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The importance of a good accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4702 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 217 of 255 26 April 2013 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me personally I have found pronunciation work to be very important.
I had issues trying to be understood, turned out that my pronunciation really needed a boost. So I did not practice pronunciation per say. I got a tutor to work with me correcting every little error with no exceptions. This has been going on for a few months, while I still have problems It appears that I am much better understood now with the only barrier being my poor grammar mangling sentences into some sort of incomprehensible goop of words...at least that is what the lady in my life tells me. That said I feel that at least a tolerable accent is important, but perhaps it is not the general case and is language specific, with what ever you native language happens to be as an added variable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vogue Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4255 days ago 109 posts - 181 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian | Message 218 of 255 26 April 2013 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||
I think what you're saying is unfair to some people. Accent will improve with exposure, but some people WILL need many more hours than others to get the pronunciation for a variety of reasons. Maybe they don't hear as well (particularly when involving cases of subtle intonation), maybe they don't speak as well (due to a physical problem perhaps), maybe they simply aren't a very good mimic-er. It stands to reason that someone who can replicate accents within their native tongue would better be able to replicate accents of foreign languages as well. Not everyone can do that. Most people with accents, I believe, can tell they have one, but lack the ability to perfect it - especially not without many hours of practice. For example, on another thread, I said that I could not roll my 'r.' That is a clear indication of an accent, that in the 7 years I've been studying Spanish, I have not been able to fix. Another problem I have is in Arabic where I struggle to say my ayn, so I just do my best to not make it sound like alif. Would a lot of practice improve this? Absolutely. Maybe if I sat and continuously and made that sound all day, I would then be able to replicate it when learning the words. Learning to say a word right is one thing when you learn it, but if you can't even make the sounds that are in the word first you've opened a can of worms where you're trying to roll your 'r' for hours on end. Some people would rather spend their study time on goals they consider more important, especially when their accent doesn't prevent communication. That being said, those of us that seem to lack a natural ability to make certain sounds could possibly address these issues with the help of a speech therapist. However, then the question becomes 'what are you willing to do to speak a language with a near-native accent?' Edited by vogue on 26 April 2013 at 1:49pm 2 persons have 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 219 of 255 26 April 2013 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | ||
I think some of this also depends on your prior language background, which shapes your “ear” for listening to languages. As someone who grew up listening to English and Khmer (and to a lesser extent) Mandarin and Cantonese from an early age, I found it very easy to pick up a good accent in Spanish and Portuguese, since I could easily hear and replicate all of sounds in those two languages. But on the other hand, learning to pronounce the uvular “r” in German/French and learning to distinguish all of the various French vowels took me a lot of conscious effort and hard work. It wasn't necessarily that I had a better "ear" for listening to languages generally, but rather, that I had developed an ear for certain sounds present in the languages I'd heard as a child. Edited by mike245 on 26 April 2013 at 1:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 220 of 255 26 April 2013 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think everybody aims for good pronunciation in their target language. That isn't the issue. The real issue is the point of diminishing returns. There is so much to learn in a language besides the phonetics that that the question becomes one of return on investment of time and energy.
Once you reach the point where you are clearly intelligible and not painful to listen to the question becomes what are your priorities. Do you really want that great accent? If so, go for it. For many people like myself, the priority becomes grammar and vocabulary. When all that comes up to speed I'll concentrate on getting the perfect accent. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 221 of 255 26 April 2013 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Why would you study something you're not actually willing to spend time on? I could not roll my r's until I was 22 and it took me two months of consistent practice (didn't go to a therapist) before I could roll it. That is how I learned to roll my r. I couldn't even hear the difference between a uvular and an alveolar trill until I tried to produce the rolled r with one or two tips from someone who could, and NOW I can reproduce a rolled r and a tapped r. Now I hear the difference. You're doing it the wrong way around; first you need to learn to pronounce the vowel/consonant sound correctly, then you'll be able to recognise it in speech. Learning how to pronounce sounds correctly takes time, but it's as much a part of learning a language as mastering the subjunctive tense is. People have always complimented me on my foreign accent, in many languages, and it's because I took out the time to practice and practice hard. And I don't have a perfect accent in every language either; just a very good one based on producing the sounds correctly from day one. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vogue Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4255 days ago 109 posts - 181 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian | Message 222 of 255 26 April 2013 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||
That's an interesting way of thinking, but it's important to note that everyone's goals might be different. The reason you want to learn a language can be very different than mine, and even between two languages the reasoning can be very different. When I learned Spanish it wasn't because I "wanted to." I had no desire to study Spanish. It was mandatory in high school. Later life took me to two different Spanish speaking countries. In the first one, Spain, I continued to get by with limited Spanish. But when I moved to Honduras that was no longer an option. Either I spoke Spanish or I didn't talk to anyone. I learned it to communicate, not because I had an innate love of the language or studying it. That being said, I still couldn't tell you WHEN to use the subjunctive, it's innate. I haven't looked at a Spanish book in years. Conversely, when I began learning Hebrew it was different. I really love the language, and spent A LOT of time on it. My teacher said she was impressed that I kept up with the class who had been going to Hebrew school for years. My reason for learning Italian falls somewhere in between the two. I love it, but it's also useful for me as an Italian citizen (who will be living in Italy). Therefore I'm happy to spend 3 hours a day on it (active and passive mix), but as I leave in 1 month it becomes a matter of prioritizing what will allow me to live the most comfortably. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 223 of 255 26 April 2013 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have a feeling that if you have a good ear for music, then you might also have a good
ear for accents; if you can easily pick up a tune, then perhaps you can also easily pick up an accent. Perhaps there is something in Huliganov's method of sometimes speaking your native language in the accent of your target language. (Unless he's just pulling our collective legs with that one. If not, then the question might arise as to how you learn the accent in the first place). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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