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Curious thing about the accent... | ||
Tags: Accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5448 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes  Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 1 of 2 30 April 2010 at 1:29am | IP Logged |
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I've only recently started thinking more seriously about the accents (I'm a type of a language
learner who doesn't care about the accent if it doesn't prevent me from being understood). I've noticed one thing that I find quite interesting: In my native language (Serbo-Croatian) I pick up regional accents extremely easily and unintentionally. I do not even have to be in an immersion environment. It was happening to me to start changing the way I speak only from being in contact with people who speak differently. However, in my second language, English, even after 3.3 years of living in NZ, in a very immersion environment (living with my Kiwi partner for about 1.5y) - I'm completely stuck with some kind of alien accent (it doesn't necessarily give out where I'm from, but gives out that I am a foreigner straight away) and not even starting to pick up the accent that surrounds me. The only explanation I have for this is the fact that I had actually been told and taught how English sounds should be pronounced (although I've been taught wrong - most of the Serbian English teachers in small schools think that if they have taught you how to pronounce 'th', they are done with English phonetics...). So, because of this 'it should be pronounced this way' thing, my brain just refuses to change the way I speak. What do other people think about this? I know many people who has learned English in non- immersion environments, but from native speakers, and they seem to have much more native accents... So, does accent really comes to how we were originally taught when we started to learn a certain language? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5585 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 2 of 2 30 April 2010 at 3:18am | IP Logged |
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I guess so. In both German and Spanish, my accent is modeled after a native speaker who I listened to a lot.
In German it's the rappers Kollegah and Sido. (I form sentences like them, use slang like them, everything :D) And for Spanish it's between Julio Voltio, Tego Calderón, and Daddy Yankee. Most of my audio comes from music, and I typically sing along to the songs whenever I listen. (who doesn't!?) :D I've fooled several people with my Spanish speaking...just because of my accent. I owe it to music! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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