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"Perfect Pronunciation" | ||
Tags: Greek | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 131 01 December 2007 at 5:45am | IP Logged | |||||
She's clearly fluent, and has a good grasp of idiom, but she does have what sounds to me like a clearly non-native accent as well. Her language skills are clearly excellent, and it would be interesting to know in more detail how she achieved her current level, but she doesn't exemplify the particular skill I started this thread to ask about: that is, she doesn't have a native pronunciation of English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6901 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 10 of 131 01 December 2007 at 6:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've met two people with a clearly huge talent to foreign accents. One is bilingual German-Turkish, and she was able to repeat Polish words, sentences and even tongue twisters without foreign accent, although she doesn't speak Polish at all. Unfortunately I haven't heard her speaking a foreign language. The other one is native Russian/Kazakh, and she speaks English and German with no foreign accent (the natives claimed so). When I met her, she had been learning German for two or three years, through immersion.
What's important, both are musically talented, both study/studied singing at the academy of music, both are bilingual. I guess without an ear for music you just can't learn the perfect pronunciation, no matter how long you're exercising, shadowing, being immersed etc. 1 person has 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 11 of 131 01 December 2007 at 6:11am | IP Logged | |||||
Interesting theory. That said, most children manage, regardless of musical talent, and I know a number of musically talented people who don't. My Italian accent can legitimately be regarded as somewhere between 'bad' and 'terrible', despite the fact that I've been involved with music (singing and playing instruments) since I was 3 years old. Edit: I should perhaps mention that I'm not actively and regularly involved in music at this stage of my life; but I still was when I started learning Italian. Edited by Volte on 01 December 2007 at 6:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gilgamesh Tetraglot Senior Member England Joined 6240 days ago 452 posts - 468 votes 14 sounds Speaks: Dutch, English, German, French Studies: Polish | Message 12 of 131 01 December 2007 at 6:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's interesting you should write about this because I had the thought of uploading a few sound clips onto this page. However, I can't seem to get them converted to MP3 because I recorded them with a mobile phone and it's some other (weird) format I never heard of before. I can, however, send them by mail to whom is interested.
I don't like to toot my own horn or anything, I just want to contribute to the discussion in this 'active' way of participation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6901 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 13 of 131 01 December 2007 at 6:39am | IP Logged | |||||
It's more a shy hypothesis than any theory :). Most children manage because, as many scientists claim, it's easy to learn pronunciation until some age. About the music issue: I think it's not exactly about being involved in music or being able or not to play an instrument or sing, it's more about how good ear for music we have (people with absolute pitch would probably learn pronunciation easier than others), if you can play by ear etc. And of course it's still not enough, you need much contact with the target language, preferably immersion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sulis Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6449 days ago 60 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 14 of 131 01 December 2007 at 7:28am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes - her accent is extremely good, but it is clear that English is not her native language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6892 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 131 01 December 2007 at 7:36am | IP Logged | |||||
No no, I absolutely refuse to believe that. It would mean I have no chance at all. I do believe someone with musical talent can have an easier time getting there. The rest of us, who are hopeless at music, just have to work a little harder. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6384 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 16 of 131 01 December 2007 at 10:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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Allow me to auto-plagiarize something I wrote some time ago with a different purpose... In the context of this
forum it's stating the obvious in many places but I have no passion for re-editing it... ========= Pronunciation is traditionally the most underestimated component of the language study yet a very important one. Professional linguists carried out tests where the same texts containing a number of grammatical errors were recorded by several groups of people, ranging from native speakers to foreign learners with varying degrees of accent. The results clearly showed that native listeners tend not to hear many grammar mistakes when the text is recorded with excellent pronunciation. Similarly, when the same text is read with a bad pronunciation, native speakers pick out all grammar mistakes and even claim to hear additional ones. A common strategy for learners of any language is to stop working on their pronunciation once they have attained a certain point where they are satisifed with how they pronounce things. Typically, as soon as they can make themselves comfortably understood, other aspects of the language study take priority and the accent remains forever. Another fact is that the absolute majority of learners have no idea about phonetics and how sounds are formed (on the conscious level) and no 'good ear' that allows them to absorb the same info on the subconscious level. And no 'trained' tongue that allows them either to imitate what they hear or to produce what they have consciously know they have to produce. Most learners (unless they have been given formal training in phonetics) do not seem to pay any attention to the fact that even the most basic sounds differ from language to language, with very few absolute equivalents. They tend to concentrate only on the 'missing sounds', such as the English [th] for the continental learners of English, or the ostensibly different sounds, such as the French [r] or the Russian [ы]. Yet the English [t] is different from the American [t] which in turn has nothing in common with the German, French, Italian or Russian [t], which are much closer but are all different amongst themselves, too. The same applies to [s], [k], [m], etc. The same applies to the vowels. Once most learners have mastered the 'missing' or the 'ostensibly different' sounds, it is the most basic sounds - i.e., the ones they have paid NO attention to - that account for the largest part of their accent. Take any foreigner who speaks English and listen to them carefully: their [th] may be perfect but their vowels and most consonants will be all over the place - these will be the vowels and consonants of their native tongue. (In fact, it is one of the greatest strategies for picking up the pronunciation of your target language - listen to how natives speakers of that language distort your own native tongue and learn to imitate the sounds they are making.) Most textbooks for written for the general public (as opposed to specialised editions concentrating on phonetical issues) propagate most horrible lies for the sake of practicality and simplicity: they will tell you that the Japanese or the French {p} sounds like the English {p} in 'prawn' or some similar nonsense. Micro-differences in intensity, tone, volume, attack, lip and tongue position are IGNORED. Those learners whose own phonetic listening and imitation skills are short of excellent will NEVER pick up on those differences by their own will and as a result will always retain some accent. Having said that, some languages are closer phonetically to each other than others. The German or the Russian base, for example, is an excellent starting point for a mastery of French or Italian, or Japanese, whereas Swedish or Dutch, for example, are disadvantaged by the lack of some properly voiced consonants. But the most peculiar European language - phonetically - is English. It is relatively easy to find a German who speaks accentless French or Italian. Or a Flemish person who speaks accentless Russian. Yet it is very uncommon to find learners who manage to speak English without any trace of an accent as a result of their adult studies. For exactly the same reason, it is highly uncommon to find English native speakers who manage to lose their accent completely in any other language as a result of their adult studies. This is often portrayed as lack of talent but in fact has nothing to do with it. It is just that the English base is extremely remote from that of most other languages. Etc., etc... ========= As for real life stories, I have come across 3 people with perfect pitches for accents. One is a good old friend of mine who started off as a professional linguist but since then moved on to other things; he's a very advanced user of 3-4 languages in his current job and utterly uninterested in picking up any others. Another one is an English actress I was going out with a couple of years ago. She only spoke English but could imitate almost any kind of speech in an almost immaculate way, phonetically. (I even started teaching her Italian as I felt that talent was going to waste.) The third and the most amazing one was a French driver who spoke perfect Parisian French, perfect Randstad Dutch and perfect British English, from having lived in the last two countries in his adult life. I can't explain any of the above or speculate about the 'techniques' they may have been using. In contrast, one of my friends has been going to some very specialised and highly acclaimed English pronunciation courses in London, for many months. Without any noticeable change in his accent. Edited by furyou_gaijin on 01 December 2007 at 10:12am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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