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REAL multi-languages fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Donaldshimoda Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 4089 days ago 47 posts - 72 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Russian | Message 97 of 102 26 September 2014 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
got it!
I'm sorry but when did I say that? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 98 of 102 26 September 2014 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think every learner should at least try to acquire as close to a native accent as they can, but for various reasons
they may not actually adopt this closest-to-native strategy in the long term: 1. As Bao said, being mistaken for a native speaker can be undesirable 2. It's possible to make your accent closer to that of a native speaker while also making it less understandable 3. If you're speaking a language with several major accents (e.g. English), you could end up with a blended accent that serves your purposes better than any of the regional native accents 4. If it's too effortful for you to imitate the native accent, it might not be worth it, considering your foreign accent is just as understandable 5. It's debatable whether this is ever true on a large scale, but certainly individual people you care about might like to hear your foreign accent However, it's usually (not always) a mark of a skilled language learner to have a decently-close-approximation- to-native accent rather than using sounds of L1 to speak L2. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 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 99 of 102 26 September 2014 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That would be me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3855 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 100 of 102 27 September 2014 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I looked back on your posts, and realised that I could have simply been misconstruing what you'd written. In your original post you wrote:
I've bolded the bits that led me to believe that you view a good accent as a marker of fluency. Of course, now I look back, I see that you put 'possibly', but my first impression is what led me to write my post above. If I misunderstood you, I am sorry. I hope you can see why that might have happened. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 4172 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 101 of 102 27 September 2014 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's interesting. It's always the first thing I teach in any class. Mainly because I teach Vietnamese people and they typically have horrible pronunciation. But yeah, it is definitely a difficult thing to teach. It's also a difficult thing to judge whether you've taught effectively, because obviously while their pronunciation might be improving, your ability to listen to them is also improving. I've heard some experts suggest that teaching pronunciation specifically doesn't actually improve pronunciation. I guess like teaching people to sing, you can give the people the techniques to help them improve, but ultimately, if you don't have an ear for it, there's only so much you can do. I'm not sure I agree with that. In my experience, the aspects of pronuncation that are most difficult to improve are the individual sounds. I've had the most success with teaching sentence-based aspects of pronunciation, like stress-timing, intonation, use of the schwa, contractions of common phrases ("Do you want to?" "Are you going to?" etc). But the individual sounds are an absolute nightmare to teach. And it's no surprise that in English at least, it's this aspect that usually identifies someone as a non-native speaker even when they're really fluent. I know English teachers who still say /v/ for /w/ or /i:/ for /I/ for example. But English is quite flexible in the variation, particularly of vowel sounds, that are acceptable, and the variety amongst native accents is quite high anyway. As is demonstrated here. On the main subject, I think the idea that you need to somehow have a native accent to be considered fluent is ridiculous. You get people who talk confidently on extremely complex ideas who happen to have an accent. I wouldn't for one second label them as anything other than fluent. For example. Having said that, it's definitely impressive when someone does manage to acquire a native accent. But only in the same way that watching someone who can do impressions is impressive. I don't think it's in any way necessary. More common and still impressive is the people who acquire a vaguely "foreign" accent that it's difficult to pin down. That's usually a sign of pretty impressive pronunciation. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 6083 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch | Message 102 of 102 29 October 2014 at 12:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My goal for every language is to try to attain a native-like accent. That said, I am lazy and should start pushing myself. Actually since I have moved around a lot and hang out with non-native speakers, my accents actually get worse. I have attained native accents in 3 languages: Czech, Slovak and English, and was pretty close in Russian as well. However my Russian accent has gotten really bad due to not using the language and my Czech accent has also gotten worse, despite this being my best language for a long time. I still have an American accent in English, but due to living in Europe for a long time and not being able to speak to an American in a long time, even that accent is getting worse. Edited by showtime17 on 29 October 2014 at 12:11am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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