Antarctic English is a variety of theEnglish language spoken by people living on the continent ofAntarctica and within thesubantarctic islands.^[1]: vii Spoken primarily byscientists and workers in theAntarctic tourism industry,^[2] it consists of various unique words and is spoken with a uniqueaccent. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Antarctic English was influenced by Spanish-speakingSouth Americans andNorthern European explorers who introduced new words that continue to be used today.

An Antarctic accent was first reported in 2019 in theJournal of the Acoustical Society of America, in a study in which researchers observed changes in the vocal phonetics of scientists over the course of a winter period in Antarctica. They observed a change in vowel pronunciation in the scientists, and vowels such as that in "food" and the second in "window" began being pronounced in a more fronted position of the mouth than in other English varieties.^[3] The changes are very slight; the lead researcher said "You can't hear the differences very well because they are so small, but you can measure them."

In 1989, Australian writer Bernadette Hince travelled to Antarctica in order to study the vocabulary of scientists working there. She wrote about a variety of unique words that originated on the continent and were not used anywhere else. In 2000, she published theAntarctic Dictionary.

Antarctic English features various words that are different from other varieties of English. Occurrences of new vocabulary include:

Antarctic English also has over 200 words for different types of ice. Words includetabulars (large flat-topped southern icebergs that break off from the Antarctic ice sheet and are usually over 16 km or 10 mi long), andgrowlers (underwater decaying icebergs roughly the size of a house).

The tourism industry has terms for different types of tourist encounters, such asKodak poisoning (what happens when many tourists take photographs of the same site) andDead-Penguin Tours (a type of tour in the late summer after penguins have abandoned weak chicks to die, leaving their bodies in popular tourist destinations, which causes grief in tourists).^[2]

Antarctic English has been influenced by both Spanish and various Northern European languages.^{[1]: vii–viii} In theFalkland Islands, Antarctic English has been influenced by Spanish-speaking South Americans, such as with the wordcamp, which originates from the Spanishcampo and refers to the countryside outside of a town.^[1]: vii During the 18th and 19th centuries, Northern European industrialists interested in whaling and the fur trade introduced various technical words like the Norwegian-origingrax, which describes the leftover solids at the end of thewhaling process.^[1]: viii Other words introduced by these Europeans during the 19th and 20th centuries includednunatak,mukluk,pemmican, andNansen sled,^[1]: viii which they in turn adopted from various indigenous American languages. Some terms in Antarctic English have their origins inmilitary terminology.

Antarctic English has also influenced other varieties of English. Furthermore, a number of English terms were first adopted in Antarctica (particularly terms relating to ice).^[1]: viii

• Linguists Hear an Accent Begin - A podcast
• Exposure: Antarctic Research at the University of Canterbury - Review of the article by Harrington et al
• Phonetic change in an Antarctic winter - A commentary on Harrington et al
• Isolated for six months, scientists in Antarctica began to develop their own accent BBC account of life on a BAS research station in relation to the research by Harrington et al

• Culture of Antarctica
• Dialects of English

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Language articles without speaker estimate
• Language articles without language codes
• Language articles missing Glottolog code