Humans living on Mars will develop a unique accent, study finds

As humans seek to live the Moon and Mars in the future, those living in isolated colonies will developed their own accents, according to an expert.

Since accents are our distinctive way of speaking, influenced by different factors such as geographical location, age, gender and socioeconomic status, and the accents of those leaving Earth to explore a moon or another planet to develop colonies into societies will somehow be impacted by this big change.

Jonathan Harrington, director of the Institute for Phonetics and Speech Processing at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich in Germany has explained to Live Science how in time new accents will develop for those living on the Moon or Mars.

“We remember the sounds and words of a conversation, and these can have a small influence on the future way that we speak," he said, and noted that new accents "emerge by imitation."

For example, this happens to people who have lived in a new country or region for long periods develop subtle changes to their accents and don't even pick up on it themselves.

So an isolated colony in space will mimic each others accents which will then eventually develop into a new accent itself.

To put this theory to the test, Harrington travelled to an isolated in a laboratory in Antarctica with 11 researchers - eight from England (five with Southern accents and three with Northern accents), one from the U.S. Northwest, one from Germany and one from Iceland.

As the group spent the entire winter together, each of them had picked up some kind of phonetic change while the whole group also began to pronounce specific sounds differently, as the beginning signs of new accent were starting to emerge.

"Exactly the same thing should happen in any environment in which individuals are isolated together over a prolonged period, whether this is in Antarctica or in space," Harrington concluded.

"In fact, accent change should be even greater in space because contact with the home community is even more difficult."

So, those who go to live in space will mimic each other over a time of period which will lead to a the development of a new accent for the future generations.

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