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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6070 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes  5 sounds | Message 9 of 13 30 March 2009 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I do the same thing. I have been taken for a native American speaker (by Americans) three times, and by Brits quite a few times, but only for a short time with Americans, which kind of makes sense (1-3 minutes, whatever). The French accent isn't harder to neutralize than any other accent, I found that Ann Cook's American accent training helped me a lot. I think that intonation and holding the distance are the hardest things. Separate sounds aren't too complicated if you're really careful, and most words are easy enough to say separately. I think I'm stuck at a "near near-native" stage. I'm almost there, but definitely not there yet, and the quality of my spoken English highly varies according to a range of parameters (whether I actually care about it that day or not, whether I'm tired or not, etc). What really frustrates me is that I can record the same text twice and sound either near-native or crappy without really being able to do something about it. I guess it has got to do with practice, determination, and that infamous "wall of resistance" you mentioned. I sort of want help and don't want help at the same time, which does ease up things! Anyway, I'm not in a position to give advice, but I'd say phonetics was and still is my savior. Also, especially when you're French, you have to be aware of the fact that sucking it up is the only solution when it comes to stress patterns and the like. I know how stupid that sounds, but that's it, really. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dlb Triglot Groupie Joined 5721 days ago 44 posts - 52 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek, Italian | Message 10 of 13 31 March 2009 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Do you mean to say that British speakers do not flap their Ds and Ts? I don't know the answer to that, but I am curious. Actually I'm leaving for London tomorrow and will see if I can find the answer. Out of curiosity, have you ever been fooled by a native English speaker's French? I mean someone who learned French as an adult, not someone who grew up bilingual. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6070 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 11 of 13 31 March 2009 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, it's more complicated than that. You can find Brits who will *occasionally* flap their Ts (see Billie Piper on Doctor Who Confidential saying bedder instead of better on several occasions, and many British actors). With London speakers, you'll most likely hear something that sounds like be'ah. I'm crap at making glottal stops sounds, unless it's at the end of the word, but you get the picture. I suppose my teacher was talking about my Ds being pronounced in a "dark" manner - you have that pheonomenon with L, too. Americans will use dark Ls all the time - that is, the letter will be somewhat more pronounced at the back of the mouth or something. You can hear it because Brits don't do it as often, and I think it's the same with D, because I've been paying close attention to that since my teacher mentioned it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ortho Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6292 days ago 58 posts - 60 votes | Message 12 of 13 31 March 2009 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm a native speaker of American English who lives in London. There's not a particularly large difference between my American accent on the letter "d" and a British "d". Also, Americans have different levels of stress and clarity on this sound, so my midwestern accent is much closer to a British accent on the "d" than it is to an American southern or New York accent in each direction. Stuff like "Be'ah" is just slangy, uneducated pronunciation in my opinion. Its function is to identify the speaker as being from a certain group (my friend from Essex makes a lot of sounds like this). Even with a perfectly native accent you would draw funny looks if you said something like this in conversation, just as you would if you used a heavily youthful African-American pronunciation on something in the US. But, really, this "difference in the d" sound between British and US English is an unbelievably minute point as far as fluency in the language goes. I had not ever thought about it before you brought it up and am quite sure that if I asked 10 natives with either accent (as if there are only 2--I would say I could recognise 40 different accents, certainly more than 20, here in the UK if you gave me a week to identify them, and there are fewer but still a large number in the US) none of them would have either. I can guarantee without ever having met you that this is not the thing that would identify you as a non-native. Edited by Ortho on 31 March 2009 at 6:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6070 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 13 of 13 31 March 2009 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's true, but sadly enough, quite a lot of people speak like that. Lots of people sound "ghetto" in France to some point, and that's just the way it is.
Well, there was this footage of an American guy on youtube that was excellent, but I don't know whether he could have fooled me or not. I did take an English lady for a native speaker once, but apparently, I don't have a very good ear when it comes to recognizing English accents in French. Mind you, that's probably due to the fact that I was taken a few times for a German/English/American native in French, and had to sort out my own French. That's what you get when your parents somehow have German heritage + you study German and especially English *a lot*.
I agree with you, and even said a couple of messages ago that my teacher "was really picky on this one". I'm sure that intonation more than anything else gives my "non-nativeness" away, even if my separate sounds aren't perfect, because there are so many accents in English. It's the same with French really, because accents account for a lot of your mistakes - I know I often think French Canadian speakers sound better than French French speakers when they are foreigners, but that's just because I'm not used to Canadian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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