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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) |  |
| 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 17 of 34 03 August 2009 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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There's enough room for everyone who's willing to debate the points civilly. You may notice that I try to debate the points at hand.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6447 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 18 of 34 05 August 2009 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hardly, Cainntear. You misuse basic vocabulary, and when it turns out you're under-informed or simply wrong, you try to drown it out with tons of new irrelevancies. It often kills or derails threads. It's almost impossible to talk to you.
You'll be missed, charlmartell. 3 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 19 of 34 05 August 2009 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I use bad examples. Does a bad example indicate faulty reasoning? I don't think it necessarily does. I'm open to my reasoning being challenged. If certain parties are willing to just jump into a thread, spout off about mistakes I made in other threads and completely fail to address the point at hand... well that's just rude in my book and that sort of behaviour shouldn't be missed. Edited by Cainntear on 05 August 2009 at 1:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6546 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 20 of 34 05 August 2009 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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What exactly is wrong with a bull session anyway? Here's what Frankfurt says about it:
What tends to go on in a bull session is that the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without its being assumed that they are committed to what they say: it's understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel. Basically, there is too much anxiety here on the forum in being right or wrong. I find this to be true, unfortunately, among language learners who take their hobby way too seriously. It could be a hilarious Monty Python sketch if this argument were enacted in person. Edited by Kugel on 05 August 2009 at 5:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Luis L Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5596 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 21 of 34 08 August 2009 at 7:02am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I tend to think it's best to get a firm grounding of the phonetics of the language before you start, and as soon as you start to exclusively use those sounds. If you've really learned them well enough you won't have to think about how to say a word, and you can focus on perfecting your intonation. This is the approach I took with Mandarin and I've received nothing but compliments here in Beijing. I'd say it's analogous to having a hint of a foreign accent yet still making sure all the sounds of your new language are clearly distinguishable: there are plenty of people who retain their accents to a point of causing confusion because their native language's allophones are not the new language's allophones. As long as you avoid this problem I think you're fine.
And as a native Spanish speaker, I am absolutely thrilled when an anglophone makes even a subtle attempt to use the right accent, and downright impressed when they nail it. Queso is not /(kh)eisou/, it sounds really weird and in my opinion very lazy. Approximate /keso/ and you'll still have your American hint but sound like you know your Spanish at the same time. This is the level most foreign English speakers you actually have conversations with have. Edited by Luis L on 08 August 2009 at 7:03am 1 person has 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 22 of 34 08 August 2009 at 10:20am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm not sure it's really possible to get that firm a grounding before you start. The thing is that so many sounds in any language rely on context that they need to be learned in a word -- the intervocalic vs nonintervocalic V/B in Spanish, and intervocalic (soft) vs nonintervocalic (hard) D in much of Spain. These distinctions can only really be learnt when you first start using them. One of the things that annoys me most about many books (eg Teach Yourself, Colloquial) is that they just supply the sounds as one long list -- you're faced with a couple of dozen different sounds, some of which you won't encounter until you're halfway through the book. It would be far better, I think, to teach the new sounds needed for chapter one in chapter one, those for chapter two in chapter 2 etc. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| simonov Senior Member Portugal Joined 5597 days ago 222 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English | Message 23 of 34 08 August 2009 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That is why they are not taught, especially when Spanish people do not seem to know the difference between those sounds, they write tubo or tuvo indiscriminately. If they do not hear, not make the difference, how could a foreigner?
You complain about Charlmartel, he says not nice things about you, but you constantly find excuses for telling us how all those other methods annoy you. I do not mind those long lists of sounds at the beginning of those books, I look at them to see if there is something special, then when I listen to the audio and find I do not hear certain sounds very clearly I check that list. If a sound is not introduced till lesson 13 I will not need to check it in the front of the book till I get to lesson 13. I listen to the audio and try to imitate what I hear. As well as I can. And that is difficult in the beginning anyway.
Well said, the "how" to pronounce like Charlmartel said, pronunciation and intonation, not "why" because of history and linguistics as proposed by Caintear. But we must know the general rule for change according to shift in stress, in word families (puerta, portal, portada) and in verb-forms. So, again, like Charlmartel said pronunciation of sounds, "vocabulary" (for words) and "grammar" (for verbs) + intonation. We have to pay attention to all that if we want to have a better accent. But if we try too hard we will sound like we are acting on stage. A slight foreign accent is practically unavoidable and does not really matter anyway, because that will already be great achievement. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6042 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 24 of 34 08 August 2009 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
The thing is, most languages don't have a "posh" accent but there is a "correct" one. The impression when someone speaks my native language correctly is only a positive one. In my lifetime I've met only one foreigner who is capable of imitating the accent to a degree where it becomes indistinguishable from a native speaker. She sounded exactly like my literature teacher at school. So perfectly articulate and nice sounding... At first I thought she is the teacher in the class, not a student. You also mention Russian in your post. For obvious historical reasons, I doubt there is a posh accent in Russian, but there is the possibility for a "literary accent" that learned people tend to use ;). In any case, be it Spanish or Russian, learn "in accent". Any effort on your part will not be perceived as mockery but rather the efforts of a foreigner struggling with the unfamiliar phonemes of the language. Edited by Sennin on 08 August 2009 at 7:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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