Shortly before I started college, I finally wised up to the fact that fluency in my parents’ native language of Mandarin Chinese might be an asset. But after nearly two decades of revolting against my parents’ desperate attempts to keep me in Chinese school, I figured I was toast. Surely, by then, my brain and vocal tract had aged out of the window in which they could easily learn to discern and produce tones. And whatever new vocabulary I tried to pick up would, I figured, be forever tainted with my American accent.

Turns out I was only partly right. We acquire speech most readily in early childhood, when the brain is almost infinitely malleable. And the older we get, the tougher it is to pick up new languages and dialects—to rewire our brain circuitry and to move our mouth and tongue and vocal cords in new ways. But even when you’re an adult, “the way you pronounce sounds can and does change,” Andrew Cheng, a linguist at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, told me. Just how much will depend on factors such as age, geography, exposure, and natural talent. To a large degree, how we speak also reflects what we feel—especially, it seems, when it comes to regional accents.

Second-language acquisition offers some of the clearest examples of how difficult adjusting to a new way of speaking can be. Take, for instance, the struggle of adult English speakers—like me—to properly deploy the multitude of tones that inflect Mandarin, as my mother will exasperatedly attest. But even within a language, certain ingrained patterns can be difficult to modify. People struggle to unmerge sounds they’ve gotten used to treating as the same, Margaret Renwick, a linguist at the University of Georgia, told me. For instance, Californians, who tend to pronounce Mary, merry, and marry identically, may have a tough time sounding local in parts of upstate New York, where the pronunciations of those three words all diverge. A similar pattern arises among Spanish speakers who emigrate from, say, Mexico to certain parts of Spain, where the s in words such as casa (house) is pronounced as a th.

Many of those constraints can be overcome with enough time or incentive—and the motivation to sound a certain way can be huge. Everyone has an accent, and each one is a beacon to the rest of the world, prompting all sorts of assumptions about the speaker’s age, geographic origins, race, socioeconomic status, even their education and intellect. The associations between voice and identity are so strong that, around the world, cultures have ordered regional accents into a hierarchy of prestige. Researchers such as Alarna Samarasinghe, a linguist at the University of Bristol, in England, have found that people in the U.K. tend to hold people with a southeastern English accent (also called received pronunciation) in higher regard than those who sound like they come from rural parts of the country. In the U.S., accents from the South are commonly described as “nicer” but less brainy. These sorts of biases can affect a speaker’s personal or professional success. For instance, John Baugh, a linguist at Washington University in St. Louis, has found that voices that sound African American or Mexican American—even when they’re not attached to faces—tend to be denied more job and housing opportunities than those perceived as white.

[Read: What’s a language, anyway?]

So it’s no shock that people often try to alter their accents, especially as they move between geographies or social contexts. Ignacio Moreno-Torres, a linguist at the University of Málaga, in Spain, recalls rapidly discarding his Málaga accent when he moved to Madrid for college, where his peers immediately ribbed him for his odd speech. Many speakers of African American Vernacular English are all too familiar with the exhausting process of toggling between different ways of speaking in different social contexts, Sonja Lanehart, a linguist at the University of Arizona, told me. Renwick, of the University of Georgia, thinks prestige concerns may be speeding up the disappearance of southern accents in cities such as Atlanta and Raleigh. Many southern cities have seen a big influx of people from other parts of the country over recent decades. If southern accents were better regarded, at least some of those newcomers “might be motivated to sound more southern,” Renwick said, but instead, they’re retaining their old way of speech. Now “the South, on the whole, sounds less southern than it did a half century ago.”

Accents, of course, don’t always bend to expectation or hierarchy. English that’s strongly Indian-accented can, for some people, be more challenging to understand, Okim Kang, a linguist at Northern Arizona University, told me. But she once interviewed a lawyer who was dead set on maintaining that accent because it helped her connect with her clients, who spoke in a similar way. Another person she worked with lost her high-status British accent within months of starting to date an American. One study found that people learning Welsh exaggerated their Welsh accent in response to an interviewer (using received pronunciation) challenging the utility of them learning Welsh at all. “If I want to be socially closer to you, then I’m more likely to imitate what you’re doing,” Cynthia Clopper, a linguist at Ohio State University, told me. “But I can also move further away.”

[Read: Why do cartoon villains speak in foreign accents?]

Our voices, after all, have a powerful influence over the people who interact with us. Researchers have found that little kids generally prefer to hang out with children who look like them—until they’re offered the chance to befriend someone who sounds like them, regardless of appearance. And we’re aware of these tendencies, at least subconsciously. Speakers of all ages naturally take on the mannerisms and vocal patterns of the people they’re interacting with, sometimes within the span of a single conversation, Morgan Sonderegger, a linguist at McGill University, in Canada, told me. It’s easy to poke fun at celebrities, such as Lindsay Lohan, who return from an extended European sojourn with a mysterious new accent—or your own college friends, freshly home from a semester abroad with suspiciously Italian-sounding vowels—but they might not actually be “putting it on” as much as people think.

Even the fabled critical period of language learning in early childhood might be at least partly a product of subjective emotions. Young brains are certainly more adept at hearing and incorporating new sounds. But kids are also less set in their identity than adults are—and, as they immerse themselves in the varied accents of peers they’re eager to fit in with, may feel less allegiance to their “first” way of speech than adults who have had decades to decide who they want to be, Jennifer Nycz, a linguist at Georgetown University, told me.

[Read: The mystery of babies’ first words]

That flexibility doesn’t have to end with childhood. After about a decade of speaking English with a U.S. accent—acquired in part by binge-watching reruns of Friends and The Big Bang Theory—Yiran Guo, who grew up in Nanjing, China, was proud that her pronunciation was noticeably more American than her friends’ and family’s. Guo’s accent was hard-earned, and she clung to it when she moved to Australia in her late teens to study linguistics at the University of Melbourne. “I actually didn’t like the Aussie accent when I came here,” she told me. “I just didn’t find it appealing.”

But as Guo’s dislike for Australian pronunciation ebbed, so too did the Americanness of her speech. Within a couple of years, most of her vowels had changed to match what she heard from her surroundings—her American “no,” for instance, rounding and rolling into something more like noerh. After seven years of Aussie life, Guo told me, her accent still feels like it’s deepening by the month. But already, she can pass as a local—even to her own adviser, who studies the sounds of speech for a living.

Microsoft is reportedly asking hundreds of its employees in China to consider relocating outside of the country amid growing tensions between the U.S. and China.

Read more...

Tesla may have already found a potential partner to use its long-promised robotaxis in China.

Read more...

China’s Nio has launched a direct challenge to Tesla’s best-selling Model Y SUV, with the first electric vehicles out of its new lower-priced brand Onvo.

Read more...

Russian president Vladimir Putin's visit to China on Thursday could spell trouble for the West.

The authoritarian leaders aim to underscore their unity during the two-day state visit.

Nio's new brand Onvo has launched its challenger to the world's best-selling electric vehicle.

This is Putin's first visit after he won a fifth presidential term following an election where he ran virtually unopposed.

Latest visit comes as Russia presses a new offensive on Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

It’s common, in criminal court, for a defendant’s friends and family to join them in the courtroom as a show of love and support. That’s not exactly what’s happening in Manhattan this week. More, after these three stories from The Atlantic:

Michael Schuman: China has gotten the trade war it deserves. The art of survival The Baby Reindeer mess was inevitable.

Trump’s Courtroom Groupies

Donald Trump’s hush-money trial was already strange enough. A former president and a porn star walk into a Manhattan courtroom. But an additional cast of characters have recently inserted themselves into the drama. During this week’s testimony from Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen, Republican politicians of many different ranks donned their courtroom best and headed downtown to put on a show for the boss. Although these particular charges could be the weakest of the many indictments Trump faces, one got the sense that none of his party allies was there to discuss the finer points of the law.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who quite famously opposes pornography on religious grounds, nevertheless accompanied the man accused of cheating on his wife with a porn star to his trial yesterday. Outside the building, Johnson told reporters that the case is a “sham” and a “ridiculous prosecution.” At Monday’s session, Senators Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and J. D. Vance of Ohio apparently adopted the roles of Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot for the event, each offering running commentary on the “dingy” courtroom, with its “depressing” vibes; the disturbing number of mask-wearing attendees; and the “psychological torture” being inflicted on Trump (who, as a reminder, has been charged with 34 felonies in this case alone).

The former presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum took turns bemoaning the state of the justice system. Even a few bit players wanted in on the action, including pro-Trump Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, who flew all the way from Des Moines to stand before the news cameras and remind viewers that “politics has no place in a criminal prosecution.”

You might be wondering: Don’t these people have anything better to do? The answer is that, in today’s Republican Party, prostration before Trump is as much part of the job as anything else.

All of this showboating has been happening for several reasons. “At its most tangible level, what we’re seeing is a work-around to the gag order,” Sarah Isgur, a former senior spokesperson for the Trump-era Justice Department, told me. The ex-president was warned by the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, that if he talks or posts any more about the jury or the judge’s family, he could face jail time. So, just as in a political campaign, Trump’s surrogates are stepping up to stump for him.

Legally, Trump can’t ask these politicians to violate the order on his behalf. But why would he have to ask when they know exactly what he wants from them? “The playbook that Trump expects party members in good standing to follow is in public,” Amanda Carpenter, a former GOP staffer and now an editor at Protect Democracy, told me. Trump’s given these acolytes their cues with his posts on Truth Social, and they’re dutifully following them.

Lower Manhattan has, over the past week, become a pilgrimage site for those vying to be in Trump’s inner circle, with a court appearance carrying the promise of a holy anointing. You could also think about this courtside display as another audition in the early veepstakes. For Ramaswamy, Burgum, and Vance, in particular, this moment is a chance to demonstrate their abiding loyalty to Trump in the hopes of being selected as his running mate. Others may have reasoned that a little time in front of the cameras yelling “Sham trial!” will go a long way toward snagging a plum Cabinet position in a second Trump administration. (A virtual unknown such as Bird, of course, probably doesn’t expect to get either of these things. But, as every climber knows, one must never miss an opportunity to ingratiate oneself with the boss.)

Which brings us to one final observation. “There’s a larger, more philosophical reason they’re all there,” Isgur said. “That’s what the Republican Party stands for now.” There is no real platform, no consistent set of principles. There is only Trump, and degrees of loyalty to him. These courtroom groupies are simply responding to the obvious incentives—“If you didn’t know that the Republican Party is now focused on Trump,” Isgur said, “I’ve got an oceanfront property to sell you in Arizona.”

That’s their deal, but what about the boss’s? Trump no longer appears concerned only with shielding himself from political accountability. Now that he has almost clinched the nomination, he’s using the party to shield himself from criminal accountability, too. This has given the GOP a new rallying cry. “The Big Lie in 2020 was that the election was stolen,” Carpenter said. “The Big Lie 2.0 is that justice has been weaponized against him to deprive him of the presidency.”

Related:

Trump’s alternate-reality criminal trial What Donald Trump fears most

Today’s News

Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, was shot several times in an assassination attempt. He has been hospitalized and is undergoing surgery. President Joe Biden and Donald Trump agreed to two presidential debates. The first one will be hosted by CNN on June 27, and the second will take place on September 10, broadcast by ABC. A barge slammed into the Pelican Island Causeway in Galveston, Texas, causing a partial collapse and spilling oil in the bay below.

Dispatches

Atlantic Intelligence: This week, Google and OpenAI announced competing visions for the future of generative AI, Matteo Wong writes.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Photo-illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Alamy.

The New Workplace Power Symbols

By Michael Waters

If you walked into an office building during the second half of the 20th century, you could probably figure out who had power with a single glance: Just look for the person in the corner office. The corner offices of yore were big, with large windows offering city views and constant streams of light, plus unbeatable levels of privacy. Everyone wanted them, but only those at the top got them. Land in one, and you’d know you’d made it.

Fast-forward to today, and that emblem of corporate success is dying off. The number of private offices along the side of a building, a category that includes those in the corner, has shrunk by about half since 2021, according to the real-estate company CBRE. But today’s workplace transformation goes beyond the corner.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

What Alice Munro has left us The horseshoe theory of Google Search The eight dynamics that will shape the election

Culture Break

Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty

Look. The dogs at the 148th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show made a big splash. Check out the images from this year’s competition.

Read. “Tapering,” a poem by Jane Huffman:

“I’m tapering / the doctor says–– // It might feel / like you can hear / your eyes moving––”

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

For the past few months, it wasn’t exactly clear whether President Biden and Trump would meet on the debate stage before November. (Some, including The Atlantic’s David Frum, argued that they shouldn’t.) Well, folks, it looks like they’re doing it. The two presidential contenders agreed today to participate in two debates. The agreed-upon rules stipulate that neither event will have a studio audience—a welcome development for viewers who would rather watch a political debate than an episode of Jerry Springer.

— Elaine

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.