The importance of a good accent (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

The importance of a good accent
Tags: Speaking \| Pronunciation \| Accent
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

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Merv
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Message 121 of 255

14 December 2010 at 5:43am | IP Logged

hrhenry wrote:

Merv wrote:

3.) You plan to teach your child French. You will speak French to your baby whereas your husband speaks
language X and the child will learn the native language of the country in which you reside in preschool. Which is
better, to speak French with an intelligible foreign accent, or to speak it with a native accent and thereby give
your child another truly native language?

My foreign-born and raised grandmother tried to do that with her children, speaking to them in Norwegian.
Guess what happened? They don't speak Norwegian, aside from the occasional "Uff Da" and "Fi" (and the "Fi" is
most likely a mocking imitation of her.)

Once kids get into school, they're going to favor what their peers are speaking. And if you're not native, your kids
will reject your attempt to teach them another language at home, seeing it as something fake.

R.
==

Quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill

John Stuart Mill was born on Rodney Street in the Pentonville area of London, the eldest son of the Scottish
philosopher, historian and economist James Mill, and Harriet Burrow. John Stuart was educated by his father, with
the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing,
and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. His father, a
follower of Bentham and an adherent of associationism, had as his explicit aim to create a genius intellect that
would carry on the cause of utilitarianism and its implementation after he and Bentham had died.
Mill was a notably precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography. At the age of three he
was taught Greek.[4] By the age of eight he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis,[4] the whole of
Herodotus,[4] and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laërtius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato.[4] He had
also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic.

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Raye
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Message 122 of 255

14 December 2010 at 5:44am | IP Logged

Tough room.

I’ll vent a recent frustration here: Lately I’ve been bugged by someone I know who continues to speak L2 English with L1 intonation after living for decades in the States (L1 is French). He’s fine at the phonetic level (no “ze” or “de” for “th”), his grammar is fine and his vocabulary is okay (although he’s probably avoiding harmless slang and two-part verbs) . But, truly, if you’re not listening closely you’d think he was speaking French. That da-da-da-DA stress pattern – yikes. I’m used to hearing lots of ESL/ L2 English, so it’s odd that this one situation bugs me, but it does. So, in this one case – an anecdote, not an argument, I know – involving just these languages and just this listener, it does seem that an insufficiently good accent – or at least the intonation part of accent – can be a deal-breaker.

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Merv
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Message 123 of 255

14 December 2010 at 6:13am | IP Logged

tracker465 wrote:

Arekkusu wrote:

Aineko wrote:

Arekkusu wrote:

I'd also venture that the closer
you get to a 10, the closer
you get to expressing every nuance a native speaker can express.

What kind of nuances you have in mind? If you are talking about vocabulary, then you are
obviously wrong (there are writers who write beautifully in their L2, despite having a
foreign accent).

We are talking about pronunciation, so this obviously only applies to spoken language. I'm refering to
expressing, at the uppermost end of scale, nuances of disbelief, contempt, concealed joy, relief, assurance,
conviction, etc.

The fact of the matter is though, that having a native accent is still not enough to understand all of the nuances
of a language. Language is tied so closely with culture, that without growing up in country x, there are going to
be points that a non-native speaker misses. Sure, some of this can be established via cultural books and history
lessons, but even then, I feel that there would still be instances in which only a native would really know.

With that being said, I am of the opinion that the whole discussion has gotten a bit ridiculous. As someone else
had mentioned earlier, I feel that those who have allegedly claimed to obtain native accents are trying to bask in
their glory, whereas those who do not have such perfect accents want to denounce the importance of a native
accent.

Time to make a music analogy here. Let’s suggest that having a perfect accent is like being able to change the
strings on a guitar. One can certainly play a guitar without ever knowing how to replace the strings, though
being able to replace the strings is certainly a useful task in itself.

Or perhaps a better analogy would be with musical style. Jazz and blues guitarists are all guitarists, and for the
purpose of this discussion, let’s say that to be considered a guitarist, the person has to have some skill at the
guitar (so that I am not called on a technicality or something). I would suggest that neither guitarist is superior
or necessarily better than the other, and both would certainly meet the goals of entertaining others, getting gigs,
etc. However, the jazz guitarist would have learned 14+ guitar scales, whereas the blues guitarist would have
learned maybe two or three. Accent isn’t everything, hell grammar isn’t even everything (and I say this listening
to my grandmother’s grammar at times).

I have only heard one or two non-native English speakers in my life who spoke English with a native-sounding
accent, and this was after working at a tourist center, traveling around the world, etc. some people may have the
ability, will, dedication, and time to achieve a native accent, but the majority of language learners do not seem to
do so, and if these people are clearly understood, then I am not sure what the big deal is. Even within different
languages, people have various accents.

A better analogy would be a violinist. The violinist has focused all his energies on his articulation, bow work,
fingerwork, rhythm and technique. He has built up a fine repertoire of music. He has completely neglected his
intonation and is thus often off key. Language mispronunciation is like being off key.
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Aineko
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Message 124 of 255

14 December 2010 at 6:29am | IP Logged

Merv wrote:

A better analogy would be a violinist. The violinist has focused all his energies on his
articulation, bow work,
fingerwork, rhythm and technique. He has built up a fine repertoire of music. He has
completely neglected his
intonation and is thus often off key. Language mispronunciation is like being off key.

Except that you are forgetting that language is not an art, but a tool. And if tool is
working to suit all your needs*, even if it's being 'off key' - where's the problem?

*assuming, of course, that not torturing native speakers with your bad
accent/grammar/whatever, is included in 'your needs'.
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tracker465
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Message 125 of 255

14 December 2010 at 6:57am | IP Logged

Aineko wrote:

Merv wrote:

A better analogy would be a violinist. The violinist has focused all his energies on his
articulation, bow work,
fingerwork, rhythm and technique. He has built up a fine repertoire of music. He has
completely neglected his
intonation and is thus often off key. Language mispronunciation is like being off key.

Agreed. Maybe accent is more like tuning by ear then.
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ratis
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Message 126 of 255

14 December 2010 at 10:55am | IP Logged

That's what I had in mind. Actually, correct pronunciation and native accent are
entirely different things for me. An accent in the sense I used the term is mainly
about melody, stress and a tendency to pronounce vowels in a particular way.
Most important: Native speakers have accents as well. Looks at the accent training
programmes for actors - they are for natives who need to imitate another accent/variety
of their mother tongue for professional reasons. And then think about how well world-
class actors usually manage to do this in spite of talent and hard work.... Having to
listen to US actors trying to imitate a UK accent seems to make a lot of Brits cringe?

A light accent would give small hints about where you come from while your
pronunciation in general is correct (absolutely no mistakes like d instead of th) and
to my mind's view has nothing to do with being able to passively understand any
subtleties or not - let alone being more prone to misunderstandings. I find that a bit
far-fetched really.

Sure, correct pronunciation is crucial. Completely getting rid of any accent
however is a nice goal for perfectionists but probably a futile exercise for the
average learner who started late. Demanding that everybody should strive to not have
any accent at all (note that I'm not suggesting to not care about correct
pronunciation!) is demanding that naturally everyone else should have the same language
learning goals and motivation as you. A bit presumptuous, isn't it?
To be honest, he whole discussion also reminds me a bit of the stereotypical,
prejudice-loaden association of accent and class / intelligence. Some feel superior for
having the right 'accent' or not having the wrong one. :-(

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Cainntear
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Message 127 of 255

14 December 2010 at 12:13pm | IP Logged

s_allard wrote:

In fact, if I look at the Cambridge materials for evaluating speaking proficiency at the C2 level in English, pronunciation is not very important. The main criteria are: Range, Accuracy, Fluency, Interaction and Coherence. I think that the reason pronunciation is not that important here is that the assumption is that anyone at the C2 level has certainly achieved relatively good pronunciation.

I think the assumption here is that they don't expect learners to ever get good pronunciation. English is considered "too hard".

The justification for this is the low number of learners that ever gets good pronunciation, but that's not proof that it's not possible -- it's proof that it's being taught wrong.

Everyone I know studying for the Cambridge Advanced is also wanting to learn English. The goals of passing the exam and learning English properly are not mutually exclusive.
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Cainntear
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Message 128 of 255

14 December 2010 at 12:23pm | IP Logged

Aineko wrote:

well, you said "I'm referring to expressing...", so I assumed you are talking about
inability to express these nuances. Although I am allowing for the theoretical
possibility of the situations you are describing, I still can't think of any particular
example. Maybe it is more likely to happen to people with a really thick accent, the
one that borders with unintelligible.

More than emotion, there's just plain old emphasis.

Many languages just use emphatic particles or word order for this, whereas English has very rich stress patterning. A heavy foreign accent can obscure many of the cues that we would use to emphasise a particular part of a word or sentence. As I understand it there are 5 different natural levels of stress in English.
The heaviest stress falls on the stressed syllable of the word with sentence focus.
Then there's tonic/primary stress in other words without focus
Some words have a secondary stress in another syllable.
Then we have unstressed syllables.
Finally, the weakest is the unstressed syllable adjacent to the tonic syllable.

That's a lot of nuance lost. Not having the full resources of stress available to you in English is like trying to speak Russian with a fixed word-order -- understandable and functional, but missing a lot of expressive power.

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