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How to Speak Like a Native | ||
Tags: Non-native Speakers | Accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5418 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 25 of 63 18 June 2012 at 5:04am | IP Logged | ||
You've certainly got a point, it is difficult to learn a particular accent/dialect well enough to fool people who speak that actual dialect while fooling others, but not impossible. My mother chooses to have a more neutral, educated sounding West Coast of Scotland type accent but can come across as a convincing Glaswegian when she wants to. She's of course had the luxury of being surrounded by accents particular to Glasgow for 25 years though so it isn't too surprising. It can take time but you can learn to fool people with a certain dialect that you naturally have it too but it takes concerted effort to note the appropriate vocabulary, idioms, intonation and pronunciation as well as enough exposure to it. Some might be able to manage it naturally if they are good mimics but you can methodically learn different dialects. Just not particularly worth spending all that time trying though in my view. Ha ha, I think I'll stick with my slightly Scottishy Østnorsk accent which I'll probably refine over the years, Supposedly I have quite a "cool" accent in Norwegian according to some people and my pronunciation is very clear so I don't feel particularly driven to acquire an accent which would fool someone who had the same accent. Might be fun to try though, always been a fan of imitating accents in English so why not in Norwegian? :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4828 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 26 of 63 18 June 2012 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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My German (Anglophile) friends tell me that they can't distinguish between different
British accents, although they are very fluent and colloquial speakers of English. I suspect they could actually, if they listened to enough of the different accents while knowing exactly what they were listening to. I imagine they can differentiate between British and American accents; regrettably (to my mind) they seem to spend a distressing (to me) amount of time watching American TV and film output :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sacha Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4527 days ago 22 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Quechua | Message 27 of 63 03 July 2012 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | ||
This is similar for me, I am usually taken to be a native Spanish speaker by native speakers, but not because I speak any specific dialect. Rather, they always take my accent to be that of some unknown Latin American country they can't quite identify. In other words, they think my accent is some regional dialect of Spanish, even though it is just my own accent! Edited by sacha on 03 July 2012 at 11:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 28 of 63 04 July 2012 at 2:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I think the lesson in all of this is that phonological proficiency is basically a product of immersion, starting at a young age and duration of exposure to the language. I don't doubt that some adults can learn a language to native-like proficiency. It's just that it is extremely rare. Can somebody start French at age 30 and in a few years pass for a native Parisian or Montréalais? Who knows? I've never seen it. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
All I know is that the people who are perfectly bilingual or multilingual where I live have all either come out of a multilingual environment or learned these languages when they were very young. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6151 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 29 of 63 05 July 2012 at 10:39am | IP Logged | ||
I'm not sure I agreee. I started French at the age of 11, stayed in France on occasions, but my accent never improved. I started Spanish in my mid thirties and my accent is far superior. I'm now spending my adult years, trying to learn to speak French properly, and undo all my previous French instruction. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ReiLung Diglot Newbie Bulgaria rei-lung.blogspot.co Joined 4846 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English | Message 30 of 63 06 July 2012 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it IS possible to learn to speak like a native, but it's not an easy thing to do.
Pronunciation is all about phonetics and these are technical things you can learn. But it really depends, like, I don't think I could ever learn to speak Arabic like a native, I've heard it's a really hard languages in pretty much all aspects, the pronunciation being one of them. I have a friend of mine who speaks French just as good as a native, but that's an entirely different story. : ) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 31 of 63 06 July 2012 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
That's like watching the record-holder 100-metre sprinter and say that it's all technique and we can all learn to do the same. It's not that simple. Edited by Arekkusu on 06 July 2012 at 8:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ReiLung Diglot Newbie Bulgaria rei-lung.blogspot.co Joined 4846 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English | Message 32 of 63 06 July 2012 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not saying it's easy, but it's certainly achievable. :)
3 persons have voted this message useful |
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