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The importance of a good accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 129 of 255 14 December 2010 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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How about a moment of levity in this rather ponderous debate? Many people here are familiar with the Michel Thomas line of self-study language courses. If you go to the website http://www.michelthomas.com, you wouldn't know that the man has been dead for 5 years. Michel (né Moniek (Moshe) Kroskof) was (is) known as language teacher to the stars and has a devoted following here at HTLAL, including, if my memory serves me well, Cainntear. Here is what one of his many celebrity students had to say about the Michel Thomas method:
Woody Allen, New York filmmaker, (as quoted in USA Today and Business Life): "I am a poor student, particularly with languages. I had years of Spanish in school and could never speak a word (but) learning with Michel: it's like a kid who loves baseball and who just knows every ball player, every batting average, and every statistic about the game. They've learned it all effortlessly. It's the same with Michel. You learn a language effortlessly. It is amazing. (He)... had me speaking French and I learned it in a way I've never forgotten, and it was painless. A tremendous experience." One of the most common remarks about the original self-study courses recorded with Michel Thomas himself is his strong central European accent (German-Polish I gather). And this is despite having lived for over 50 years in the United States. I've only listened to Michel Thomas speaking Spanish and French. Needless to say, he does not sound like a native speaker. He is presumably much better in his product for German. Looking at the Michel Thomas story, I can't help but think that much of the debate in this thread is pointless. Here is the great polyglot linguist who has made millions, and probably is still making millions, teaching the world French, Spanish, Italian and German despite that thick accent. Maybe Michel Thomas missed some nuances in all his languages because he did not speak them in a native-like manner, except for German. But that did not seem to hinder his success. Hell, if an accent is good enough for Michel Thomas, it's good enough for me. As a matter of fact, when I listen to the many polyglots that are now crowding Youtube, I've yet to see one that sounds like a native in the foreign languages that I know best, French and Spanish. They do a very credible job, mind you, and that is the point. You don't have to sound like a native to enjoy the experience of speaking a foreign language. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 130 of 255 14 December 2010 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, and I've debated the relative merits of his accent on a number of occasions.
It did hinder him. If you listen to the Italian course, a lot of time is lost to a simple misunderstanding due to his inability to pronounce "won't" as different from "want". He compounded this confusion through inappropriate choice of language -- by using "...would be?" as his prompt, he made the students on the CD think they were supposed to produce the incorrect one. He then dedicates a big chunk of that CD to teaching the difference between "won't" and "want", something which he only identifies as a problem because of his poor accent in English -- he believes they are homophones, but they aren't. When I did Thomas's Spanish course, I was happy with the bad accent because by overpronouncing everything, he forced the learner to note the meaningful distinctions. As I say, getting that right is the first step to getting a good accent in the long run. However, his French course went entirely the opposite way, underpronouncing everything to the point where he was teaching "le" and "la" as identical. Thomas had a fixation with verbs and taught very little other than the verb system (see also lack of noun case in the German course). He did that better than anyone else I've ever heard about, but his poor ability with accent isn't something to aspire to. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 131 of 255 14 December 2010 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think the key word here is 'heavy'.
after coming back from a very international dinner, any discussion about native accent seems totally pointless :). But, if you remember, what got me into debate were claims that not caring about native accent = not caring about vocab/grammar, and 'striving for native accent is the best/the only proper way to learn a language'. The first one is so obviously wrong (because functionality of foreign accent/good everything else is telling us otherwise) and for the second, from what Cainntear wrote I can only conclude that it is an individual thing, works for some people but not necessarily for all. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 132 of 255 15 December 2010 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I know this thread isn't about Michel Thomas, but it seems to me that such a success story seems to prove totally that a perfect accent is not that important after all. What did Michel miss by not having a native-like accent in any of his languages? His pronunciation of "won't" and "want" may have been strange, but I'm sure he didn't misunderstand the distinction. As for overpronouncing Spanish and underpronouncing French, I have no idea what that means. Actually, I chuckle at the thought that thousands of people in the world are learning to speak French or Spanish, among others, with a Polish accent! The key point again, however, is that a native-like accent is nice to have but far from necessary.
Just for laughs, here is what the site http://www.200words-a-day.com/michel-thomas.html has to say about the French course: "Strong Word of Caution about the Michel Thomas French Audio CD Language Course Severe Language Health Warning! For the Michel Thomas French audio course I do also add a very strong word of caution. Despite Michel studying at the Sorbonne University in Paris, and his ability to speak French, his accent is definitely NOT the accent any French student should be attempting to adopt. According to Wikipedia Mr Thomas was Polish and spent some of his youth in Germany, going to France in his twenties. This comes clearly through in his accent. Michel Thomas speaks French with a Polish accent (with possibly some German into the mix - but I don't know). And not just a hint of an accent. Like his strong personality the Polish accent emerges strongly with his French. So if you want to speak French with a Polish/German accent then use Michel Thomas's accent. It would be like learning English with a Polish/English accent. Would you want this? If a friend of yours was learning English would you get him to practise his/her accent with a teacher with a heavy Polish accent? When most courses out there use native speakers!? What is somewhat disconcerting is that nowhere on the Michel Thomas French CD, nowhere on the packaging, nowhere in the audio course does Michel or his publishers make this clear. Nowhere does he state "Look I speak French but I am not a native speaker…" And on the course I listened to there was no native speaker to back him up, or to put the students on the right track." 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 133 of 255 15 December 2010 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
But Thomas didn't just have a heavy accent when speaking English, he also had an unnatural turn of phrase which came through on the CDs*, and part of what Arekkusu and me have been saying all along is that you're more likely to notice your errors if your pronunciation is correct. Language is a complex system -- everything you understand easily helps you understand other, more difficult things. The clearer you understand the sounds, the clearer you hear the words; this is turn makes it easier to notice the exact words used and learn phrases correctly. So my point is that, yes, "native-like accent is nice to have but far from necessary", but only in the same way that native-like grammar and command of vocabulary is nice to have but far from necessary. Good accent helps you learn grammar and vocabulary, and it takes less effort than you think. It certainly pays for itself in the long run. * This did initially make me quite wary about the courses, because I assumed that he would be making similar errors in the target languages, but I quickly became satisfied that as he was sticking to the basic units of grammar, and not aiming at phrases, this wasn't a problem. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 134 of 255 15 December 2010 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
I actually agree with this. Now that the native-like accent necessity red herring is out of the way, we can probably all agree that a good accent is important. My gosh, all this arguing to arrive at this conclusion! It seems to me that we are right back where we started from. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 135 of 255 15 December 2010 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
I wouldn't underestimate the number of things we've each learned just from this debate, whether we realize it now or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 136 of 255 15 December 2010 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, Cristina's original question was "How important is a good accent for your perception of language skills?", I answered along those lines (I only take an accentless diction is an immediate sign of proficiency, while accents native or not set me to wait for more input) and so I expected more light answers, nearly no discussion and certainly not conclusions ;) However, very interesting insights of learning processes, perception, sound systems and memorization have been brought to the spotlight in interesting fashions and that's always a good thing. Bookmarked for future reference - thank you all :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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