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Timeline to developing an accent | ||
Tags: Accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5217 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 1 of 100 22 March 2014 at 8:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I had an interesting conversation over a bottle of wine the evening before last in a hotel in Granada, Spain.
An older German man had moved to Cork, Ireland some 6 years ago: as the conversation was in English to accommodate other people I could detect both German and Irish influences in his accent: the Irish accent was most obvious in the colloquial language he used. My question is whether you actively seek a native accent: or are you content to have your own accent in the mix? or do you have a special register where you put on a better accent? If you do how do you do it and how long does it take to rid yourself of your own accent without the use of a professional voice coach? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 100 22 March 2014 at 9:35am | IP Logged | ||
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I first seek an understandable, good accent that approximates a native's (but doesn't
have to be 100% spot-on) which doesn't throw off a native when hearing me speak. Once I get to a level where I can speak reasonably well, I polish the accent. In no language except for English have I attained that perfection, though. And English is a language I learned in childhood. Edited by tarvos on 22 March 2014 at 9:35am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 100 22 March 2014 at 9:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I actively seek out a native accent, simply because it is the only thing that makes sense to me. Why would I
deliberately choose to hang on to traits of my native language when it will be easier to understand me if I try to copy a native one? I do however find that accents are harder to pull off the older you get. As a kid it was a piece of cake. Now it is hard. I have never spent any time on learning accents, other than copying what I hear as closely as I can. I am always puzzled by people who say they do not want to spend the extra time on learning an accent. What extra time? It is all part of the process. As a kid I guess it took about 6 months of immersion to get rid of the accent, now it would take considerably longer - if I could do it at all. A special case is English. If I had spent time in a particular place in England or in the US early on, I would probably have been able to get a great accent. As it is, it is good, but not great. Listening to so many different variants of English, it easily becomes a mix of all of them. If I were to get my English accent up to a native level now I would have had to use a voice coach. And even then I do not think I could be guaranteed a perfect result. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4306 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 4 of 100 22 March 2014 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||
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I like this Stuart Jay Raj video - he says that a good accent is like music. As I
interpret it, you must use the correct scales (register), hit the right notes (the phonemes) and, more importantly, you have to have the right sort of holistic energy and rhythm (intonation). I´m still learning the scales in Spanish and in German I can play some well known tunes, but without any real flair or improvisation. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=H0bPyKwNBVc 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 100 22 March 2014 at 11:44am | IP Logged | ||
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English is a bit of a special case regardless, Solfrid. I know plenty of people who natively speak English, but have mixed accents from having lived in various places, both within a country (an Alabama accent isn't much like a New York one; a Yorkshire accent isn't much like a London one) and between countries (see: a large chunk of anglophones who migrate intercontinentally). And it can be pretty hard to hear the difference between, say, an American whose speech has been modified by a lot of exposure to Standard Southern English and a Norwegian who's listened to a lot of American and British TV, as long as they don't have really heavy Norwegian traces in their accent.
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| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5907 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 100 22 March 2014 at 11:55am | IP Logged | ||
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On the spectrum from heavy accents to perfectly native, I'd prefer to be as close to the latter as possible... But for me, at this point, the main thing is that ideally I want people to focus only on what I'm saying, not what I sound like. I want my accent to be irrelevant. So when I practice speaking, I try to speak as well as I can, and try to improve when I notice that I sound off, but I'm not going to be a perfectionist about it by trying to weed out every last trace of my origins. Too much work for too little extra benefit.
I guess it would be fun to eventually be able to fool Japanese people on the phone, but not at all necessary, and I like the idea of being able to play the foreigner card so I'm not expected to understand every little cultural thing. People have different expectations for native speakers vs foreign learners. It will be blatantly obvious to anyone that sees my face that I'm not Japanese anyway, so it's not a big deal if I don't sound exactly like one. But close. Close enough that my speaking doesn't bother anyone. Liz 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 7 of 100 22 March 2014 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm happy to leave parts of my own accent in the mix. Native speakers in real life don't care about accents as long as they can understand you without difficulty. I do aim for good pronunciation but I would never actively try to copy the cadence of a native speaker. That's for actors. Besides, my native language, English, already has a multitude of accents among native speakers. If I moved to Cork I wouldn't try and ramp up the "oirish", why would I do that? Edited by beano on 22 March 2014 at 1:02pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5217 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 8 of 100 22 March 2014 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | ||
Oh he'd 'ramped up' Oirish in certain set phrases(!) but in his less affected moments still had some evidence that he'd just absorbed the local speech patterns. I first learned Spanish (properly) from Michel Thomas and I had an abysmal accent: a native madrileña I used for a few months as a tutor hammered the worst of it out of me - or so people say. I worked with Barcelones for a while and my Spanish was all over the place - accent, rhythm, dropping 's. I used to be a good mimic but I've not got a consistent frame of reference so things are going to be a bit up and down - I get the message across - plus the company has just employed a number of Spanish people so I'll get some production practice. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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