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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3793 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 14, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Right, I’m well aware of that, and obviously my comment was intentionally flippant. However, I don’t see anything in Sunak’s phenotype that looks “more British than American” nor vice versa. He’s obviously quite visually distinct from any European-derived person. I wouldn’t consider him one of the Indians who has European or Levantine facial features.

I think he has some hard-to-define Britishness to his look, too.

I've seen some speculate on Twitter that talking a certain languge (a certain accent?) for all of your life will subtly change your facial structure by reworking the musculature of your mouth, making people who grow embedded in some culture from birth on bear this sort of a hard-to-define resemblance through almost invisible subconscious clues, even if their genetics remain distinct.

It's hard to imagine such an effect, if it exists, could be observed between any but significantly phonologically distinct languages. It sounds like a stretch to imagine it could play a role in why some British-English speakers might look different from American-English speakers.

Must be all those hard r's Romney's been slinging that give him that jawline. #cancelmitt

I’m not seeing it at all, and I think any speculation about the effect of accents on facial musculature development is probably pseudoscientific cope.

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