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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 33 of 49 27 May 2011 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
OK, here's another observation: the most popular language books I've seen, and the vast majority of language teachers I have studied with or spoken to, do not teach articulatory phonetics to beginners. Those of us who propose early articulatory phonetics as a way to improve teaching and learning don't dispute the fact that most learners have poor accent -- in fact, we use it to support our argument! After all, if you don't teach something, how is anyone supposed to learn it? And (anecdotal, I know) the people I know with the best accents in foreign languages are the few that have consciously studied articulatory phonetics. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5190 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 35 of 49 28 May 2011 at 12:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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On another forum this man's origins are being discussed. He's actually English, but he pronounces a couple of phonemes in a slightly unusual way.
I think this shows how difficult (maybe impossible) it is to ever persuade native speakers that you are one of them. But second-language learners seldom have the same peer pressure at school to develop an accent which conforms, and they get input from all sorts of different sources with a variety of accents (e.g Michel Thomas speaking Spanish -eek!). If second language learners were exposed to a consistent accent and this was combined with some feedback mechanism, then I think a near-native accent would be possible. But there will always be something that gives you away, I think. EDIT: I wonder if natives might actually be more comfortable with a recogisable foreign accent than an almost-but-not-quite-native one. Edited by Andrew C on 28 May 2011 at 2:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ygangerg Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5318 days ago 100 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French Studies: German | Message 36 of 49 28 May 2011 at 12:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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I know a lot of speakers of English as a second language (that is, they learned as an adult [that is, excluding people who learned English as a second language at age 6 or 9]). I've never met anyone who learned English as an adult who had (I use this phrase because it's the one being thrown around on this thread) "perfect native pronunciation."
One close example is the actor Javier Bardem in, for example, the movie "No Country for Old Men." He uses an American accent, and he uses it exceptionally well, but "perfect" ain't [sic] perfect unless it's perfect. You know what I mean? That is to say, one can watch this actor doing a very believable American English accent, but an American English speaker will hear occasional "holes" or slips in the pronunciation. So: are we saying an adult language learner can never learn to pronounce a word perfectly? Because that's wrong; many can. However, as far as their on-the-fly English (or insert L2) having "perfect" native pronuciation... I've yet to see it happen. Edited by Ygangerg on 28 May 2011 at 12:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 6118 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes Speaks: German* | Message 37 of 49 28 May 2011 at 5:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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Rm. Ygan,
Have you seen a video of Jerry Dai? If so, what do you think of him? I believe there are some videos on youtube. He's not quite perfect, but I'd say he's near-native, and his problems do not reside in phonetic articulation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gon-no-suke Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6434 days ago 156 posts - 191 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Japanese, EnglishC2 Studies: Korean, Malay, Swahili | Message 38 of 49 28 May 2011 at 9:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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It seems that we cannot agree about adult pronunciation, but can we at least agree that Patricia Kuhl's research
* isn't about learning a L2 * doesn't say anything about the abilities of adults * presents no new data about pronunciation since a lot of people (including Dr Kuhl herself) seem to have these unscientific misconceptions. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6550 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 39 of 49 28 May 2011 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
Disagree. Was he even trying to sound American? If so, he didn't do a very good job of it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5130 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 40 of 49 28 May 2011 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Gotta agree with leosmith here. It was a pretty awful attempt at an American accent, if it indeed was an attempt. I see Ygangerg lists English as his/her native language, so this doesn't really apply to him or her, I suppose, but... My experience with people saying that an accent is authentic usually comes from non-native speakers. Whether it's a Spanish speaker saying his or her accent is an authentic American accent, or an American saying he or she has the perfect Spanish accent - their opinion is usually influenced by their own sense of accomplishment and not accurate. Is the accent close? Sure, but it's not error-free. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but that's been my experience. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful |
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