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Passing as a Native | ||
Tags: Native Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Raye Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5159 days ago 37 posts - 51 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: DutchB1 | Message 17 of 35 16 February 2011 at 1:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I’ll try to click around to find some of the past discussions of “passing” so I don’t repeat anything that’s been discussed to death. But if I had to pretend to be another nationality to save my life at a border crossing during wartime, I hope I could pass well enough to nail every shibboleth the agents threw at me. I just don’t know whether I’d want the agents to be people who don’t get out much or people who do. Who’s more likely to let a nonnative pass: someone who’s not around many foreigners, or someone who’s around lots?
I’ve had the OP’s experience after short exchanges in Spanish: “Are you from [X-Spanish-speaking country]? No? Then where are your parents from?” But in my case I think it’s a pretty ambiguous question. The person could just as easily mean, “You aren’t Mexican like everyone else here, so what strange/other/non-Mexican thing are you?” Not to mention that a sentence or two more and the game is completely over, anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 18 of 35 16 February 2011 at 6:59am | IP Logged | ||
I think this says it all. If you want to pass for a native speaker, this is what you have to do. Nothing wrong with this, but not everybody shares this goal. The fundamental issue here seems to be "sounding" like a native. In other words, it's all about achieving a native-like phonetic performance. What is not mentioned is the actual ability to use the language like a native. This is where things fall apart very quickly. So, in essence passing for native is in most cases giving an impressive first impression. This is not always very difficult. As I'm sure many people here have experienced, it's one thing to be able to ask a question in a credible manner, it's another thing to understand the answer. That's where the problems arise. Just yesterday, I had the occasion to use some of my rusty Italian. I've been told in the past that it sounds quite good. The problem is that after I used up the few phrases that I can use with great polish I barely had a clue of what was replied to me. It made for a very laborious conversation. It was rather quite embarrassing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5339 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 19 of 35 16 February 2011 at 9:36am | IP Logged | ||
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These discussions always puzzle me. If I learn a language I will always attempt to make both my accent and my grammar and vocabulary as good as possible. I do not set out saying. "Hm. Let me think, should I focus on accent or functionality?" I want both!
Obviously, it will be very hard to get a perfect acccent in a foreign language if you are sitting in your home town, but I still do not get this either/or thing about accent. And it is not about hiding where you are from, it is just about doing it as good as you can. I will always try to have a lot of oral input, but I am of course aware of the fact that I will never have a native accent in Russian, because I do not get enough input. Even my English accent, though perfectly understandable, will never be native, because it is a mix of all the different American and English accents I hear. If you really want to have a native accent, I think you need to stay in the country for some time, preferably before you are 15. I agree with s allard when it comes to the uselessness of pronouncing a few sentences very well, and not be able to follow it up. I used to be a little parrot when I was younger, which always got me into trouble. In Israel I would say "Lo medaberet ivrit" (I do not speak Hebrew) in perfect Hebrew, which they of course then did not believe, and continued speaking Hebrew to me, and also in Germany as an 11 year old, I would say "Ich verstehe kein deutch" with a pronunciation which made everybody speak German to me. These are however exceptions. Usually you have a heavy accent until you speak the language fairly well. I never understand why we are even debating this. Who sets our to have a bad accent? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 16 February 2011 at 9:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5598 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 20 of 35 16 February 2011 at 10:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, this forum is for discussions on such topics and it wouldn't be very interesting
if we all thought the same thing. As some people with a differing viewpoint have acknowledged, they couldn't pass for a native for more and a sentence or two or maybe a couple of minutes. Whilst it's not the case I would ever set out to have a bad accent (quite the opposite in fact), I think the point is more that is it really worth the effort to go from the stage of being fluent but having a bit of an accent to being able to pass as a native with your accent? Like I said in my previous post, if was at the former stage, then this would be something I would maybe acquire over an extended time naturally but not something that would particularly worry about if I am already able to communicate effectively. A final thought, I've yet to hear the definitive accent of a country. Each country is made up of various accents and to concentrate on one could potentially have detrimental effects as people often (wrongly, it has to be said) have intellectual abilities and other characteristics assumed purely on their accent in the first instance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Meelämmchen Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5088 days ago 214 posts - 249 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 21 of 35 16 February 2011 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would say the accent spoken by the top news anchor men and women is pretty much the standard accent. You can't go wrong with that.
Sorry to ask a Hebrew question here (@ Solfrid Cristin): is it ok to omit the pronoun in present tense's first person? Only saw it at the second person present tense and in past tense first and second singular and plural. Edited by Meelämmchen on 16 February 2011 at 12:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5135 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 22 of 35 16 February 2011 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | ||
I think striving for a native-like accent is a good thing, no question. But "passing" - the term being thrown around most often here - sort of gives the impression that it's a game. And as a few people have said, it's not that hard to play that game for a couple sentences. But for an adult language learner to keep it up for any length of time is damn difficult and takes years of living in the target language environment and most often will still have traces of non-nativeness, even if it's not immediately obvious to listeners what exactly that non-nativeness is. By the time a person is able to pull off a native-like or near-native accent for an extended length of time and in any situation, they'll most likely be at a point with the language that they re no longer concerned with "passing". R. == Edited by hrhenry on 16 February 2011 at 12:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5339 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 23 of 35 16 February 2011 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||
Oops. Did I forget the "Ani"? It should of course be with the pronoun. I guess I am too influenced by Spanish. Thanks for reminding me. It says a lot about my Hebrew that I do not even remember the one sentence I used to know properly. Definitely a need for a Hebrew challenge next year!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5674 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 24 of 35 16 February 2011 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Except for people who have lived in-country for decades, I have never met anybody who can
speak a foreign language without being detected as a foreigner within a minute. It is not just a matter of accent, but also of ever-changing idiomatic speech and cultural background. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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