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Natural Accent Talent: The magic of Urdu? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| pakiboy Newbie United States Joined 5644 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English | Message 1 of 8 08 June 2009 at 5:00am | IP Logged |
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Dear Professor Arguelles,
I hope you are doing well. I have posted this same topic in another forum but I want to get some feedback from you apropos what I have written below. My main question is: Does native language play an important part in acquiring correct pronunciation and formulating native accent? Since childhood, my family, teachers and friends have always appraised me of having an American accent (I am from Pakistan.) At that time I was small and didn't realize this. It was not until recently that I discovered that I do have a natural accent talent. However, having natural accent talent does not equate to fluency. I am not that fluent in English but yet I can formulate a fairly good combination of British and American accent. (Yes I do pronounce some words in British and the rest in American which always perplex ppl... and I don't know how I developed that.) Anyways, I can pretty much formulate accent for any language I have ever heard... ranging from French to Arabic to Chinese. Here might be the reason why: I wonder if its due to my native language Urdu which is the only language in the world that contains all the sounds of any language in the world... from the French "r"... to the Arabic "ain".... to the Spanish "rr" ... you name it! What really surprised me is the fact that despite studying years of any language...most ppl fail to identify the correct sounds of the language. For instance, I have heard a lot of Americans speaking Spanish.. and what I found in all most all cases is that they confuse the Spanish "d" with English "d" and pronounce it like English "d" where in fact it should be pronounced like "th" as in English "the". I also had the opportunity to take French classes at an American university and what perplexed me was that our professor didn't distinguish between the different sounds of the letter "t". In most cases, French "t" is pronounced as English "t" as in "to" but from the native conversations I have heard ... I did find a lot of instances where "t" was pronounced as the Spanish "t". To make matters worst... there was no instruction on pronunciation WHATSOEVER!!! Moreover, in India where Hindi is the primary language ... students learning "French" are taught to pronounce "r" as like English "r" which is ABSOLUTELY INCORRECT!. French "r" is akin to Arabic "khe" and "ghen"... The reason is that Hindi does not have this sound at all! whilst Urdu does. I will appreciate your response Prof. Arguelles. Edited by pakiboy on 08 June 2009 at 5:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kimchicurry Super Polyglot Newbie United States Joined 5984 days ago 12 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English, Cantonese*, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Spanish, Nepali, Urdu, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Kannada, Gujarati Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (Egyptian), Sinhalese, Swahili, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (Written), French, Persian, Bengali, Malay | Message 2 of 8 11 June 2009 at 12:05pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, from my personal experience, it helps to have knowledge of a language which distinguishes a large number of different sounds when learning new languages, since there will be a higher chance that the sounds you are already capable of producing will be in the language you are trying to learn. However, knowledge of a language with comparatively few sounds isn't the end of the world, it just means that you will need to have more training in linguistics to catch up. Conversely, speakers of South Asian languages will still have their own hurdles to get over. Not even Urdu with its dozens of consonants can claim to have every sound in the world; some languages of the Caucasus have upwards of 60 contrasting consonants, many of which are not present in Urdu. Khoisan languages of southwestern Africa can have even more, including click consonants (which can cluster with other consonants as well). One example of a sound that is missing from Urdu/Hindi/Gujarati/etc. I can give from my personal experience is "ng," it's hard for them to pronounce the velar nasal "ng" without inserting a quick g after it, or at the beginning of word. For example, in Gujarati-accented English, "finger" and "singer" would rhyme, although STANDARD English (both American and British apparently) pronounced the two differently (I think NY or some other northeastern accent rhymes them though). Also my Gujarati friend couldn't pronounce the initial consonant in Cantonese "nga" (meaning tooth). Nevertheless, it's okay to have some accent anyway, in most areas of the world where people aren't too xenophobic.
By the way, I am quite envious of speakers of South Asian languages, especially the ones with many consonants, such as Urdu or Gujarati. As I started studying Hindi and Gujarati, I realized that the dental/retroflex distinction is really something special, and it is very hard to develop a good ear for that, particularly for myself, since I speak Cantonese and Mandarin, which are phonologically quite different from South Asian languages. In fact, the last English sound I learned to make reliably was the voiced "th" in words such as 'then,' which I used to pronounce as 'den." So there will always be certain sounds present in other languages but not in your native language, since no language can have EVERY single sound. Cantonese didn't equip me to perceive the dental/retroflex distinction like Indo-Aryan or Dravidian languages could have, but it prepared me with a good sense of pitch and tones, which was useful for me in learning Japanese, since the pitch accent is not taught with words and must be learned by ear if one wants to imitate the proper accent. Japanese appears to be a very simple language to pronounce for most people, especially when you compare its consonant inventory to a language like Hindi/Urdu, but it usually takes a long time for English-speaking Americans to get over their American accent not due to consonants or vowels, but more so due to the pitch accent, which for whatever reason, Japanese teachers do not acknowledge when teaching Japanese, possibly to avoid scaring the students. I agree that linguistic training regarding phonetics and phonology is severely lacking in most language teaching nowadays. This is something which really needs to be addressed in current language courses, if they are serious about equipping students with accurate pronunciation. Of course, some people are simply more gifted in imitating accents, such as the topic starter, but for most laypeople like me, a linguistic description of the language's phonology is necessary in the language learning process. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Budz Octoglot Senior Member Australia languagepump.com Joined 6362 days ago 118 posts - 171 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Russian, Esperanto, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Cantonese, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Persian, Hungarian, Kazakh, Swahili, Vietnamese, Polish | Message 3 of 8 12 June 2009 at 12:17pm | IP Logged |
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In any case we're talking about one individual. It's rather simplistic that to presume that the good pronunciation of one individual is because of his native tongue. In statistical terms this is called 'a small sample space'. No wonder the professor hasn't bothered commenting.
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 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6883 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 8 21 June 2009 at 4:35am | IP Logged |
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Well, good for you if you have a special talent for accents. I for one am happy for you and even envy you a little, and I wouldn't be surprised if many other forum members felt the same.
Now, can your talent be explained by the fact that your native language includes an above-average number of sounds? Personally I can see at least a couple of problems with such an assumption: First, being able to produce the correct sounds is only a minor part of the elements that make up an "accent". Rhythm, tone and stress patterns (prosody) is the biggest issue in this, it's the part that is usually hardest to get right, and that will give away a foreign speaker ten times out of ten no matter how accurate their sounds (phonemes) are. In fact, you can easily get away with an imperfection or two in the actual sounds, and still sound native, if rhytm, tone and stress patterns sound right and natural. This is why even fairly serious cases of speech impediment in natives are very rarely mistaken for a foreign accent. So, having all the sounds might help just a little, but not a great deal, and it will certainly not give you an accent for free. The other question: Do a majority of native Urdu speakers also have exceptional talent for accents? If the number of native sounds is a key issue, they should all be in the same position as yourself, and we could expect a similar level of talent in all of them. If this is not the case, then you can strike the many-native-sounds theory off the list right away and start looking for other reasons. Still, the main thing is that you have this talent. I would have thought that concentrating on making good use of this special gift of yours is more important than trying to explain it. Edited by Hencke on 21 June 2009 at 4:38am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Duffie Diglot Newbie United States connect-languag Joined 6632 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 8 22 June 2009 at 6:38am | IP Logged |
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In few words, I would have to say no from personal experience. My native language is (American) English and I excel at accents in Spanish, Japanese and Norwegian. My German accent? Terrible. I think it's all about the speaker's ability to acquire the phonemes, not what phonemes they already know.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kimchicurry Super Polyglot Newbie United States Joined 5984 days ago 12 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English, Cantonese*, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Spanish, Nepali, Urdu, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Kannada, Gujarati Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (Egyptian), Sinhalese, Swahili, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (Written), French, Persian, Bengali, Malay | Message 6 of 8 23 June 2009 at 12:49pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, the individual is very important as a factor in learning accents. However, for certain sounds for certain speakers, I am inclined to suspect that the native languages and other languages the speaker has been exposed to will offer a certain advantage in learning certain other languages. HOWEVER, this is something that one must be very careful in judging, and I don't believe it's possible for a non-native speaker to be able to judge whether his or her own accent is accurate (enough).
One example I can give would be the dental and retroflex consonants of South Asia. For those who have not yet studied a language which makes this distinction in plosives (most Indo-Aryan languages, all Dravidian languages, Pashto, etc.), I personally find it to be very difficult not to pronounce (that part is very straightforward), but to aurally distinguish). This is because in English and many other languages, these two sounds are ingrained into the brain as allophones. However, one study has showed native Japanese speakers to outdo native English speakers in the identification of dental and retroflex consonants by a significant margin. Here is a link to the study: http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=n ormal&id=JASMAN000119000003001684000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=ye s Now, I'm not saying in any way that Japanese is a "better" language than English, all I'm trying to say is that simply by being a native Japanese speaker, the learner was able to outdo a native English speaker in recognizing dental and retroflex consonants. Of course, the study isn't totally comprehensive, and I'm not sure why they didn't extend the study to include Hindi's retroflex and alveolar flaps (which probably would have confused the Japanese), but it just shows how while of course the individual is important, knowing a language which distinguishes two consonants phonemically will help one distinguish those two consonants in another language where they are allophones of each other, and PART (not all) of the process of accent formation. It's also really hard to apply this across the board to all speakers of a language, unfortunately, because not everyone is at the same level of language learning (the topic creator seems to be at a very fluent level of English, whereas other Urdu speakers may only have learned at school, and would accordingly have had less exposure to NATIVE English speakers). That's why the best thing to do is find extremely high quality linguistic descriptions for the dialect of the language you're trying to learn, or simply look for a native speaker. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ashley_Victrola Senior Member United States Joined 5695 days ago 416 posts - 429 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Romanian | Message 7 of 8 24 June 2009 at 1:24pm | IP Logged |
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Yeah, you said all of your family, teachers, and friends have complimented your great American accent. I assume that at least your family's native language is Urdu. If that really had anything to do with accent, wouldn't your family's American accents all be great?
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| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6883 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 8 30 June 2009 at 9:29am | IP Logged |
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It's amazing how persistent some myths can be. Such as trying to discuss accents and building up the whole analysis around the minor issue of phoneme ability. Edited by Hencke on 30 June 2009 at 9:30am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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