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Passing as a Native | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6277 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 33 of 35 17 February 2011 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Actors can often put on convincing accents, generally with help from voice coaches. It is probably very tiring and not something they can do easily when the camera isn't rolling.
On the subject of people pretending to be from a different area when they are "behind enemy lines", I recall an incident in a Sven Hassel novel set on the Eastern Front in WW2. Some Germans are behind Soviet lines and encounter a Russian. The one German who speaks good but not flawless Russian is asked where he came from. He thinks quickly and says Yeniseisk, a remote town in Siberia. The Russian accepts that as an explanation for why his accent sounds a little strange. 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 34 of 35 17 February 2011 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
And by contrast, you have raised the bar so high that even many native speakers cannot pass as native speakers. My normal accent and way of speaking does not reveal where I'm from in much detail at all -- most English speakers can place me as Scottish, but no more accurately than that, and some have mistaken me as English, Irish or even Australian. A friend of mine from my university days spent half his childhood in Wales, and half in Scotland. His accent in English is neither a Scottish or Welsh, but I would certainly consider him a native speaker! Besides, my point about spies wasn't that it was a target for learners, but just a statement of the norm in spy circles, and a reason why the film mentioned wasn't so far-fetched. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5287 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian | Message 35 of 35 17 February 2011 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Interesting exchange. I can't help wondering whether there aren't some nuances here which you are both missing. Granted it's pure gut-feeling on my part, but I honestly think that the average adult would be able to distinguish fairly quickly between a native speaker from another (unknown) region of his/her own country and a highly fluent foreigner who was just pretending to be from some (again unknown) region. I think it's likely that there would be little give-aways - things which just wouldn't quite ring true for a native. I struggle to buy the idea that a spy from, for example, East Germany could have turned up in 1950s Glasgow and fooled most of the local people into thinking that he was from, say, Exeter. I reckon someone like this would have been rumbled pretty darned quickly! Edited by Romanist on 17 February 2011 at 6:02pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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