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This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Susanne Bard¹.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是苏珊娜·巴德。

(CLIP: The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.)

（音频剪辑：西班牙的雨主要留在平原上。）

Why can people speaking the same language have such different accents? The short answer: new accents begin to develop when isolated² groups of speakers start making nearly imperceptible changes to the way they pronounce words.

为何说同一种语言的人会有如此不同的口音？简而言之：当孤立的说话者群体开始对他们的发音方式进行几乎不可察觉的改变时，新口音就会开始形成。

"Accent development is the first step in language change. Fifteen hundred years ago, languages like English, Dutch and Swedish were actually all dialects of the same language. But of course, then they diversified³ over time."

“口音发展是语言变化的第一步。1500年前，英语、荷兰语和瑞典语等语言实际上都是同一种语言的方言。但当然，后来它们随着时间的推移而各自分化。”

University of Munich linguist⁴ Jonathan Harrington. He's interested in how accents first get started. But because of global communication, most communities are no longer linguistically⁵ isolated, and audio recording⁶ equipment didn't exist back when more of them were. So how to capture the early stages of accent formation today?

慕尼黑大学的语言学家乔纳森·哈林顿说到。他对口音开始形成的方式很感兴趣。但由于全球通讯的出现，大多数群体在语言方面不再孤立，而在群体语言孤立的时代，录音设备又尚未出现。那如何发现口音形成的早期阶段呢？

Harrington and his team turned to members of the British Antarctic Survey, who speak with a variety of English accents.

哈林顿及其团队转而去找英国南极调查所的成员，这些成员的英语有各种口音。

"When you are in Antarctica during the winter period, then there's no way in, and there's no way out. So they were isolated together, and they interacted with each other, and they have to cooperate with each other."

“当冬季你在南极时，那里没有路进入，也没有路出去。因此，他们与世隔绝，互相影响，不得和互相合作。”

Harrington's team recorded the winterers reciting a list of words before they left for Antarctica. Then, while there, the winterers recorded themselves saying the same words four more times. The linguists⁷ then analyzed⁸ the recordings—in particular, resonances⁹: the way airflow shapes sound.

哈林顿的研究小组记录了这些越冬者出发去南极前朗读单词表的声音。之后，在南极时，越冬者又录了4次他们朗读相同单词的声音。接下来，语言学家分析了录音，特别是共振：气流塑造声音的方式。

"Resonances are the defining acoustic¹⁰ features, which let you distinguish one vowel¹¹ from the next."

“共振是决定性的声学特征，它使你将一个元音与另一个元音区分开来。”

And even during their short time in Antarctica, the way the winterers produced certain vowels¹² began to converge¹³, averaging out the resonances. For example, at the beginning of the study, some people produced the "oo" in "food" at the front of the mouth like this:

即使在南极短暂的逗留时间，越冬者某些元音的发音方式就开始趋同，将共振频率拉平。例如，在研究初期，有些人在读“food”这个词时，会用口腔前部发/u:/音，如下所示：

(CLIP: "Food" at front)

（音频剪辑：用口腔前部读“Food”）

While others used the back of the mouth:

其他人则用口腔后部发音：

(CLIP: "Food" at back)

（音频剪辑：用口腔后部读“Food”）

But they began to sound more similar over time.

但随着时间的推移，他们的发音方式越来越相似。

In addition, the winterers invented slightly new ways of pronouncing vowels, such as shifting the production of the second syllable¹⁴ in the word "window" very slightly forward in the vocal¹⁵ tract¹⁶. The linguists think these small changes document the very beginnings of a common accent. The study is in the Journal of the Acoustical¹⁷ Society of America.

此外，越冬者还发明了稍新乡的元音发声法，例如改变“window”第二音节的发音，让声道发音位置略微前移。语言学家认为这些微小变化记录了常见口音的开端。这项研究发表在《美国声学学会期刊》上。

Harrington says the research isn't just relevant for understanding Earth's colonial past. He thinks there's every reason to expect that prolonged isolation¹⁸ will cause astronauts on Mars missions to end up with an out-of-this world accent.

哈林顿表示，这项研究不仅有助于了解世界殖民史。他认为，现在完全有理由期待，长时间的与世隔绝将导致执行火星任务的宇航员最终会产生“另一个世界”的口音。

Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Susanne Bard.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是苏珊娜·巴德。