People From Ireland And The Northern UK Are Experts At Spotting Fake Accents
Compared to people from London, Essex, and Bristol, people from Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, and the northeast region of England are better at detecting fake accents.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge found that people from Belfast were best at telling when someone was imitating their accent.
In the new study, the researchers reviewed nearly 12,000 responses and found that participants across all groups were better than chance at identifying fake accents.
The participants were given two- to three-second clips. Some of the test sentences included phrases like “Hold up those two cooked tea bags,” “She kicked the goose hard with her foot,” “He thought a bath would make him happy,” and “Kit strutted across the room.”
Participants from Scotland, the northeast of England, Ireland, and northern Ireland were able to tell whether short recordings of their native accents were genuine or fake about 65 to 85 percent of the time.
Those from Essex, London, and Bristol were only successful just over 50 percent of the time, which is barely better than chance. If the clips were longer, perhaps the success rates across all regions would rise.
“We found a pretty pronounced difference in accent cheater detection between these areas,” said Dr. Jonathan R. Goodman, a co-author of the study from the University of Cambridge.
“We think that the ability to detect fake accents is linked to an area’s cultural homogeneity, the degree to which its people hold similar cultural values.”
The researchers believe that the accents of speakers from Belfast, Glasgow, Dublin, and northeast England have evolved culturally during the past few centuries.
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Over the years, there have been cultural tensions between these regions and the group that makes up southeast England, particularly London.
Due to the cultural tensions, the researchers suggest that individuals from Ireland and the northern region of the United Kingdom have considered their accents to be signs of their social identity.
Having a fear of cultural dilution or even erasure by outsiders would have given rise to the development of improved accent recognition.
People from London and Essex were the least able to catch fake accents because they were more used to hearing different kinds of accents, which could make them less capable of detecting fake accents.
Many speakers of the Essex accent only moved to the area from London within the past 25 years. Meanwhile, the accents of people in Belfast, Glasgow, and Dublin have evolved throughout centuries of cultural tensions.
“Cultural, political, or even violent conflict are likely to encourage people to strengthen their accents as they try to maintain social cohesion through cultural homogeneity. Even relatively mild tension, for example, the intrusion of tourists in the summer, could have this effect,” said Dr. Goodman.
The study was published in the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences.
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