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Valerie Friedland is a linguist.

She's an expert on accents.

And in her new book, she says,

What provides a sense of belonging in every human society is the way we sound.

So when that sound changes or no longer matches the world around us,

that's when we feel its power most clearly.

Friedland was raised surrounded by one of the most recognizable accents in America, but for the longest time, she didn't hear it.

I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, definitely an accented place that was aware of its accent.

All my formative accent years were there.

And I didn't notice that my parents sounded different.

I was so acclimated to their accent, which was French, that I had no idea they had an accent. But what would happen is kids would come play at my house. And the first thing they always said, the minute my mother

opened her mouth to offer them something was, oh my gosh, why does your mom sound like that?

And that was my first realization that my parents sounded funny.

Like they didn't sound like me.

I couldn't hear it because I had been trained in their accent as well as the ones of my friends.

But it was a really striking revelation at a very young age that sounds mean something.

They mean something social and they can set us apart or make us feel like we're part of

something depending on the perspective of who's noticing.

But then I left to go to Georgetown for college.

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