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The importance of a good accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5101 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 185 of 255 20 April 2013 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't find a good accent to be terribly important, but I am a native English speaker and I'm used to hearing them alot.
I like to think that my accent in French is important, but that is because it is the only thing I'm fairly certain that I'm good at. Edited by Darklight1216 on 20 April 2013 at 10:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6973 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 186 of 255 21 April 2013 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think grammar and a good accent both require a lot of work, so one can sometimes come at the expense of the other, especially when starting out in a language. For me, putting on a good accent requires that I pay a lot of attention to making all of the correct sounds, mimicking the prosody of the language, getting the right intonations, etc. It's exhausting and sometimes if I am working hard to pronounce things perfectly, I'll slip up on the grammar. Similarly, if I am pushing the limits of my grammar or vocabulary, my accent will start to break down. Back when I knew a lot less Cantonese than now, I used to be fairly good at mimicking an almost native sounding accent -- to the point where a few people remarked that my accent sounded even better than my partner's, even though he grew up in Hong Kong and remains fully bilingual. But I only knew simple phrases and basic sentences. Now that I'm actually concerned about grammar and learning to communicate substantively (and correctly) in Chinese, my accent has completely gone out the window. I imagine for some advanced learners/speakers of a language, once they've gotten the accent/grammar under control, they can turn their attention to bringing up the rest of their language skills? At least, I hope that's the case! Edited by mike245 on 21 April 2013 at 3:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 187 of 255 21 April 2013 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Did you realize they were hitting on you at the time? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6973 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 188 of 255 21 April 2013 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Considering they were older aunts and uncles we met up with at a family dinner in Hong Kong, I hope not! In full disclosure, their comments were based on about 3 sentences that I said during dinner, in contrast to my partner who spent the entire time speaking in the language. He is fluent in Cantonese, but I think he's lived long enough in the US (20+ years) that he no longer sounds quite like an HK local. Edited by mike245 on 21 April 2013 at 6:45pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 189 of 255 21 April 2013 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Working on your accent in order to make yourself readily understood is one thing. Attempting to perfect it with
the aim of passing yourself off as a native speaker is another, and a rather pointless one in my opinion (unless you're an actor or a spy). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 190 of 255 23 April 2013 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To me not trying to get the best pronunciation you possibly can, is like learning the violin without bothering to
get it quite right. If my accent is mediocre in a particular language it is because I can't do it any better, not because I can't be bothered. Aiming for a bad accent makes zero sense to me. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 191 of 255 24 April 2013 at 12:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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But you don't work on your pronunciation 100% of the time? Therefore you could've done better if you hadn't spent your time on this or that word, grammar item, idiom. But essentially we come to a point where you "would've done better" if you knew nothing and just imitated the sounds. This is waaay past the point where the law of diminishing returns comes into play, however.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 192 of 255 24 April 2013 at 8:40am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't focus on spot on intonation (or that dreaded thing knowns as the vibrato) at the expense of other skills (building up a repertoire, anyone?). This being said, I agree that it's wise to at least try to improve your pronunciation. Some people don't seem to bother a bit. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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