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Can adult learners achieve native levels? | ||
Tags: Native Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 113 of 303 08 October 2012 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
How often does this actually happen? Yes, there are places where locals will speak English if a visitor is clearly struggling with the local language. But if you speak confidently, even with an accent, people will naturally engage with you because that is what they do every single day of their lives, ie speak their own language in their own country. 2 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 114 of 303 08 October 2012 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The problem is that non-professionals tend to base their judgement on your accent. And also, it depends on whether they can actually understand your accent! I'm not that good at understanding non-native speakers of Russian for example, apart from the aforementioned Baltic and Caucasian (as in Azerbaijan etc) accents. And then there's the issue that if one doesn't expect to understand you, they might only understand if you sound nearly perfect, otherwise they'll assume you're speaking your native language and not try to understand.
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| Hiiro Yui Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4718 days ago 111 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 115 of 303 11 October 2012 at 4:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm aiming for perfection in Japanese. I'm aiming to surpass natives. This is the kind of goal that will keep me learning well after other learners would have given up or moved on to another language. I simply don't have wanderlust, nor do I burn out. I actually enjoy learning by reading the dictionary, so I think it's only a matter of time before I memorize more words and meanings than natives my age. I haven't been producing much, but when I do, I want to be so good I can do that simultaneous interpretation stuff in both directions. As for my accent, it's a work in progress and I hope I won't need to pay a coach. The system shouldn't work this way. Why should it be that I can access the definitions of hundreds of thousands of words and example sentences online, but I can't find detailed explanations or animations of what people's tongues look like as they speak? How about software that displays your voice's frequency and volume visually so you can compare it to a native's? This has become a vicious cycle. Few people achieve a native-like accent, so you think it's a waste of time and you tell people not to even bother trying or you don't give them the detailed help they need, so few people achieve a native-like accent.... Let's break the cycle. What if there were a project to capture 3D images of people's tongues (instead of people just saying, "learn IPA")? What if people were pointed towards voice displaying software just as often as they are pointed towards SRS's?
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| 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 116 of 303 11 October 2012 at 5:05am | IP Logged | |||||
Hiiro Yui, I don't think the 3D software you mention is the key. Even if you saw what you're supposed to do, you'd still have to learn to control your muscles to replicate an image on a screen (which is almost like trying to move your stomach to match a scan), and then you'd have to practice to do it automatically, and you'd be doing the vast majority of the work without the software anyway. Explore. Move your tongue around and produce as many sounds as you can. Feel the difference between sounds. Gain an awareness of what makes up the sounds you produce and how to modify and control them. When you know exactly how you produce the sounds of your own language, then you can alter that to match the sounds of Japanese. No coach can do that for you. 3 persons have 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 117 of 303 11 October 2012 at 5:31am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't think people are saying to not bother trying or that it's a waste of time. What some people like myself are saying is that native-like proficiency requires certain special conditions that the vast majority of people can never meet and that more bang can be had for the buck by working on grammar and vocabulary than on achieving perfection of pronunciation. This is not to be construed as an effort to discourage people from perfecting their accent. If this is important for you, by all means go for it. I think that Arekkusu knows only too well that native-like proficiency requires certain circumstances. Is it possible to achieve such proficiency in Japanese without access to native speakers or some kind of feedback from native speakers? I will say no. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 118 of 303 11 October 2012 at 10:50am | IP Logged | |||||
Look at this thread please. http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp? TID=33966&PN=1&TPN=4 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 119 of 303 11 October 2012 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I had a look at the thread mentioned by @Mapk and I have to say that I couldn't make head not tail of it.
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| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 120 of 303 11 October 2012 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
That would not work. Try to match the sound. If you try again and again, you will eventually find the sound that sounds native. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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