Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing How YouTubers' voices evolve, with Andrew Cheng
May 8, 2025
Linguist Andrew Cheng, a professor at the University of Hawaii specializing in sociolinguistics, delves into the intriguing ways accents shift over time, especially among YouTubers influenced by geographic moves. He discusses second dialect acquisition, demonstrating how individuals can adopt new speech patterns while retaining their originals. The conversation also emphasizes the fluidity of vowels and how social contexts shape speech modifications, highlighting the dynamic relationship between language and identity.
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Understanding Second Dialect Acquisition
- Second dialect acquisition means someone learns a new dialect of the same language later in life.
- Adults can unconsciously shift their accent after moving to a new dialect region.
Language vs. Dialect: A Political Question
- The distinction between language and dialect is political, not purely linguistic.
- Languages often become languages because of political power, not solely differences in speech.
YouTubers as Linguistic Subjects
- Andrew Cheng studied YouTubers to track how their accents changed over many years.
- He used YouTube videos as a natural longitudinal dataset since traditional studies are hard to conduct.
