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Authentic Regional Accent in Target Lang | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 17 of 44 15 April 2015 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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One of the interesting things about most contemporary dialect phenomenon is that there is often an important
social class component. Quite often certain local features are stigmatized as uncouth, uneducated, old-fashioned and lacking of prestige. This is particularly striking in the United Kingdom where, seen from a North American perspective, accent seems to be of paramount social importance. In North American English, we see that as one climbs the social ladder, certain dialect features are attenuated. We note for example that American newscasters tend to use a form of Broadcast standard US English. Often we see news programs where the reporter or broadcaster may be perfectly understandable but ordinary people being interviewed are often difficult to understand. This probably happens in most languages. Certain language forms are considered more prestigious or appropriate than others. For example, in Québécois, I would recommend extreme caution when using some the the pronunciations of what is written -oi- or -oy- outside of a very informal context. And even then, it would sound very incongruous, and even perhaps disrespectful, for a foreigner to try to imitate things like moé pi toé and à swère. In the United States, Southern American English and its relative, African American Vernacular English, have features that are often stereotyped as less prestigious. This, of course, does not in any way diminish the legitimacy of these forms of expression. I would simply suggest that learners of English exercise a bit of caution when choosing the form of English they want to imitate. Edited by s_allard on 15 April 2015 at 4:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4641 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 18 of 44 15 April 2015 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been reading this thread with interest, and also the separate one about picking a regional dialect in Italian. I think it is a nice idea, and if 1e4e6 manages to do this I take my hat of. I myself have never gone down that route though. In the languages I speak well, I mostly have a neutral accent, close to what is considered "standard" in the respective languages.
I lived in London for five years, and when I came to France, some non-British colleagues would make a comment about my very "posh" English accent, so to the extent that I picked up an accent in London, it was the Queen's English spoken by BBC reporters rather than that of my British colleagues who mostly spoke Estuary English. As for my Spainsh, I spent two years in Salamanca, where they supposedly speak a very pure Castilian. That may be the case for the highly educated university professors there, but the "salmantino" accent is actually quite different from standard Spainsh, particulary the intonation, but there are also phonetic differences. Again, my Spanish is pretty close to what you will her from newsreaders on RTVE, but I still won't be taken for a native. There are always nuances in intonation, vowel quality etc. which give you away. Obviously, had I spent two years in Buenos Aires instead of in Spain, I would probably speak some sort of Argentinian Spanish, that would make sense then. The reason I would still go for a pretty neutral version is that I always think there is a risk that as a foreigner, you could be accused of mocking the regional accent. In a somewhat similar way, if I suddenly tried to speak as someone from Bergen, being myself from Oslo, people in Bergen would think I made fun of them. After all, I would never be able to speak it 100% correctly. I can't even do my parent's West Norwegian dialect well, although I spent all the summers of my childhood in that part of the country. By the way, talking about Bergen:
In Bergen, there is certainly a class distinction and two distinct sociolects, so-called "penbergensk" (approximately "Nice Bergenese") and "gatebergensk" (Street Bergenese"). Penbergensk is normally associated with the Bergen "bourgeoisie" and is much closer to standard Norwegian bokmål while gatebergensk is more working class and closer to the dialects of the surrounding country side. Here is an example from Norwegian Wikipedia of the same sentence in the two sociolects: I do not know when she will arrive. Penbergensk: Jei vet ikke når hun kommar. Gatebergensk: E' vet'sje ko'ti' hon komma'. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4292 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 19 of 44 15 April 2015 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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That Bergen dialect looks interesting, quite different from the Bokmål definitely.
Unfortunately when I visited my level was not good enough to notice the difference. But I think I shall look into it now, especially the gatebergensk. Traditionally in the UK, there has always been an accent-class type of distinction. However, in my generaiton (<30), at least I notice that people do not seem to care as much. No one really says, "Look at that bloke/girl, s/he speaks with such a [derogatory adjective] accent" unless they really have been engrained from their society to act that way. I have spoken with people with all ranges, in university I used to eat dinner with a group with people that came from working class on government assistance to those who owned more than one (big) house and a farm, and we generally got along without ever feeling class divides. Of course, this mostly applies to people born after perhaps, 1980. Those born before may have the older stereotypes though. It might be a bit exaggerated overseas, in terms of the UK and its class/accent divide in present day. These are the types of barrios where I try to model my accents if I want to use a Rioplatense accent. Both are in the "Zona Oeste". Should you be familiar with BA, this is about 10 km from the Ezeiza aeroport: Una vueltita por Haedo La villa que no te mostraría ni TN ni C5N Carlos Gardel, Morón Caminando Haedo Caseros, Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires Festejo en Caseros Copa Mundial 2014 Hinchada de la tribuna, Caseros Zona Sur: Caminando por Avellaneda Edited by 1e4e6 on 15 April 2015 at 9:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 20 of 44 15 April 2015 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
If somebody tries to mock a regional accent, they'd better be damn good at doing it first -- if not necessarily offensive, it may end up being *unintentionally* funny :) I'm a neutral accent guy even in my native language for two reasons (you might hear me speak with a variety of heavy regional accents if class considerations are floating in the air, but that's another story): First, I generally aim to be understood by the broadest possible public. Assuming I could do 100% perfect accents, which I can't even though I think I am good at it, why would I want to reduce the amount of people who will understand me, or make the task unnecessarily more difficult? Second, even as a native there's a slim chance you can do accents properly, so let alone in a foreign language where you struggle with a different sound system from the start. I'd aim to lose any traces of a foreign accent before even trying to go regional, unless that were my only pronunciation model. Third (of the two, yes): I'm too lazy and I know too well how tricky accents are and how we all can delude ourselves about our abilities, no matter the level, so why bite more than I can chew and make a fool of myself too soon? -- occasions for that will arise spontaneously and aplenty anyway. Example: there seems to be a lot of people at HTLAL -even some who should know better- who think word-final 's's are simply dropped in Andalusian accents of Spanish. Well, that's not so, and for example 'unas naranjas' (some oranges) is not pronounced the same way as 'una naranja' (one orange), although it may seem so to the insufficiently trained ear, including many natives. I have a native friend from Madrid who thought, after twenty years of living here and being aware that there is a difference, that she had finally mastered it. So, to all locals' amusement whenever we tell this story, she entered a shop, asked for some oranges trying her very best accent, and, of course, she was handed ONE orange by the shop lady :) I'm not saying a foreigner can't do better than that, or that you shouldn't try, but chances are it will stay out of your league for longer than you care. Edited by mrwarper on 15 April 2015 at 9:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 21 of 44 16 April 2015 at 4:13am | IP Logged | ||
I'm not so sure that class and accent distinctions are not as important in the UK today than in past years. Maybe the situation is changing. Is their less social inequality today than before. I'll let the UK members of HTLAL weigh in on this. On a different note, I looked at all the videos from Argentina. Unless I am mistaken, only one video has any significant amount of talking from, I assume, a local resident. So, if I understand correctly, this could be an example of the accent that this poster is trying to imitate or emulate. I'm not familiar with Rioplatense accents, but I think we can assume that the accent here is just one example of a certain kind of Rioplatense accent. In accordance with the poster's other statements, we can assume that this accent here is some sort of working- class, lumpenproletariat accent. This is probably not my cup of tea, but I see nothing wrong with trying to imitate this accent. I'm still scratching my head as to why would one want to focus on this accent, as opposed to, let's say, the speech of a more educated or cultured resident of Buenos Aires. But, as they say, different strokes for different folks. But the more fundamental issue is, in my mind, what one does with this accent. There is no talk about learning or mastering the grammar and vocabulary that also make up this sociolect. Is the point of learning this accent to be able to fit in effortlessly with the residents of these neighbourhoods? But what are you going to say? Maybe it's just about collecting accents and doing impressions. For example, in Québécois, one could learn the vernacular language that is highly stigmatized. It is very important to know that many native Québécois speakers do not use this vernacular language, at least in public. For example, just today the rector of Université de Montréal gave a speech to the local Chamber of Commerce. You can bet your bottom dollar that he did not start his speech with the Québécois equivalent of "Hi y'all. I be mighty happy to be getting down with you folks." I would say that the rector probably spoke a form of Standard Educated Québécois, something quite different from Québécois Vernacular French. Which variety is more useful? Well, it depends on what you want to do. And that's the fundamental question: what's the point of all this? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3538 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 22 of 44 16 April 2015 at 4:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Ogrim, I have noticed Swedes and Norwegians have an amazing ability to take on English accents - whether they're UK or American accents. Usually as I mentioned before something gives them away, but by far they are the most convincing in my experience.
I remember I was working in a touristy area a few years ago and we had a customer come in that had a very strong British accent that sounded like it was Scottish or maybe Welsh (I am not too familiar with the various types of accents from over there), anyways while I was processing his order he was speaking with his friend and I thought wow when they speak with each other it's even harder to understand what they're saying. I was amazed and thought it was like he was speaking another language, turns out he was! He was speaking Norwegian and apparently he hadn't even spent that much time in the UK - just a sort of student exchange for 6months or a year; something like that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 23 of 44 16 April 2015 at 4:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Register depends on social context yes, s_allard. Thanks for that enlightening
revelation! I don't try to forcibly sound educated; I try to sound educated when I'm delivering a formal speech, and casual on a night out on the town. That's a separate skill, though; namely taxing social situations correctly and delivering the appropriate response, which is partly a linguistic problem (because you may lack the necessary stylistic knowledge) but partly also simply a human one. You simply need to know both registers for full proficiency in a language. And I will use colloquial registers on purpose very often when speaking to indicate that I'm not a stuck up prick and would like to talk like friends. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4891 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 24 of 44 16 April 2015 at 5:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's common for people to have a regional accent without having native-like
fluency, especially when they've learned the language as much through immersion as through books and classes. I see this with immigrants all the time - they'll have certain inflections that indicate where they learned English, whether it be Britain, the States, or Australia. And when I used to speak Indonesian people would comment that I had a "Sundanese" accent - even though I wasn't close to having native-like skills in the language. It would take some serious skills to be able to switch between accents, though! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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