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Should I learn "In accent" or not? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| babble_bum Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5605 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 34 30 July 2009 at 10:00am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Hi Yes thats a good point, like the "zsh" type sound and so on. At the mo Im really learning as a hobby, for fun - but I would love to use it properly at some point and Ive never been to Russia, so what you say is encouraging! Thankyou 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| babble_bum Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5605 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 34 30 July 2009 at 10:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Hi there Yes thats my feeling about when people speak English - I love to hear an accent too. Oh well, I guess its just a matter of time and teething troubles. If I get people thinking Im a hammy English spy trying to pretend to be from moscow, then I will know its time to switch the accent :D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5989 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes  Speaks: Spanish* | Message 11 of 34 30 July 2009 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
What is a stereotypical Spanish accent? Even more, what is a Spanish accent talking in Spanish? Do you mean one of the accents from Spain? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6252 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 12 of 34 30 July 2009 at 1:06pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
What has that got to do with the accent people have when speaking languages? It has to do with stress in single words only. In Spanish a stressed "o" breaks up into "ue", just like a stressed "e" becomes either "ie" or just plain "i" (some verbs in -ir only). In any verb or noun, except in some special cases like "costa" meaning coast or the cost (like in a toda costa) and "cuesta" (slope) et al. Instead of "accent" read "vocabulary and grammar".
I'm afraid I don't understand the meaning of this cryptic remark. Nobody needs missing or extra consonants to speak in their own accent because that is unfortunately the easiest thing to do, in any language. So what do you mean by "can't"? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6019 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 13 of 34 30 July 2009 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
I'll assume for now that this is a genuine question.
Grammar is a set of observed rules. It says how things are done, not why. The "why" of sound changes is about accent. At some point the natives of certain areas of what's now Spain couldn't pronounce words like "podo", "porto" and "tene", so they changed the vowels. Nowadays, the introduction of foreign terms is teaching them to say these sounds. But there are still sounds that they categorically can't pronounce. "Especial" was once "special", but they couldn't say it (initial sp- doesn't exist in Basque either). You can dismiss words like "escuela", "especie", etc as just vocabulary, but if you learn the accent you'll know that there's no other way to say them, because the word form is a result of the phonology/pronunciation/accent of the language.
It's quite simple. In Hindi, for example, there are four letters that roughly approximate an English T and four than roughly approximate a D. In my accent, those 8 sounds would reduce to 2, making me impossible to understand. Also, consider English vowels. An English-speaker's accent is full of schwas. There is no schwa in many languages -- Italian or Spanish, for example. Have you ever heard someone pronouncing Spanish in an English accent? There is no discernible difference between hablo, habla and hable, and it makes the person difficult to understand. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6252 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 14 of 34 02 August 2009 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Yes they would, because you'd sound just as silly as your above mentioned foreigner with a "posh" English accent. The main thing with "in accent" is, don't overdue it, a put-on accent belongs on the stage, sounds phoney in real life. Read anamsc's post, his advice is spot on. As long as you speak normally you'll do fine. That applies to our own language as well, it's practically impossible to totally eliminate our regional accent. Neutralise it a little to make it less obvious, less broad, fine. Speak "The Queen's English" and you'll get stage applause but street jeers.
When people talk about accent in the sense of "English" versus "American", "native" versus "foreign" (like in this thread) the pronunciation itself is meant, not the historical evolution. Only people interested in pure linguistics want to know that, most language learners don't, they need the "how to do it now". If people couldn't pronounce "pode, tene, porto", how come they could make the difference between "costa" and "cuesta". And why could they say "Portugal, otro, potro.." And "tenedor, tengo, vengo..."? The reason why they say escuela, especial etc. is not because they can't say it without an e, it's because they just don't, it sounds nicer that way in Spanish (and Portuguese), just like duermo sounds right while dormo doesn't (but does in Portuguese). They take the e in front of st and sp over into other languages because of ingrained habit, not physical incapacity. Just like you take your diphthongs and long vowels over into languages that don't use them, Spanish and Greek for instance. So, if you want to learn to speak any language properly you need to learn to say words the way they say them, which requires abiding by the basic general rules of pronunciation, relevant to their language, now, not in a hypothetical distant past. It's all a question of sound, in their language their way sounds better. So we've got to adjust our own way of saying things to match theirs, pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary, grammar and all. And we've got to learn to do it naturally, not like we were in a language laboratory or on stage practicing phonetics.
I still don't get it. I suppose you meant "can't because you won't be understood", but even that doesn't make much sense to me. I ask you why it's impossible to speak Russian with an English accent because of missing consonants, and you tell me about Hindi. If the Russians can speak English with a Russian accent and are understood, why should English speakers not be able to speak Russian with an English one? Then you tell me about schwas. What has that got to do with Russian consonants, especially since the original post was about trying for a Russian accent, and Russian does use schwas. What do you mean: "There is no discernible difference between hablo, habla and hable, and it makes the person difficult to understand." How do you pronounce "echo, ego..." in English? with a schwa? And "mama"? Therefore the above examples would not be pronounced with schwas. Now that is nothing compared to the mess foreigners, especially English speakers, make of endings, even when pronouncing them properly. Most use the above mentioned hablo, habla and hable indiscriminately, not because of accent, but because of lack of grammar know-how. If you want to speak proper Spanish, with a good accent then: don't use long vowels, diphthongs and schwas and make sure you get your Spanish usage correct (phonetics, morphology and syntax). And try to learn about and get used to their intonation patterns and adapt yours to match theirs, in their language. Especially Russian courses give lots of advice on and practice with Russian intonation patters. Heed them, you won't sound silly at all doing that, it's phoney individual letter pronunciation that's to be avoided, not flow of output. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6019 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 15 of 34 02 August 2009 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
At the moment we're talking about whether to do it now (speak "in accent", that is), so I'm talking about why I think you should. Simple as that.
First of all, as you should already know, the diphthongisation of o->ue and e->ie only occurs in the stressed syllable, so "Portugal" is a bad example. Secondly, it depends on the consonants either side of the vowel. The only interesting case you raise is costa/cuesta, and the fact that there are exceptions doesn't mean there's no rule, as every rule in every language will attest. I feel that I've got a lot further a lot quicker by just getting a feel for what sounds right and what just couldn't be said, because of accent.
Or, in other words, because of their accent.
As far as I could see, we were talking in general terms about any language. I just thought Hindi was a nice clear example.
Not everything works both ways. First of all, English speakers are far more used to hearing foreign accents than speakers of many other languages are. Secondly, English is fairly forgiving on accents because of its lack of inflections. Thirdly, because Russian has more consonants than English, less information is lost speaking English with a Russian accent than Russian with an English accent. There is no symmetry here.
But not the same as English.
One or two examples do not constitute a rule. The accent is generally how we pronounce the most common words. Maybe you've got a point with "echo" and "ego", but that only means that saying "hablo" in an English accent leaves you saying /'ableu/, which isn't really any easier for a Spanish speaker to understand than if it was a schwa...
I don't see your point. No-one here suggested that learning the accent was the be-all-and-end-all of learning a language, so this doesn't address any points raised. If you hope to win a debate by raising an unargued point that no-one will disagree with, you're on quite the wrong track.... Edited by Cainntear on 02 August 2009 at 5:58pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6252 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 16 of 34 02 August 2009 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Maybe you didn't notice that in my previous post in this thread I explained about that and we had a little confusion, me calling it "grammar" and you calling it "accent". I didn't want to win a debate, that's your prerogative, I just didn't see what on earth any of your points had to do with 'Should I learn "in accent" or not?' Of course he should, as well as possible. But for that he doesn't need history, he needs to learn all of the skills I said. I won't go into any other detail of your strange argumentation. After all, I've only lived in Spain and Portugal with lots of English speakers, so how could I possible know how they speak foreign and how they are understood? And how could I know about speaking 'in accent', look at my profile, will you. You won't hear from me again as I'm leaving this forum, deactivating my account. Because there's no chance of either of us ever changing our spots and therefore no room for the 2 of us here, without constantly clashing. This forum doesn't need me and I don't need it, but you obviously do, so I withdraw, leaving the stage to you. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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