I DIDN’T KNOW THAT...

Q: Why do people have accents?

A: Because of the patterns of speaking learned in their native language, according to “The Language Instinct,” by language maven Steven Pinker. Part of the problem has to do with the normal order of words in a sentence, which varies from language to language. More important, however, are the phonemes, the individual sounds that are combined into words. The group of consonants at the beginning of a syllable--such as “fl” in flit and “thr” in thrive--is called the onset, while the vowel and consonants coming after it are called the rime. In English, certain onsets, such as the “vl” and “sr” in vlit and sring, are impossible, even though they are accepted in other languages. In Japanese, by contrast, an onset can have only a single consonant and a rime must be a bare vowel. Strawberry ice cream thus comes out as sutoroberi aisukurimo. Many people, such as novelist Vladimir Nabokov, are able to learn the rules of English grammar and write brilliantly in English, but are trapped by the speech patterns of their native language and have an impenetrable accent.