10 messages over 2 pages: 1 2
wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5237 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish
| Message 9 of 10 13 November 2013 at 7:49pm | IP Logged |
I think of my Belgian French teacher who came to the US after World War 2. She didn't speak English and had a 6
year old child. She & her husband waited for her to return from school to teach them what she'd learned that day.
When I met her, 40 + years later, she was of course a fluent speaker, but had a pronounced accent. She also wrote
well in English, although she never attended university here. She and her husband, a dancer, had to learn quickly
and that's what they did. She'd share some funny mistakes they made while learning ... her husband asking for 2
white skirts instead of shirts, complimenting someone on their lovely chicken instead of kitchen, disappointment
when they mistakenly tried root beer as a new type of beer! Immersion and necessity sure do produce results, even
if you aren't a kid anymore.
3 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 10 of 10 14 November 2013 at 12:36am | IP Logged |
I guess it was fairly common after the war for adults to end up in new countries and have to learn a language
from scratch.
On the question of accents, I wonder if adults are more self conscious about aping foreign sounds whereas
kids just go for it. Mind you, an accent is only a problem if it actually interferes with understanding. Every day
at work I talk to Polish cleaning staff who all have heavy Polish accents but I understand everything they say.
1 person has voted this message useful
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