Antarctic English

Antarctic English is a variety of the English language spoken by people living on the continent of Antarctica and within the subantarctic islands.[1]: vii  Spoken primarily by scientists and workers in the Antarctic tourism industry,[2] it consists of various unique words and is spoken with a unique accent. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Antarctic English was influenced by Spanish-speaking South Americans and Northern European explorers who introduced new words that continue to be used today.

Antarctic English
RegionAntarctica
Early forms
Latin (English alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
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History

In 1989, Australian writer Bernadette Hince travelled to Antarctica in order to study the vocabulary of scientists working there. She wrote about a variety of unique words that originated on the continent and were not used anywhere else on earth. In 2000, she published the Antarctic Dictionary, a book detailing the words found in the dialect.[2]

An Antarctic accent was first studied in 2019 by the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, in a study in which researchers observed changes in the vocal phonetics of scientists over the course of a winter period in Antarctica. They observed a change in vowel pronunciation in the scientists, and the vowels in words such as "food" and "window" began being pronounced in a more fronted position of the mouth than in other English varieties.[3][4][5][6]

Vocabulary

Antarctic English features various words that are not used in other varieties of English. Differences in vocabulary include:

British English Antarctic English
Sleeping chamber Donga[2]
Antarctica The Ice[2]
Homebrew beer Homer[2]
Insomnia Big Eye[2]

Antarctic English also has over 200 words for different types of ice. Words include tabulars (large flat-topped southern icebergs that break off from the Antarctic ice sheet and are usually over ten miles long), and growlers (underwater decaying icebergs roughly the size of a house).[2] In addition, the tourism industry has terms for different types of tourist encounters, such as Kodak poisoning (what happens when many tourists take photographs of the same site) and Dead-Penguin Tours (a type of tour in the late summer after penguins have abandoned weak chicks to die, leaving their bodies in popular tourist destinations, which causes grief in tourists).[2]

Influences from other languages

Antarctic English has been influenced by both Spanish and various Northern European languages.[1]: vii–viii  In the Falkland Islands, Antarctic English has been influenced by Spanish-speaking South Americans, such as with the word camp, which originates from the Spanish campo and refers to the countryside outside of a town.[1]: vii  During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Northern European industrialists interested in whaling and the fur trade introduced various technical words like the Norwegian-origin grax, which describes the leftover solids at the end of the whaling process.[1]: viii  Other words introduced by these Europeans during the 19th and 20th centuries included nunatak, mukluk, pemmican, and Nansen sled,[1]: viii  which they in turn adopted from various indigenous American languages.

Influence

Antarctic English has also influenced other varieties of English and a number of Arctic English terms were first adopted in Antarctica (particularly terms relating to ice).[1]: viii 

References
  1. Hince, Bernadette (2000). "Introduction". The Antarctic Dictionary: A Complete Guide to Antarctic English. Collingwood, Victoria: CSIRO Publishing. pp. vii–x. ISBN 978-0957747111.
  2. Brooks, Geraldine (1997-07-01). "A Volume on Antarctic Lingo Will Make Slang Crystal Clear". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  3. Bard, Susanne. "Linguists Hear an Accent Begin". Scientific American. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  4. "Phonetic change in an Antarctic winter". pubs.aip.org. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  5. "Prolonged Isolation Can Lead to the Creation of New Accents". Atlas Obscura. 2020-04-20. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  6. University of Canterbury Antarctic Conference, Southern Exposure: Antarctic Research at the University of Canterbury
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