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The importance of a good accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5168 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 73 of 255 13 December 2010 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I'm not sure to what degree one can work to perfect their accent AFTER they learned the language to a proficient level. If it didn't bother you for years, you're not going to start caring about it all of a sudden.
To me, aiming for the right pronunciation from the start -- with the kind of knowledge you acquire when you listen to native speakers and mimic them the best way you can (yes, it involves a certain degree of acting) -- is a booster for fluency. The whole language, including its vocabulary and grammar, was forged in this phonological system and without it, you are dancing with 2 left feet. The kinds of mechanisms one would use to reproduce native accents turn out to be effective ways to learn whole languages -- listening, mimicking, internalizing and naturally producing the language. Edited by Arekkusu on 13 December 2010 at 9:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5235 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 74 of 255 13 December 2010 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
That I don't want to bother. I see it as a waste of time in my situation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5168 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 75 of 255 13 December 2010 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Hmm... I did, didn't I... ;) Seriously, though, I meant that we do not ignore parts of languages deliberately in order to learn more from other languages. Edited by Arekkusu on 13 December 2010 at 9:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5168 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 76 of 255 13 December 2010 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Hmm... Then I see why the most important question for people like you is "why", as opposed to "how". I tried to answer in my previous post. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5798 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 77 of 255 13 December 2010 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
This is completely untrue. I can pronounce every sound in Hindi if I'm taught the word in written form (in the academic transliteration), but I cannot hear with any degree of confidence the full distinction between b, p, bh and ph. The bilabial plosive have two dimensions of distinction, voiced vs unvoiced (b vs p) and aspirated vs unaspirated (b vs bh and p vs ph). There's 4 sounds where English has 2. And I'm totally stumped by trying to hear their Ts and Ds. With T and D there's a not only the distinctions between voiced and unvoiced and between aspirated and unaspirated to think about, there's also dental vs retroflex (t vs T). That gives us 8 sounds (t, d, th, dh, T, D, TH, DH) where English has 2. I can pronounce all of these, but I can't hear them. (I believe I would learn to hear them if I started learning Hindi properly, but that remains to be seen. I also believe that learning to pronounce these sounds has helped me with every language I have learned since. Gaelic, for example, has a distinction between aspirated and unaspirated consonants, but voicing is non-phonemic. I read this, I learned to speak based on that distinction, and now when I hear an unknown word spoken, I generally have a good idea how to spell it.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5217 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 78 of 255 13 December 2010 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Really, I think the debate about importance of native-like pronunciation has come full circle. Can't we agree that if native-like performance is important for you, then by all means focus on it. At the same time, can't we agree that for other people less than native-like pronunciation can also be satisfying? What's the problem? It's not as if it's either sounding like a native or being unintelligible. And, as I have already said, I would go so far as to suggest that cultivating or retaining a foreign accent in the target language can be charming and attractive. I've always felt that most people think a little accent coupled with GOOD GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY --sorry for shouting--is rather cute. I've always found that people are really impressed by the fact that an obvious foreigner (by the accent) can have such mastery of the language. If I sound like a native nobody is really impressed until they find out that I'm not a native. Then they are impressed for sure. But the danger is that if I pass truly for native then I'm just like everybody else. A westerner speaking perfect Mandarin or Japanese impresses everybody because of the visible contrast between physical appearance and language proficiency. If that person were native Chinese or Japanese, nobody would be particularly impressed. For me the real issue is how to use my limited time. I'm a big fan of grammar and vocabulary, not because I think pronunciation is not important or that I've given up improving my articulation. Of course not. I think all of us who actually attempt to speak the language are always making an effort to improve our pronunciation. It's just that some of us want to concentrate on pumping up our vocabulary and honing our grammar skills. Maybe it's just a question of learning sequence. Some people are concentrating on perfecting their pronunciation now. Others are working on their grammar. At a later date priorities can change. We really don't have a problem. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5798 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 79 of 255 13 December 2010 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Question: how comfortable with Spanish were you before you went to Buenos Aires.
It looks to me like you're only against working on accent because your experience of accent work is based on bad teaching. Mindless listen and repeat is a poor way to learn accent -- it focus's on the superficial details of accent (the way Lucas would use the word "accent") rather than the structure that the accent hangs off. By listen-and-repeat, you can get an initially impressive accent, but if it's not built on a solid understanding of the underlying phonology of the language, it's always going to be of limited effectiveness. Conscious work on making all the phonetic distinctions takes a little bit of effort at to begin with, but it's a lot less work than you think....
I think the problem here is that little word "bother". You believe that it requires an additional effort. It requires effort, but in my experience it is actual easier to get that rich social, cultural, professional and emotional life in the long run if you focus on pronunciation early on. A better understanding of the sound system makes it easier to learn new words, and makes it easier to distinguish between known words. For example, someone who never learns the difference between SH and TCH in English may mishear the phrase "chip on your shoulder" as "ship on your shoulder". And if that person can't hear the difference between "ih" and "ee", then it could become "sheep on your shoulder". Someone with that heavy an accent would probably be understood if he said it face to face to someone he knows, but in writing, I bet most native English-speakers would be confused by it. I've also heard learners of English who get their present continuous wrong because of their inability to hear and/or pronounce the contractions of "to be". On this forum I see lots of things that at first glance appear to be typos, but that could actually by the manifestation of pronunciation problems in written form -- I've actually only become aware of some of my incorrect pronunciations in Gaelic from encountering a misspelling that reflects my pronunciation of the word. English has a lot of consonant clusters that are difficult for non-natives to pronounce, and if you look around this forum, most of the time when a plural S is missed by a non-native speaker, it's at the end of a word that's got an awkward consonant cluster there already, and before another word that starts with an awkward consonant or consonant cluster. So pronunciation also affects your ability to write. Edit: just so your response to Arekkusu
That explains it, I suppose. If you start off with a good, complete phoneme map, then it's all just a matter of fine-tuning. The ear can do fine-tuning if it starts off with enough information. But most of the world's languages combinations don't work like that. As a Slavic speaker, you're quite lucky, as you start off knowing a lot of the rarer consonant distinctions, and not only does Spanish have a simple vowel structure, but the most characteristic part of the rioplatense accent is the palatal ll/y sound. Edited by Cainntear on 13 December 2010 at 10:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5235 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 80 of 255 13 December 2010 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
well, I think it has to be taken into consideration that there is only one particular aspect of the language that many learners don't care too much about - native accent. That must be saying something about that aspect of the language (most likely that it is not as important for functionality as other aspects). Just to make things clear - I'm perfectly aware that, for example, in Mandarin, in order to understand and be understood I have to get everything right. Therefore, I'm perfectly happy to spend hours and hours practising pronunciation. However, if Serbian phonology allows me get Spanish and Russian phonemes straight away, at the level where my speech is understandable to every native speaker I meet, although still not exactly native - then I don't see why would I bother (both with phonemes perfection and sentence intonation). There could also be something to be said about personal differences. If someone cannot hear the difference between two phonemes before being able to produce them, then it is understandable why that person wants native pronunciation. But I seem to have much better ear than mouth - I learn to hear difference between 'hard' phonemes quickly, but the perfect production is much harder task for me. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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