I saw this story – Cows also ‘have regional accents’ – a couple of weeks ago, and didn’t give it much thought. However, it’s just been pointed out to me by a friend that the report was written by Prof. John Wells, who is one of my ex-lecturers in linguistics at UCL! Luckily, we never studied this kind of stuff…
Tink said:
Did you never do the whole Vervet Monkeys have accents thingy (mind you, you were a year below me..)? I’m pretty sure we talked about ducks and cows having accents too… Or maybe that was just in my imagination to make accents more interesting…
Oohh. BTW I have a new musical discovery for you now…
x
Frankie Roberto said:
I didn’t do that course, no. I don’t doubt that animals have regional ‘accents’ either. What seems slightly unplausable is the suggestion that these accents are because of human linguistic influence…