There are no permanent residents in Antarctica, only scientists and occasional tourists. But a recent study suggests that some visitors to the icy continent may pick up a local accent. Researchers at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, in Germany, tracked the speech of scientists from various countries working together in Antarctica. For six months, the group lived cut off from the world, interacting only with each other. Every few weeks, the scientists recorded themselves saying the same 29 English words, and over time, their pronunciations subtly shifted to sound more like each other’s. Accents naturally develop when people live in close contact with each other in isolation, says lead researcher Jonathan Harrington. This helps explain why people from different regions—such as Americans and Brits—pronounce words differently. “We remember the sounds and words of a conversation,” Harrington says. “These can have a small influence on the future way that we speak.”