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The importance of a good accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| wber Groupie United States Joined 4089 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 169 of 255 04 April 2013 at 7:31am | IP Logged | ||
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My opinion is that you really don't need a perfect native-like accent. For some people, that's going to be impossible. However, you should have a comprehensible accent.
Using English as an example, imagine a Canadian, a Briton, an Australian and an American all talking to each other. Each of them will have an accent, however they'll all understand each other more or less minus a few regionalisms, and slang words. If you have a perfect accent but have a low level of comprehension people will most likely think that you're mentally challenged to be politically correct. On the other hand, no matter how fluent you are in English, if your accent is horribly thick, people will not take you seriously even if your writing, use of colloquialisms and expressions surpasses theirs'. This is especially true for minorities and people of other races. If you are Caucasian, they'll give you more leeway and assume you're European or something. 3 persons have 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 170 of 255 04 April 2013 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | ||
This is not really a scenario many people need worry about. It might happen to people who grew up with a language but lost most or much of it. In any case, I would certainly not recommend they worsen their accent on purpose; this is a problem of profiency, not pronunciation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| NewLanguageGuy Groupie France youtube.com/NewLangu Joined 4395 days ago 74 posts - 134 votes Speaks: English* | Message 171 of 255 14 April 2013 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think people often confuse "accent" and "pronunciation". Some people get so caught up in imitating natives that they don't learn enough words to say anything meaningful!
For me, "accent" is the way you sound when you speak, whether speaking your native or a foreign language. "Pronunciation" is the way you pronounce the words in your language. Most people who learn a foreign language will never sound like a native, and indeed would be wasting their time if they tried to do so. What we do when we learn another language is develop our own range of sounds which vary with each word we pronounce. They may not be the same as native speakers, but if they are at least close to the way native speakers of our L2 are used to hearing it pronounced, there will never be a problem with comprehension, except perhaps when differentiating between subtle sound differences in certain languages. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4495 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 172 of 255 14 April 2013 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||
Because they can't, or because they didn't go about doing it the right way? 1 person has 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 173 of 255 15 April 2013 at 8:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Can they, if they give two hoots about it? ;)
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| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4410 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 174 of 255 15 April 2013 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
I agree. To me, accent and pronunciation are different things. Pronunciation is the way you voice individual words whereas accent is the cadence of your voice and the way it rises and falls during conversation. It is perfectly possible to achieve good pronunciation yet still have an obvious foreign accent. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4456 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 175 of 255 15 April 2013 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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That would be intonation.
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| 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 176 of 255 15 April 2013 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
I was going to say exactly the same thing. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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