sonorant sound, which are the sounds that require a lot of airflow and open articulation to make. So that's v- all vowels are very sonorant. Ls, Rs, Ms, Ns, those are flowing, melodious sounds. And we like open syllables. So French and Italian, for example, are both languages with lots of sonorant sounds, a high frequency of sonorant sounds, and open syllables, and they're very singable and musical.

    19. AGAdam Grant39:38

        Yep.

    20. VFValerie Fridland39:38

        So there is a little truth to the fact that certain sounds do sound better to us. But English tends not to have a lot of those. So English itself would not be a very attractive language, but what makes English an attractive language is its global prestige. So it's all about-

    21. AGAdam Grant39:53

        Yep

    22. VFValerie Fridland39:53

        ... what we believe and nothing about what is intrinsic in that sound at all.

    23. AGAdam Grant39:57

        Wow.

    24. VFValerie Fridland39:57

        [laughs]

    25. AGAdam Grant39:58

        One other I have, [laughs] I have to ask about. We have noticed on and off that when I've had Irish speakers on the podcast, everyone loves their accent and finds it very pleasing. What is that about?

    26. VFValerie Fridland40:10

        You know, it could be that they're hearkening back to the revolutionary roots. Um, but I think more likely it's because there's a sense of authenticity and, um, sort of localness and sincerity that we hear with accents, like Scottish and Irish. And Irish in particular, it's ... There's a friendliness and a warmth to it because of the persona. We have this image of these beautiful hills and this beautiful landscape and coast and beau- and maybe not so great weather. But still, we have this really lovely, rugged, rustic, kind of homey sensibility that we get when we hear it, and that carries over in the ideas we have about that language or that accent.

15. 40:51 – 42:13

    Internet accents and performative speech: generic reach, attention tactics, and uptalk

    1. AGAdam Grant40:51

       Yep. Ugh, okay, great. Uh, one of our past guests, Adam Aleksic, submitted a question. You might know him as Etymology Nerd on Instagram.

    2. VFValerie Fridland40:59

       Yes, yes.

    3. AGAdam Grant40:59

       And he said ... "Hi, Valerie. I'd love to hear about internet accents and why people might speak differently on social media."

    4. VFValerie Fridland41:06

       Well, I think one of the things we have to think about is the performativity of social media. And when I was just talking about Irish accents, um, it has a warmth and an authenticity. I mean, local accents have a authenticity to them, right? They have a tie to a certain subjectivity and place and people. But when we talk on the internet, we don't know what our audience is, and so we're going to use language that is kind of more generic, but also more performative because not only are we trying to make sure that we can reach the maximum audience in terms of not identifying anybody by using an ac- local accent, we're also going to wanna get their attention. And so I think when we're speaking performatively, we project in a certain way, and we're very hyperbolic in the way that we present ourselves. And we also use a lot of uptalk to keep people interested and engaged because uptalk tends to signal, "I'm not done. Keep paying attention to me. Here we come. Here's the big thing."

    5. AGAdam Grant41:59

       [laughs]

    6. VFValerie Fridland42:00

       "We're coming up to it. Keep watching."

    7. AGAdam Grant42:01

       [laughs]

    8. VFValerie Fridland42:02

       And I think what happens is because everybody's trying to do the same thing, the goal of making a post for social media is that people see it, people start talking that same way in this very performative model of speech.

16. 42:13 – 44:33

    Alien language as a tool for challenging assumptions: whales, AI analysis, and communication norms

    1. AGAdam Grant42:13

       Oh, that's so helpful. Thank you. Very informative. Um, okay, last question for you. Did you see Project Hail Mary?

    2. VFValerie Fridland42:19

       I read the book. It's been a long time. I read it when it first came out. But yes, I love that he had a very unique language for the alien. What was the name of the alien? Ma?

    3. AGAdam Grant42:29

       Rocky was the alien.

    4. VFValerie Fridland42:30

       Rocky, Rocky. Okay, yes.

    5. AGAdam Grant42:32

       Yeah.

    6. VFValerie Fridland42:32

       It's been a while. I'm a little rusty on my Rocky, but yes. [laughs]

    7. AGAdam Grant42:35

       No, it's all good. Well, no, but it, it speaks to a post you wrote about exploring extraterrestrial language. And I thought a really fun lightning question would be, why and how should we think about alien language? What's the point of that?

    8. VFValerie Fridland42:48

       Well, I love the idea of alien language because I think it ke- keeps us on our toes about these norms that we have about how language should be. And, you know, we're very, we're very prescriptive-ist in the beliefs we have about language. We know this from the way we judge other people that don't meet those norms. But we also have never thought through, like, what would someone without a mouth, how would they communicate? But actually, there's been some really interesting research recently on whale language, which I think is very much like an alien language. And so we, if we look at other species and how they communicate on Earth, it might give us some ideas of what aliens might sound like. The fascinating thing about the whale language is this was the first time they did it with an sort of AI analysis, where it could kind of listen on different dimensions than a human could. And they discovered that there were actually really fine nuances that actually were like vowels. So they were the equivalent of vowels, but humans couldn't hear them. And so until-

    9. AGAdam Grant43:44

       Wow

    10. VFValerie Fridland43:44

        ... they did this analysis, w- we didn't know that they did this because we were not, we were not sophisticated enough to understand their sophistication. And I think that that's really what we get at when we get at alien languages, is trying to figure out, "Well, how do we get out of the box in terms of what we think communication is?"

    11. AGAdam Grant44:01

        That's incredibly interesting. This has been such a generative conversation. I, I am leaving feeling very gruntled.

    12. VFValerie Fridland44:08

        [laughs] I'm, I'm feeling very ept, so we're good. [laughs] [outro music]

Episode duration: 44:33