Imitation is the best form of flattery — and the best way to understand people with accents. A study published in Psychological Science claims there is a reason behind our love of accents: copying a person’s speech patterns makes it easier to comprehend what they’re saying.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Manchester and Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
Imitating how people talk is something we do naturally, says the study’s co-author, Patti Adank, of the University of Manchester:
“If people are talking to each other, they tend to sort of move their speech toward each other.”
To understand the benefits of accent imitation, two groups of Dutch participants were given 100 sentences in an obscure accent in Dutch. One group was told to repeat their sentences with the set accent, while the other groups were instructed to say or transcribe the sentences in their own style of speech.
The results found that imitators had much higher comprehension rates than non-imitators. Once someone has a solid grasp of a person’s pronunciation differences, it takes less effort to understand the rest of what they’re saying. Accent imitators, start your engines.
(via Psychological Science / Images via Wikimedia Commons: L: Diphthongs of Netherlandic Dutch, R: Diphthongs of Standard Belgian Dutch)
