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Accent formation video lecture | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| JonB Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6298 days ago 209 posts - 220 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Dutch, Greek | Message 9 of 34 01 March 2009 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||
Be that as it may. My actual point here is that adult learners tend, in my opinion, to invest too much energy in the attainment of a 'correct' native accent. Since most experts agree that this is not possible once the learner is older than about 12 years of age, I would argue that the goal should simply be to speak clearly and with reasonable intonation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7289 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 10 of 34 05 March 2009 at 4:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I have added the next two parts:
Part 2: Technique Part 3: Analysis AA 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5798 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 11 of 34 05 March 2009 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree- I live in London, a extremely diverse city with people from all over the world. And I love the sound of foreign accents -in fact I find them very attractive. Though I have no way of knowing if an English accent apeaking a foreign language would also be considered sexy... probably not! As to whether it's possible though, I have a Norwegian friend who moved to London as an adult (about 19)and in less than ten years developed a native accent. I honestly would never have guessed she was 'foreign' if she hadn't told me. And somewhat more bizarrely, when visiting Ireland I met a few Eastern Europeans, and South Africans who sounded 100% Irish to me, despite having been in Ireland only 2-3 years. So I now have this theory that the Irish accent is very easy to acquire, even unintentionally Edited by Dark_Sunshine on 05 March 2009 at 7:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6698 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 12 of 34 05 March 2009 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is the page of a phonetics project at the University of Iowa which explains the sounds of German, English, and Spanish by showing animations of the movements of the speech organs involved.
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| dlb Triglot Groupie Joined 5812 days ago 44 posts - 52 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek, Italian | Message 13 of 34 06 March 2009 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Professor Arguelles,
I very much appreciate your candor and insight. My question concerns stress-timed languages vs. syllable-timed languages. I took a course in teaching English pronunciation which focused primarily on stress and intonation including fast speech forms and vowel reduction. The teaching of individual phonemes was actually considered less important because stress and intonation are thought to have a greater impact for the interlocutor. In your series I believe your example languages are all stress-timed? What are your thoughts on learning languages that have a different stress pattern from your native language? Secondly we use a book called Targeting Pronunciation by Sue Miller which I find to be quite useful for the language learner. It’s written for the language learner and is easy to understand. It gives good explanations of stress, intonation patterns, fast speech forms and phonemes. In many cases I think it helps students improve their listening comprehension more than their pronunciation. They can finally understand what they are missing when Americans speak quickly. Do you know of similar pronunciation materials in any other languages? I’m primary interested in Spanish, French and German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeito Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5850 days ago 55 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin, German, Italian, Portuguese | Message 14 of 34 06 March 2009 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
I respectfully offer a dissenting opinion. While it is clear that language acquistion along with the ability to imitate accents for most people decline after childhood. I posit that is does not signifcantly diminish in a large subset of people. I thankfully consider myself in that subset. I am well past my 15th birthday and my ability to hear and mimic subtle distinctions has not only not diminished, it has actually increased as I have studied more languages. In all of the Romance languages I know I am frequently asked if I am a native speaker by native speakers. Granted those questions come relatively early on before I have had a chance to make a mistake in grammar. They are based on my ability to imitate not only accent, but also intonation. Since Americans get such a bad rap as lousy and lazy linguists, I am immensely gratified to have the question asked. I also think how one sounds is extremely important in how one is initially received. I have found out that speaking other languages opens doors and grants access to information and experience that are unavailable people who don't speak the language. When visiting other countries, I can't tell you how many times people have told me something or took me somewhere because they thought I would understand and be able to handle myself in that situation. They didn't have to sugarcoat it or babysit me. And in a decidedly unscientific survey of my experience, I have found out the closer you sound to your hosts, the faster their confidence in your ability develops. For these reasons, and yes for the sheer vanity of it, I put a lot of emphasis on learning accent and intonation. I will agree that having sweet nothings whispered in your ear by a French, Italian, or Spanish, etc accent has a certain amount of giddy charm. But listening to business discussions a wide variety of other accents can be taxing and fatiguing. Put me strongly in the column that favors attention to how you sound when you speak a foreign language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JonB Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6298 days ago 209 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Dutch, Greek | Message 15 of 34 07 March 2009 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||
Jeito, I agree with this. Perhaps I made my original point rather clumsily? I certainly didn't mean to suggest that it's okay to have a really bad accent. All I'm arguing is that we should be realistic, and not get overly 'hung up' about achieving an absolutely perfect accent. Okay, there may be some people who have a special talent for this. If you're one of these lucky people, then hey-ho, so much the better! But most adult learners are not, in fact, able to reach a level where their accents would be so completely authentic as to fool a native speaker. IMHO it's basically not a problem to be identified as a 'foreigner', provided that we can speak clearly and with a reasonably good intonation. (And if we speak clearly and with a reasonably good intonation, there shouldn't be any problems or misunderstandings - in either the bedroom or the boardroom! :-D ) Edited by JonB on 07 March 2009 at 12:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5880 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 34 07 March 2009 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | ||
Jeito, I fully agree with you on the point that the pronounciation of a foreign language is important and that you should strive of having a good accent and intonation.I am a kind of perfectionist on that field, it would never satisfy me having a bad pronouctiation of a foreign language. My way of aquiring languages is assimilation and within this process I assimiate also the pronounciation and (which is more difficult) the intonation. I am talented for imitating pronounciation but that does not mean that I get the result without decent work on this. For example I use audio CDs or a vocabulary trainer on CD-ROM to assimilate the pronounciation by repeating the words and sentences aloud. Even if you are talented, you don't get the result for nothing. It costs work like any other part of language acquisition. But I wouldn't see any age limit there, at my age of 47 I can as well learn a very good pronounciation, so why not? Such an abiltiy doesn't end at teenager age. Fasulye-Babylonia Edited by Fasulye on 07 March 2009 at 1:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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