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What do you consider a bad accent? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Leurre Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5425 days ago 219 posts - 372 votes  Speaks: French*, English*, Korean, Haitian Creole, SpanishC2 Studies: Japanese | Message 9 of 17 08 September 2011 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'll talk to anyone, but man some people have bad pronunciation.
Bad control over the nasal sounds/ mixing up 'saint' and 'cent', for example, usually does it for me. As for accents, for me Canada is the killer. I can't stand the canadian accent... But that's all poppycock to you. Bad pronunciation rubs me the wrong way as much as native canadians do. If you focus on getting your pronunciation as close to what the native speakers around you are rolling with as you can, and (more importantly to me) if you can speak as fast as you want to without having to slow down _because of pronunciation issues_ then you should be just fine 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tricycle Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5663 days ago 99 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French | Message 10 of 17 08 September 2011 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Oh dear. I can barely hear the difference. This certainly doesn't bode well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JLA Triglot Newbie France Joined 4897 days ago 25 posts - 33 votes Speaks: French*, English, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 11 of 17 10 September 2011 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hum, a foreign accent can be quiet charming and a person who makes the effort to try and speak your language deserve to be treated as well as possible, so I would tend to do my best to understand (I live near Lyon to, so maybe a pattern ;) ). Only if there is absolutely no chance for me to understand, or if the person doesn't understand my answers however slowly and distinctly I try to speak, then will I switch to English (or, the person's language if I happen to speak it well enough).
But to be fair, I guess the answers you will get on this forum will all be biased since we are for the most part "language addicts" and we all know the kind of effort it takes to learn a language and are probably for the most part, much more susceptible to be open (unless we are so egoistic that we want to seize any occasions to practice our skills and therefore take advantage of any native speaker we can put our hand on). Edited by JLA on 10 September 2011 at 6:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5418 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 12 of 17 10 September 2011 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
The way I think of the difference is that "saint" has a kind of nasal "ah" sound while "cent" leans a bit more closely to the vowel sound of "bon" although the sounds are still different. Try and find examples of pronunciation of the two words and just keep comparing them. You'll get it eventually. Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 10 September 2011 at 7:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| floydak Tetraglot Groupie Slovakia Joined 4854 days ago 60 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Slovak*, English, German, Spanish Studies: French | Message 13 of 17 10 September 2011 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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there are 3(4) nasal sounds in french (one is considered to be obsolete) I'm not sure
about the right "transcription" but the difference between saint and cent should be the same like difference between wind (vent) ~e nasal sound and vine (vin). ~a nasal sound. bon is different one ~o nassal sound. the obsolete one should be like lundi which you can also say like ~e sound. french speakers please correct me if I'm wrong. 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 14 of 17 11 September 2011 at 4:10am | IP Logged | |||||
This is true, and a French accent in English is often so - an extreme example of this was the late Sacha Distel, who was quite popular in England, and probably exploited his charming accent to good effect. My wife and I usually find Scandinavian accents charming, and their owners are usually very fluent, with often only a hint of an accent, but enough to be interesting and not enough to get in the way. But some accents are less attractive, but it's obviously a matter of personal taste. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 15 of 17 11 September 2011 at 9:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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My experience tells me that until you speak French quite well - grammar and pronunciation - you are doomed as far as being understood by Frenchmen, Parisians in particular.I have no experience with Canadians, but I would guess that since they are more used to multilingualism, and to an English accent, they would be more forgiving.
I remember going to the museum of impressionist art in Paris, asking for the painting Olympia. Now that is a well known painting, and it is a rather peculiar word, but when I pronounced it I said the Y like a Norwegian Y, which is close to French/German U/Ü (Olümpia, in stead of Olimpia), and the woman declared that there was no such painting in the museum. We have had lengthy discussions on this forum regarding the importance of pronunciation, and my advice is that as far as French goes, you should put every possible effort into pronouncing it perfectly. It will make your life a lot easier. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Carlos Ignacio Diglot Newbie ChileRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4926 days ago 12 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French | Message 16 of 17 12 September 2011 at 12:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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So definitely I'll need to spend more time improving my French pronunciation. Thanks
goodness there is a French phonology course in FSI webpage. My only experience with a francophone was with a girl that I met in a student house here in Chile, she was kind and helpful and she tried to explain me some issues in French pronunciation, however the fact she was a foreigner could have played an important role in her willingness. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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