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Passing as a Native | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 25 of 35 16 February 2011 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
For decades, or as a child. Most children can pick up a local accent within months, and will soon adapt to their surroundings. Two films I have seen come to mind to. The first was "Shining Through" with Melanie Griffith, where she supposedly is able to work as a spy in Germany without anyone discovering her being American, because her mother was German. I do not buy that. I think any German would have unmasked her within minutes. The other film was "Unglorious Bastards" (with among other Brad Pitt) where one of the charachters, a Brit, passes himself off as German, and of course people start asking questions quickly, and although one of the other Germans assures everyone that she knows him personally, and that he just has a weird accent because he comes from a little village, he is caught because of his body language. Unglorious Bastards is by the way an absolute gem for anyone interested in languages. It is quite brutal, but I think one of the funniest scenes I have ever seen, from a liguistic point of view, was Brad Pitt being forced to put on display his horrible Italian (he tries to pass himself off as Italian) by a German whose Italian is extremely good. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 26 of 35 16 February 2011 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Did you "simply state" that or did you use the word "obsessed". Perhaps I am the one with an issue. If you didn't write that then I must be going completely mad, because when I read your post, I still see it... Or do you honestly feel that there's nothing offensive about using the term "obsessed" like that?
How so? I'm happy enough with people thinking I'm a native speaker but not knowing where I'm from.
I believe I've stated on several occassions that I see good pronunciation as an aid to noticing correct grammatical structures. I think you're charicaturing people here -- as Solfid says, it's not either/or, we want both.
As I always say, if you wait until you're fluent to work on your accent, it's a lot more difficult than if you get into good habits early.
It is a game and it's good fun. It's also a great way to measure your progress -- how long you can keep it up before you give yourself away. After all, people tend to be forgiving of your mistakes once they know you're a foreigner, so the "oh wait, you're not [whatever]" moment is the most honest and clear feedback you're likely to get.
Yup, that's the game -- hold off the moment of discovery as long as you can. It's a game you can always get better at. I always try to beat my personal best cycling to work, I do the same when meeting new people from overseas. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 27 of 35 16 February 2011 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Before TV became mainstream, most people wouldn't really know much about people from other parts of their own country. The general rule for spies trying to pass off as a different nationality was always to pretend to be from a region as far away as possible from where they were working -- people would then dismiss your mistakes as differences in local custom or dialect. If you were going to Bavaria, claim to be from Lower Saxony. If you were going to Leningrad, pretend to be from Siberia. If you were going to Newcastle, pretend to be Welsh or Cornish. 5 persons have 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 28 of 35 16 February 2011 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Yes, I did state that, and no offense was intended by it. But it makes you feel better, let me rephrase: I believe that too many people place too much importance on something that will never fully be achieved, outside of spending many years in the target country, at the expense of other, more important things, such as grammar, idioms and culture. Better?
I don't believe anyoone in this thread has stated it's an either/or thing, but I'll have to go back through the thread.
It may be one way to measure progress, but it's certainly not the only way, or even the best way, in my opinion. R. == 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 29 of 35 16 February 2011 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I don't know how many times we have to have this dreadful discussion. If some people believe that passing for native, fleetingly or permanently, is their purpose of learning a language, that is certainly a worthy goal. On the other hand, some people, including myself, believe that passing for native is not their goal and that the end result of learning a foreign language at an adult age can take other forms. I think both points of view can co-exist peacefully.
The only problem seems to be that some people on both sides of the divide seem to believe that their goal should be the only purpose of learning a language. I believe in linguistic hedonism. Do what makes you happy. Don't mind me and I won't mind you. 4 persons have 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 30 of 35 16 February 2011 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Yes, that sounds quite reasonable, but I still have problems believing that someone could pass as native, just from having a mother from the country. Even if we assume that they spoke German all the time together, and that she had no American accent, which in itself is a stretch of the imagination, it is precisely the little bits of language that changes over time that would give her away. I notice it myself when I speak French. What sounded cool in the mouth of a 14 year old in 1976 sounds most uncool from the mouth of a 48 year old in 2011. I remember a story from some years back, when a guy was stopped for speeding, and refused to give his driving liscense. It turned out that he was the son of Norwegian parents living in the States, and he was fluent in Norwegian,(although with a weird dialect) but had never heard the word before, since there were few cars when his parents left for the US. Hence the refusal to hand it over, since he did not know the word, and did not understand what he was asked for. 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 31 of 35 17 February 2011 at 5:07am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Although my position on trying to pass for a native speaker is quite clear, I would like to emphasize that in my opinion we all basically share the similar concrete objective of mastering the target language as best as possible. Obviously, the word best means different things to different people. I actually like what I call the romantic idea of speaking like a native. I fantasize being able to sound like someone I hear on Spanish radio or the television. But when I open my eyes and look in the mirror I say to myself, "Get real. At your age, there is no way in hell that you will ever speak like a native from Mexico City or from Madrid. Get over it." And the real problem is not actually sounding like a native, it's being able to use the language like a native.
I think a lot of people don't realize what it takes to really speak a language well. I take that back. Here at HTLAL, most people know how hard it is to arrive at a point where one feels truly comfortable in a language, let's say CEFR C2 and beyond. Something as simple as being able to talk to young children can be very challenging because it is not something that is often taught. Or take a slightly technical task like explaining how certain things work. So you speak language x well. Then explain to me how to play a game on a smartphone, how to change diapers on a baby, how a gas-electric car works, how to paint the walls of a house, how to cook a roast chicken, etc. Many of us may not know all the technical vocabulary surrounding all those activities even in our own languages. For example, we may not know what regenerative braking means when speaking of automobiles, but basically most people who grow up in modern society are exposed to a wide variety of terminological experiences and are able to express themselves with some degree of accuracy about certain common things, events or facts. And when we don't know the exact terms, we know how to use workarounds or synonymous terms. All of this forms the basis of the cultural knowledge that we incorporate into our speaking a language. This is exactly why even as advanced speakers of a foreign language we sometimes "run out of gas" when we have to talk about a simple subject that may be totally unfamiliar to us. For example, I would be very hard pressed if I had to explain how to drive a manual transmission car in Spanish, something that I could do spontaneously in French or English. And you want me to sound like a native Spanish speaker to boot? Not in this life. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6708 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 32 of 35 17 February 2011 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
So there we have already lowered the bar: we don't have to sound like a native speaker from exactly the spot where we stand, trying to impress some local person. It's enough to speak some other dialect like a native, - and maybe without touching 'risky' subjects like car repairs, semiotics or local gossip. The question is how much we really differ in the way we study languages. Some declare that their goal is to become as good as a (good) native speaker, others declare that they want to become as good as possible with the ressources that they can muster. Personally I have been in the situation where people mistook me for a native speaker, though not from their own region (or at least originally from somewhere else) - and only after having spent several days speaking the language in question. Yet I have never said that passing for a native is my goal because I know that I won't be able to allot the ressources necessary to keep up that level, including long immersion stays abroad. I think my position is close to that of s_allard:
Edited by Iversen on 17 February 2011 at 1:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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