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Bilinguals and their accents | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5922 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 1 of 26 08 February 2010 at 4:45am | IP Logged | ||
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There are accents associated with knowing just one language. A German speaker learning
English will have an accent that can be identified as German. The same be said of a Chinese speaker or a Russian speaker. However, how does this situation change when you involve people knowing two languages? For example, I am bilingual with Spanish and English and I'd say that having both of those sound inventories has helped me with my Russian and French accents, but I still have an accent. What type of accent is it? Is it anything other than 'foreign'? How would the situation change if I were fluent in even more languages? This applies to people fluent in other languages, but not necessarily bilingual (I think of bilingual as knowing two languages natively). If you know, say, English, Danish, and German, what kind of accent would you have when learning another language? Assuming you can't do all of the sounds in the language, would you just end up with a really bizarre accent? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5575 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 2 of 26 08 February 2010 at 5:31am | IP Logged | ||
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I have the same native languages as you. I've been told I have a very clear neutral
accent when speaking Russian, my accent in French I've been told is hard to identify though sometimes the Hispanic accent comes through a little, as does an occasional "American" sounding word. What kind of feedback have you received so far lynxrunner? Edited by LatinoBoy84 on 08 February 2010 at 5:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5922 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 3 of 26 09 February 2010 at 4:49am | IP Logged | ||
I've been told my Russian is pretty good except for the 'y' sound, failure to palatize some consonants, and my silibants are "too strong" (strange, I thought they weren't strong enough). I don't have any particular comments about my French, only that apparently it deserves 3 stars out of 5. I know I have an advantage over monolingual Spanish and English speakers (or English speakers that learned Spanish later on and vice versa), so I don't have as much of an accent as I could have. I just wonder what kind of accent I have. It seems that we both have relatively good accents but with oddities here and there which vaguely give us away. I understand what you mean by occasionally pronouncing a word as too Spanish or too America. I still struggle with "roi", and some of those Russian words with consonant clusters end up sound extremely odd. Bilinguals! Polyglots! People who have heard other polyglots speaking languages! Feel free to comment on this thread; I'd totally appreciate your comment, being that this topic interests me a lot. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gal Triglot Newbie Israel Joined 5464 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Biblical Hebrew, Modern Hebrew*, English Studies: Arabic (Levantine) | Message 4 of 26 09 February 2010 at 10:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Unfortunately I'm not a bilingual, but I've met a 30 year old native russian speaker who moved, with her family, to states when she was 10 years old and now she's learning hebrew. She's got an american accent par excellence.. Edited by gal on 09 February 2010 at 10:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| GauchoBoaCepa Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5419 days ago 172 posts - 199 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish | Message 5 of 26 09 February 2010 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been told that my English has a bit of Scandinavian accent though I've tried to put on a real American accent. Edited by GauchoBoaCepa on 09 February 2010 at 12:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5524 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 6 of 26 10 February 2010 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I’m not a true bilingual person but I have been speaking English since I was very small. I don’t have a Dutch accent in any foreign language which is very odd. People usually have a hard time placing my accent, the closest thing they can get is usually ‘something European’.
I dislike accents, if I learn a language I always try to be on par with native pronunciation. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5677 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 7 of 26 03 March 2010 at 1:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I sometimes wonder if having a slight accent is better than not having one. Personally,
I'm more impressed with someone who speaks grammatically flawless English with a slight accent than I am with someone who is flawless in both regards. When you don't have an accent, you're judged by native standards; by consequence, you get no special credit for having learned the language. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 8 of 26 03 March 2010 at 3:10am | IP Logged | ||
I would have to disagree. I think that people would be more surprised to discover that you are not a native speaker without an accent than they would be if you spoke flawlessly with a slight accent. However, in everyday situations where you would not reveal that it's not your native language, I could understand how that would make people notice and recognize your accomplishment rather than just looking at you as a native speaker. Edited by ruskivyetr on 03 March 2010 at 3:12am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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