This Town In Kansas Has Its Own Unique Accent

[Judi Lynn]

Immigration over the last 40 years has all the young people in town speaking English with a slightly Latin feel 

By Jason Daley 
SMITHSONIAN.COM 
2 HOURS AGO 

During the last half century, reports have occasionally circulated that regional American accents are going the way of the trolley car—mass communication like television and radio, it’s argued, is teaching us all to be a little less Fargo and a little more Tom Brokaw. But it turns out, in the 21st century, regional accents are becoming stronger and more common. Even more, reports Cara Giaimo at Atlas Obscura, recent research shows that new regional accents are being created, with immigration into the city of Liberal, Kansas, spawning its own linguistic style. 

The research is part of Kansas State University’s Kansas Speaks Project, an investigation of how language is used and is changing over time in the Great Plains. According to a press release, as part of the project, linguist Mary Kohn and her students recorded audio samples of 90 people of all ages across the state, including Liberal, then compared them to archival recordings of Kansans recorded in 1968 for the Dictionary of American Regional English. 

Liberal, a town of about 25,000 in southwest Kansas, has seen a radical population shift in the last forty years. In 1980, the community was 20 percent Hispanic. As of the last census, it is 60 percent Hispanic, with a large number of immigrants from Mexico coming to the city to work in the meatpacking plants. 

Accents tend to come from social affiliations, so the researchers recorded members of youth sports teams in Liberal, thinking those teens with European heritage would have one accent and those of Mexican heritage would have another. But what they found is that the English of all the young people in Liberal, no matter the speakers’ ethnic background, has taken on some of the pronunciation and rhythms of Spanish. 

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/town-kansas-unique-accent-180969390/#JR05r0p2OTHzlIlH.99 

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