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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 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 41 of 44 19 April 2015 at 5:07am | IP Logged |
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robarb's and tarvos's points are well taken. Attaining high phonetic performance without the underlying grammar
and vocabulary can create problems. Of course, the question here is how important is it to really sound like a native, especially if one is interested in learning a highly stigmatized sociolect. For example, where I live there is a local variety of Québécois Vernacular French traditionally called le joual. It is actually a somewhat stereotyped variety of French with many non-standard features of phonology, grammar and vocabulary. It is considered bad French and a sign of lack of education and sophistication. Is this the kind of French that the OP is interested in learning? I don't know for sure but it seems possible. Is this a good idea? Again, the fundamental question is: What is the purpose of this? Are we talking just about the phonetics for collection of accents? Or, are we talking about learning to really speak like and with natives? I can imagine various valid reasons for wanting to learn this variety of Québécois. For example, one may be teaching a course on French phonetics. Or maybe to work as an undercover police officer. At the same time, I would advise great caution because you should be aware of the very negative perceptions associated with the speech variety. Do you really want to come across as uncouth and uneducated. Or, as robarb has pointed out, do you want to risk offending people who are only too aware of how much their speech is stigmatized. I guess the real question to the OP is why is it so important to actually speak a negatively-perceived language variety when there are other varieties that are more neutral or more better perceived? I have nothing against speaking with plenty of obscenities, swear words, non-standard grammar and slang but is that the right image you want to project to all the people you meet? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 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 42 of 44 19 April 2015 at 5:26am | IP Logged |
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You can speak a dialect without necessarily cursing or using obscenities.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 43 of 44 19 April 2015 at 6:22am | IP Logged |
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The neutral version, if you mean like RP or just "standard" Italian, or RTVE-style
Peninsular Spanish for Spain or Univisión-style Spanish for Latin America, is fine, I think that most people learn sometihng like this in classrooms or courses, but as I said before, it has no real roots like someone from Ramos Mejía in Zona Oeste of Buenos Aires, or Atocha or Chamartín in Madrid. Likewise, the CBC French news or Radio Québec, France24 have no real roots, i.e. you cannot say that person is from this barrio/arrondisement, this socioeconomic barrier, etc. I do not mind neutral, but I certainly would not try to go above and do posh. I really do not like speaking RP nor CBC-style Peter Mansbridge/Amanda Lang or NBC-style Brian Williams General Canadian or General American, all of which I can do in my native English. I can do pure Manc, Geordie, and Bay Area accents in English from living there if I really want to, but if I had to learn English I would probably choose something specific like that were it not my native language. Since I do not come from an upper class or higher class type of background, doing an accent from Palermo/Recoleta/Núñez from Buenos Aires, or Westmount in Montréal, or the western area right outside of the "ring" in Paris, and their accents are not very interesting to me, nor do they correspond to me. It would make more sense to find a specific accent that corresponds to my own background, and that would have to be from a lower-income background area, like Haedo/Avellaneda/Ramos Mejía/Caballito/Quilmes/San Martín in Buenos Aires, La Barceloneta/Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Sherbrooke in QC. Such accents give more information about the speaker than the neutral version. It is true that like in some of the above videos, the a few speakers curse almost every sentence like the bloke who kept saying, "boludo", "pelotudo", "carajo", "puto", "mierda", "pedazo de gil", "bobo", "la concha", "me jode", "cabrón", and one guy managed to use half of the words in about 10 seconds, but that does not mean that everyone has to speak like that. I certainly do not speak like that. There was another, amongst all of the others, who needed subtitles, for «No es nada raro» because it sounded like, «Che ¿n'é naa waa, eh?» but it does not mean that everyone has to make their speech that unintelligble. A bit like this barrio. Edited by 1e4e6 on 19 April 2015 at 8:55am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 44 of 44 19 April 2015 at 7:51am | IP Logged |
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Of course, I know that one can speak a dialect without using obscenities or swear words, but I was referring to
the Québec Vernacular French that is particularly rich in swear words and obscenities that are often used for emphasis and not necessarily as obscenities. I think I see what is going on here. Since the OP is not of an upper class background they believe that it would be best to seek out a language variety that is more in keeping with their authentic class origin. Fair enough. Let's say one has a regional accent in L1, then it would make sense to seek out a regional accent in L2. Why not? I'm not against the idea at all. My caveats are two-fold. First of all, as I have already pointed out, certain language varieties may be associated with very negative attitudes in certain contexts. This is not to say that all regional language varieties provoke negative attitudes. There are dozens of youtube videos on American accents and for those of other languages. For people learning English, which accent should they choose? Sure, there are lots of reasons for wanting to choose a certain accent but why make your life complicated by learning a stigmatized variety because you feel that it corresponds to your background? For example, if you decide to speak with a strong Brooklyn accent, keep in mind that this is definitely considered a low-class accent. The other reason for choosing one' s target accent carefully is the use you will be making of the language. One reason for choosing a relatively neutral accent that is let's say a middle of the road or middle-class accent is that it does not provoke all the negative attitudes that may come with the extreme accents (both high and low). This may be an extreme example, but if you want to work in the spoken media in North America, you should not have a strong Brooklyn or Southern accent. In teaching, it probably doesn't matter. As I pointed out with my example of joual, if you want to sound uneducated, unsophisticated and definitely low- class, this is the way to go. If you are comfortable with this image of yourself in Quebec French, then go for it. Another reason for thinking this choice of accent through is that acquiring these accents is not easy and in the process one might appear to be mocking their speakers. Frankly, I think that it is extremely difficult for adult learners to come very close to speaking the vernacular like a native. So, I believe that most people end up with some hybrid accent or with a good accent and nothing to say. The idea that one can just choose and pick up an accent 6000 kilometers from where it is spoken and just using youtube videos is in my mind preposterous. This is why I suggested a video log so that everybody can see the kind of progress being made. Edited by s_allard on 19 April 2015 at 2:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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