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How to get a native accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 25 of 47 13 April 2010 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I won't claim to have perfect accent in any language, but a useful level in many - plus a reasonable ability to adapt when I'm in a situation where I actually can hear a language spoken around me. However with those reservations I have to following points to make:
Getting a good accent is not fundamentally different from learning vocabulary or idiomatic expressions: there is only one reliable source, namely the utterances by native or nearnative speakers. BUT to suck all information out of those sources you either have to be a natural mimicry talent (= genius) or you should spend some time preparing for the task. In the case of learning how to pronounce a language: you should go through some lists of the sounds you can expect, then listen for these sounds in recordings (if you can't get someone to say the words for you). I like to have a transcript for this purpose. One thing that is important is to concentrate on the sounds and not be tempted to guess the meaning. If the meaning doesn't comes automatically to you in a flash it would distract you to think about it. There will be other occasions for that game. This is almost the same thing that I have written about the art of understand spoken sources like radio and television: when you are just below the treshold of understanding the best thing you can do is to forget about the meaning and just sort out the words and phrases, - when you know enough words and constructions then the meaning will come automatically. And yes, I know it sounds like a paradox. Listening for sounds is easier if you understand something about phonetics. Unfortunately this discipline is permeated by Latin nomenclature that won't help you before you already know the subject well. But try to visualize the descriptions - tongue and lip position, intonational patterns etc. Seeing these things as images instead of descriptions in words may be a way to circumvent the ugly Latin terminology. And finally you should of course speak. But personally I get tired from talking, so I just think instead. And therefore my accent won't ever be perfect, because my muscles and my mouth positioning won't get the language specific training they crave. I have tried ProfArguelles' shadowing, but for me it only functions in very short bursts. Edited by Iversen on 14 April 2010 at 8:21am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 26 of 47 13 April 2010 at 1:30pm | IP Logged | ||
The difficulty lies in knowing exactly what to mimic and, as you say, people either do it instinctively, or academically (the first being infinitely easier, but if you're stuck needing to do it the second way, the learning curve is rather steep). Getting each basic sound down is not the hard part. The real difficulty resides in figuring out exactly what constitutes a distinction in the language and understanding how far from the basic production you are allowed to stray until it becomes another sound. So nasal consonants make the preceding vowel nasal? Ok, but how much nasality is not enough and how much is too much? French p is unaspirated and lies somewhere between the English p and b? Ok, but just how close to b is it? Where exactly does a p become b? Isn't there a bit of aspiration after i? How much? You have long and short vowels? Just when does an elongated short vowel become a shortened long vowel? When language X has 3 vowels that fit just a little outside of the realm of 2 vowels in your own language, firguring out exactly where each begins and ends, and how the production of each is influence by neighbouring sounds is not only hard to acquire, but it's actually painstaking to reproduce in phonological terms. IPA is good for indicating phonemes, but can sometimes be less than ideal when you need to be very precise with tiny distinctions or regional differences. Edited by Arekkusu on 13 April 2010 at 1:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 27 of 47 13 April 2010 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||
I hate to say it, but wikipedia is actually a reasonable reference for this. Some of the descriptions on individual pages are unclear, but a few clicks on related pages often sorts out the confusion. Some of the pages are also complemented by decent diagrams, which as Iversen says are a lot more accessible than the dense Latin descriptions in most books. 3 persons have 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 28 of 47 13 April 2010 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I usually find a favorite person in that language (actor, music artist etc) and model my accent COMPLETELY after theirs. I sound like Daddy Yankee or Tego Calderón in Spanish, and like the German rapper Kaas or Kollegah in German. I've watched TONS of interviews and movies to model their accent. I'm not perfect but I'm close :)
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 29 of 47 13 April 2010 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
And then there is the difficulty of properly assessing our own accent, or managing to sollicit a truly honest and accurate evaluation from native speakers. Edited by Arekkusu on 13 April 2010 at 5:15pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5645 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 30 of 47 13 April 2010 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Recording yourself is awesome for hearing yourself though; I've tried it a couple of times to see what it sounded like in German. It was not a fun experience :D When I speak my accent sounds (to me) ok, not good but not bad. When I played it back.....
PLAN (for June): Extensive listening, lots of recording myself and comparing it to native speech, phonetic study from Wikipedia (and also this book if I can afford it) and pick a German role model... What do you think of Johann König? :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 31 of 47 14 April 2010 at 8:34am | IP Logged | ||
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IPa is the best thing you can imagine for 'writing' the sounds of an utterance in some language, but only when you already know all about phonetics and all the symbols have become etched into your brain. When I try to learn for instance the wowels of another language I use a classical diagram (polygon) with the front-back dimension horizontally and the open-closed dimension vertically. I then compare the position of the sounds (and with more experience: the range of 'sound-areas' for each phoneme) with those of Danish or related languages. The same with consonants, though here it is often guesswork what actually happens inside the mouths of other people - books or homepages about phonetics sometimes contain useful X-ray photos or precise descriptions, but I don't have them when I'm travelling around). Finally intonation can be seen as a curve above the sentences, and listening to people while thinking in curves is really the only way I know to study this aspect of language in a conscious way as intonation isn't marked in writing. So if I sometimes don't hear what people say it may be because I'm analyzing the way they say it.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 32 of 47 14 April 2010 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | ||
Do you painstakingly note even the fine differences such as the nuances in the English n in "unpaack", "unthinkable", "confused"? I don't think most people note these differences -- they either do not notice them or else pick them up instinctively. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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