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Contentment with Speech Speed | ||
Tags: Language Level Satisfaction | Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4292 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 1 of 15 02 February 2015 at 8:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I am not sure if I am starting to forget how to speak English, but it took me about 10
minutes to think about how to make the title. I meant what is the point when one can be content with the speed of one's speech in one of their target languages. For example, the language at the fastest speed where I can speak is my best language, Spanish, fast in terms of I can match natives in terms of speed when they speak at full speed if needed. I can even if I try hard speak faster than is necessary, like this man in an episode of Aquí no hay quien viva. No one speaks this fast on a regular basis in any language, but if I wanted to speed up like that I could. I remember one time when I wanted to go to the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid few years ago, I went into a taxi and chatted with the driver and he told me a few times to slow down because I was under an impression to go at full speed of speech as possible. Unlikewise howerver, I cannot do this in my languages with lesser skills, like Norwegian or Italian. That is, I speak slower, or at least if I try to speak at native speed, I might tongue twist myself and the whole thing might sound like complete gibberish and I could end up sounding like a fool. Is it fine to be content with having to speak at a slower speed? I have heard non-natives speaking my native English, and those who speak a a very slow speed give the impression of holding up the conversation (although native Anglophones almost never switch to their languages in these cases), or it can lower the quality overall of the speech because whatever it said is taking too long to be said. So I am not sure if whatever skills I have in my lesser languages gets lowered or sounds worse to natives because I take a bit more time than a non-native (or at least someone with a higher level). As in I am not sure if speaking at full speed should be placed on high priority regardless of level, so that whatever it is said, even if it is basic, is spoken at a speed such that natives do not think to themselves, "Come on, hurry up" because the non-native interlocutor takes too long to speak. Edited by 1e4e6 on 02 February 2015 at 9:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5310 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 2 of 15 02 February 2015 at 10:00am | IP Logged | ||
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As with most things in life, I aim at being at least as good as most people are, and I use these videos as reference: Recordings of language exams.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 15 02 February 2015 at 10:12am | IP Logged | ||
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I often have the opposite problem of trying to speak too fast: I'm with a group of native speakers and I feel under pressure to "keep up", not slow the conversation down, and show that I'm capable. But then I usually just end up going faster than I can really handle so I make more mistakes with grammar and pronunciation, so actually I'm better off speaking more slowly and carefully. I think a lot of this pressure to keep up is actually just in my head, and a lot of people are understanding and cut some slack for non-native speakers.
Amongst guitarists there's a saying that "speed is a byproduct of accuracy": if you can do something very accurately at a slower speed it's then easy and natural to speed it up, whereas if you try to go too fast too soon then you lose accuracy. I think this applies to speaking languages too. Also, while many Italians speak quite quickly, many others do speak relatively slowly and clearly, which is something I remind myself if I ever feel a need to go at "native speed". It might be a different case for Spanish and others though! 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 4 of 15 02 February 2015 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with garyb. Speak properly first. Speaking fast doesn't win you brownie points,
it just makes you sloppy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4667 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 5 of 15 02 February 2015 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I speak fairly slowly in English the great majority of the time. So I just do the same in my target languages.
To me maintaining a comfortable and natural-sounding rhythm (pattern of enunciations and pauses) is much more important than matching the speed of my interlocuteur. It's certainly possible to try to go too fast and then keep getting blocked as you talk yourself into awkward phrasings that are difficult to get out of, and which could have been avoided if you took your time. I know because it's happened to me! Besides, any language has at least some "leisurely" native speakers, even ones like Spanish that are notorious for speed. :-) Edited by tastyonions on 02 February 2015 at 3:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 15 02 February 2015 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Were they simply speaking slowly though, or also stumbling and noticeably struggling, hesitating and sounding uncomfortable? I'm sure that if their slow speech still sounded natural, you'd not have paid much attention. I personally admire those that sound calm and confident when speaking slowly. I tend to try to speak as fast as I think, but that's nearly impossible to keep up with :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| holly heels Groupie United States Joined 3888 days ago 47 posts - 107 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 15 02 February 2015 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Speech speed is only an issue for me because of my striving to sound like a native speaker. Not for pride reasons, I just feel that sounding more like a native conveys confidence and competence in the target language.
I have found that the faster I speak, within reason, even at the expense of flubbing or mispronouncing the tones sometimes, the closer I come to native like speech. The more conscious of the tones that I am, the less convincing I sound. The two best examples of non-Asians who could pass as Mandarin native speakers, at least on the phone, are Sandra from England and Ewa from Poland on the show "WTO", a Taiwan Mandarin game show. They speak at warp speed but that is probably why they are superior to the other non-Asians. It seems obvious also but if the learner is not familiar with the subject or doesn't have the vocab, it doesn't matter how slowly the other person speaks, it's still an exercise in futility. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4292 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 8 of 15 03 February 2015 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||
When I hear people speak slowly in English, it usually sounds like, for example when I talk with a new Hispanphone the other day, "I...enjoy...eh...go...disco..nightclub...but pub too, is...fun", which probably is already 10 seconds to form that sentence. The grammar has problems, but it sounds even worse because it took so much time to form a sentence, which diminishes whatever good that was already there. In fact the person was delighted to switch to Spanish after I heard the accent and offered after hearing that. So I imagine that I might sound the same if I spoke like that in a target language. However, I did remember that there was some study that was done that showed that Spanish and Japanese were the world's fastest languages in terms of word per unit time as in, Hispanophones speak more words in Spanish per unit time than an Anglophone speaks English words per unit time. Then some languages do have natives who speak faster in their languages than other natives that speak in their respective native languages. But then with Spanish, if one wants to sound better or native, one has to speak more quickly than most other languages, and with English or German, for example, speaking slower is less of a problem. But speaking much slower than normal in any language migth give it away. An example of a non-native who speaks at not exactly what I would say average native speed, but sufficient enough to not derail the conversation, here is an interview of one of my old acquaintances. Edited by 1e4e6 on 03 February 2015 at 9:33am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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