Phonetic accommodation and acquisition of a second dialect: the case of Italian out-of-town university students

This pilot study investigates whether out-of-town university students from Campania accommodate to the Milanese variety of Italian in a controlled phonetic shadowing task. Focusing on mid front vowels ([e]/[ɛ]), the study tests whether pronunciation changes triggered by imitation persist in subsequent speech tasks and generalise to back vowels ([o]/ [ɔ]) not included in the shadowing phase. Four participants were recorded across three experimental sessions, spaced one month apart. Results show some perceptual and acoustic evidence of selective imitation of the Milanese model’s front vowel patterns, but with limited generalisation to back vowels. While no strong diachronic trends emerged, slight shifts were observed in the final reading session. The findings suggest that short-term phonetic accommodation can occur toward a non-native regional variety of the same language, but such adjustments do not straightforwardly influence long-term phonological patterns. The study supports the view of university students as agents of linguistic innovation and lays the groundwork for larger-scale research.