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The importance of a good accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6447 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 145 of 255 16 December 2010 at 12:10am | IP Logged | |||||
There's the key. Many of us learn languages on our own, and we don't have much access to native speakers. Usually we have tapes, and we might have access to radio or television in our target language. If we faithfully mimic the right native speakers, we can develop a good accent. However, we don't get feedback from those tapes and broadcasts. I would argue that if you want a good accent, you need a native speaker (or better yet, two or more) to give you honest feedback on your pronunciation to get a great accent. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5218 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 146 of 255 16 December 2010 at 1:54am | IP Logged | |||||
I sort of agree with this although I'm not sure because the explanation seems a bit convoluted. As someone who has done a fair amount of ear training and still has problems singing in key, I think that it is not a question of lack of initial experimentation phase. I think it's more a lack of training and the fact of starting at a late age. Why do people take voice classes? Why not just buy "Voice Training for Dummies" or fool around with the piano by yourself? Sure you could, but it's far more efficient to work with someone who will tell you what you are doing wrong. Remember that you are trying to reproduce some sounds. You can hear them well enough, but the challenge is to align all the physiological elements to reproduce those sounds. This is where the coach comes in. He or she can tell you what you have to do to produce the right sounds. If you can do it by yourself, you'll save yourself a lot of money. Most of us need someone to guide us because it is difficult for us to really hear what we sound like. As a matter of fact, when you sing you have to be keenly aware of a reference pitch. Some people have perfect pitch. Most of us don't. That's why choir conductors will give the starting notes to the various sections of choir before every piece. But how does this relate to the issue at hand of accent? Learning to reproduce an accent is akin to learning to sing in the sense that you are learning to imitate sounds. Nobody disputes that. The real issue that we have been debating endlessly is how good does the target accent have to be. I'll say the best you can do. If you can and want to invest in dialect coaches and accent reduction specialists, then you'll probably get topnotch results. On the other hand, most of us say something like "At my age, I'm not going to be singing solo at the Metropolitan Opera; so I'm not going to pretend that I will. Instead I'll sing in my amateur choir and enjoy other things in life." That's not giving up. It's being realistic. Speaking a language involves a lot of things, Maybe I'll work on something besides the accent because it is more important at this point. On the other hand, if I feel that my foreign accent is hindering my job prospects, then of course I'll consider seriously taking an accent reduction class. Actually this is very serious business. In places like India where call centers serving North America are big business, people work hard at reducing their Indian accent because they know that North American customers do not like to deal with people having strong accents. In call centers in North Africa serving France, people are taught to sound as Parisian as possible and even to use French names because they know that French customers prefer to speak to Nicolas from Paris rather than Mohammed from Tunis. Edited by s_allard on 16 December 2010 at 2:04am 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 5014 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 147 of 255 16 December 2010 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
Spanish call centers usually employ Latin American immigrants (and sometimes they ARE located in LAm) for the usual economic reasons. Undisputedly, the person picking up your phone call has a 100% native accent and yet I've had to give up sometimes because we couldn't understand each other. And if you think I'm peculiar ask any other Spaniard about the Latin American guys at call centers. BTW I couldn't care less about their names, be they regular Spanish ones or the usual Spanglish mishmash they seem to like so much. For what I care, people in call centers could even have no names at all - I want my stuff fixed, not a genealogy tree... On a different example my Russian friends always tell me to avoid speaking like some of them because of the accent as well, because they know I'd like to be understood in the widest possible area. So they make me pronounce "shto" (Moscow accent) for the official "что" spelling, instead of "cho" which is how many of them pronounce it in a Tambov accent. Something else I usually hear is Portuguese people complaining about most Brazilians being hard to understand (I even know a Brazilian who agrees!). And those are natives too, no matter what. America is a very big country, and it's common to see people mock speakers from far away because they speak 'funny'. Are their accents non-native? So, why bother to get "native" accents? Use proper sounds, strive to be understood by (almost) everyone. Or what are you trying to speak a language for, in the first place? :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5799 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 148 of 255 16 December 2010 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
And this is where pronunciation is different from pitch -- the methods of articulation in speech can be described in a way that isn't too hard to understadn, whereas pitch simply cannot be explained. Of course, you can only get so far from a physical description or pictures, but it gets you close to the sound and as I've already said it's easier to make fine adjustments by ear than radical changes.
Consider this: If you are an archer, what do you aim for? If you're not a good archer, you may never score a bullseye. There's 11 circles on an archery target. Say you're always hitting the 5th ring from the centre. Do you stop aiming for the bullseye? If you start aiming for the 5th ring, you would end up with a worse score. As Arekkusu keeps saying, the justification of "I'm never going to be perfect, so I won't try" goes for grammar and vocabulary too. After all, none of us are never going to achieve full native command of a foreign language. But we still aim for the bullseye. This is why I've never liked saying "I speak <language>." I want to improve constantly, and even if I'm not actively studying, I can still pick up new things if I'm open to correction and noticing. Just last night I had another incident where the Spanish person I was talking to thought I was joking when I said I was Scottish. She only thought I was from "somewhere in South America", so I don't have a very specific accent. I can't develop a specific accent right now as Edinburgh's something of a melting pot of Spanish accents, so I'm comfortable with what I've got... for now. But I'll still try to refine it, as and when I can. Just like my grammar, just like my vocabulary. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5236 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 149 of 255 16 December 2010 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
In my opinion, another wrong analogy, like with that violinist. The nature of sport is competition (with others or with yourself). The nature of language is communication. Maybe I'm looking at it too pragmatically, but given the number of perfectly integrated, high-achieving immigrants who still have foreign accents, I can't help but think that not all aspects of a language are equally important when it comes to it's main purpose. If you want to be a university professor in a foreign country, you do need a near-native grammar. But you certainly don't need a near-native accent, just the one that everyone can understand (nobody cares if it is obviously foreign). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5169 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 150 of 255 16 December 2010 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
There is no way to pinpoint exactly where "good enough" is and the notion is highly subjective. But it's obviously not at the same place for everyone. All archers may not aim for consistent bull's-eyes, but all could benefit from the motivation of seeing one who does. You can't hit dead centre occasionally if you don't aim there all the time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5236 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 151 of 255 16 December 2010 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
"people are not distracted by your accent" apparently is good enough in practice.
as already said, I don't see this analogy as correct. yes, archers should aim for the bull's eye, I agree :). That's the whole point of their sport, otherwise they could just shoot at a blank wall and not bother where the arrow ends up, but that's not exactly the archery. But what does it have to do with a foreign accent? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5799 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 152 of 255 16 December 2010 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Competition with yourself is about being the best you can be. s_allard seems to want to be the best he can be in language, he just seems to think he's limited to start off with. Maybe we are limited, but if we aim for that limit, then we aren't likely to reach it. If we aim for the ideal, we will keep aiming until we hit that limit. If you don't like the archery analogy, consider language exams. If you do an official preparation course for an organised language exam, you will learn everything needed for the exam and nothing more. If you forget one thing on the day of the exam, you won't get 100%. But if you study beyond the level of the exam you can still get 100%, even if you don't learn anything. Aiming high always gets better results. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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