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The importance of a good accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 97 of 255 14 December 2010 at 12:07am | IP Logged | |||||
I was quite enjoying the discussion. Must we stop because you've had enough? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 98 of 255 14 December 2010 at 1:07am | IP Logged | |||||
A) Transliteration in particular is a red herring. B) It's not a matter of either/or. A) The only reason I rely on the transliteration is because I hadn't got round to learning the devanagari as I was more interested in learning to speak. It could be transliteration, the original script, or an explanation; and in a minority of cases it could be a very good ear, but to learn pronunciation well you have to be aware of what the sounds are when you start. As you say, you cannot mimic what you cannot hear. For most people that means we cannot mimic foreign sounds because even if our ears detect the full sound, our brains don't process it. Our brains don't hear every sound that enters our ears -- they have been trained to extract the useful information. If you don't make it recognise new useful information, it won't. B) Once you have learned the basic "shape" of a language through conscious directed study/practice/effort/whatever, then you can refine your accent by listening. Early training of the brain to the new set of sounds gives a "baseline" for reference, and the brain can fine-tune the details. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 99 of 255 14 December 2010 at 1:40am | IP Logged | |||||
It's in order to understand the language better. In order to master an accent, you have to develop an understanding of the underlying system. You have to develop a sensitivity to the meaningful distinctions in the language. Once you know the meaningful distinctions, you are better able to handle other accents in the same language, because a regional accent is a small set of systematic and internally consistent changes to the base sound system. In Spanish, it's not good enough to think of a soft D as TH phoneme -- it is a D phoneme, and must be learned that way if you want to develop a phoneme map that reflects that of a native, and you do want a phoneme map that reflects a native's one, because that phoneme map is an integral part of the language and aids in the understanding of it. But in order to fully understand that a soft D is a D phoneme, you have to learn to pronounce a Spanish dental D, because while the English alveolar D close enough to be an understood in place of the dental D, the soft D is only possible as a modification of the dental D. And if you don't learn the basic Madrid soft D, you're going to have a lot of trouble understanding the even softer one that occurs in the north in the past tense suffix -ado/-ido, which in extreme cases reduces to zero. But if you work on accent from the very fundamental level and you learn consonant softening as a process and a feature of accent, then with one system you can recognise /comp'rado/ /comp'raθo/ and /comp'rao/ as the same word. Similarly, the process of softening gives us a whole range of possibilities with S: español->ehpañol->e.pañol->epañol. Without understanding that system, the variety of accents in your target language will always be a problem.
How do you as a learner judge what "correct pronunciation" is, and what the "wrong way" to pronounce words is? It is difficult to know early on the difference between the basic phonology of a language and what is a specific "accent". There's a big philosophical grey area between "understandable" and "native", and correct lies somewhere in there. I do not aim for native-like pronunciation in order to achieve it, but to get as close as possible. If I don't aim for it, I'll end up further away, and be convinced that I speak properly when I don't. Edited by Cainntear on 14 December 2010 at 1:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 100 of 255 14 December 2010 at 1:41am | IP Logged | |||||
Then your mind is not listening to what my mind is saying: Everyone loves a French accent. But not all accents were born equal. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 101 of 255 14 December 2010 at 1:50am | IP Logged | |||||
you actually made me ask three people in my lab (English at a high level, working in academia for few years, being in NZ for at least 3 years) have they ever tried to go for a native accent :). And what do you think the response was? If you now tell me that they have actually tried but, ashamed by they failure, they are not admitting it, then I rest my case :D. Is it that hard to believe that for the average language learner/user, native accent is not as important as other aspects of language? And by 'average' I mean someone who learns a language to a high level and use it daily (with language enthusiasts on one side of the spectrum and people who live in a foreign country for years and don't pass the beginner level on the other). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 102 of 255 14 December 2010 at 1:52am | IP Logged | |||||
The average language learner uses suboptimal methods and gets suboptimal results. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 103 of 255 14 December 2010 at 1:53am | IP Logged | |||||
well, I totally disagree. I solved this problem by watching movies in different Spanish accents. I don't need to know how to talk with a Cuban accent in order to be able to understand it. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 104 of 255 14 December 2010 at 1:57am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not sure what you mean. These people said that they never cared about sounding like a native as long as they are understood. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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