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Ever busted a non-native speaker? | ||
Tags: Error | Advanced Level | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 33 of 34 17 November 2012 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
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This is an interesting thread. I got the explanation to why some people who are born and raised in Norway
still speaks with an accent: that they are raised by people who spoke Norwegian with a heavy accent themselves. Until a few week ago I would have said that no one who came here as an adult could learn the language to a degree where I could not hear an accent. Even though they are fluent according to any definition of the word, grammar, vocabulary, mastery of the language, there will always be something which gives them away. A mispronunciation of a vowel, wrong gender, a preposition that are wrong, you can always tell. Two weeks ago however, I met an American lady who came to Norway in her early twenties, and had I not seen her name and her CV I would not have guessed she was not a native Norwegian. She spoke a different dialect, which I assume might have covered up any minor flaws, but I know that dialect, so if there were any flaws they must have been very minor indeed. Otherwise I agree that if a non-native speaker has us fooled for a few minutes at least, then their command of the language is impressive, I would never think of a case like that as "busted". I would think of it more in terms of "damn, that is good". 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| fnord Triglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5033 days ago 71 posts - 124 votes Speaks: German*, Swiss-German, English Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch | Message 34 of 34 16 December 2012 at 3:12am | IP Logged |
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Working in sales in a town that's no more than 3km away from the border (in several directions), I get to talk to
lots of different people every day. I don't usually get to know my customers so as to know they are non-natives. But how would I then know someone's non-native, if I never noticed? When I do, it's most often due some peculiarity in pronunciation, intonation, stress, etc., that I'm familiar with (from English, French, Portuguese, Polish, any other language) but cannot really attribute to any of the native dialects/accents. Often, it's more a feeling that develops slowly, creepingly, rather than a sudden "busted you" moment. Vocabulary? Not so much. I'd consider myself to have to a larger vocabulary in my native language (German) than the average speaker. I live in a country that is foreign yet not too foreign (using its own variety of standard German) and linguistically diverse. That has definitely enriched my vocabulary. At the same time, my feel for language usage has become somewhat "blurred" with regard to what's common/appropriate or odd/foreign locally. Having said that, Germans have more than once mistaken me for/thought to have "busted" me as being Swiss - which I'm not. Even complimented me on my pronunciation in standard German (my native tongue). So when you think you "busted" as a non-native speaker, you could, in fact, just have stumbled over some peculiarity (for whatever reason) in a native's speech. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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