The importance of a good accent (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

The importance of a good accent
Tags: Speaking \| Pronunciation \| Accent
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casamata
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Message 209 of 255

26 April 2013 at 1:57am | IP Logged

Medulin wrote:

What does it mean, pleasant?
Many Brazilians don't find the accent of native speakers of Continental Portuguese pleasant (nor cool for that matter), and many find it difficult to understand. So, they lose 3 out of 4 points from that list.

By "pleasant", I mean bearable. Some people have such a strong accent in some languages that it makes me cringe and want to return to the nurturing bussom of the sound of the native speaker. (an analogy of how bad it would sound)

Of course, if you don't like the accent of a native speaker (or non-native speaker), then it won't be pleasant regardless of how native it is. I don't mind any accent in English except the Indian accent.
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Solfrid Cristin
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Message 210 of 255

26 April 2013 at 9:14am | IP Logged

Arekkusu wrote:

Tsopivo wrote:

Solfrid Cristin wrote:

Aiming for a bad accent makes zero sense
to me.

I don't think anyone aims for a bad accent. The question is more: how much efforts are you willing to put into
improving your accent?

This is a very common response and it shows how people view this problem from different angles depending
on what they've been able to achieve.

Those who tend to find accents easy don't consider that accents take a lot of time because actually, they
don't usually devote a lot of time to the task, as they simply remain mindful of their pronunciation over the
course of their study.

On the other hand, those who can't find an effective way to improve or fix their pronunciation problems are of
the opinion that spending any more time on the issue is pointless as anything they have tried in the past has
had minimal impact. This should not, however, lead the student to the conclusion that pronunciation is not
important and, as others have pointed out, approximate pronunciation has just as much impact as
approximate grammar.

My view exactly - only you phrase it so much better :-)
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Solfrid Cristin
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Message 211 of 255

26 April 2013 at 9:29am | IP Logged

vogue wrote:

Arekkusu wrote:

vogue wrote:

luke wrote:

I would expect people who don't
care
much about accent to have a terrible one. Even someone who wants a good may fall
short. Someone who doesn't care much is generally difficult to listen to, unless their
accent has some prestige (say a Russian speaking English) or they are good looking.

It may have something to do with the native language. Spanish doesn't sound pleasant
with a thick American accent. Most foreign languages don't sound pleasant to my ears
with a thick American accent.

My Spanish accent has a very distinct American accent, but it doesn't impede
understanding. I actually had a discussion one day with some friends where they said my
accent was thick, but I had a much better vocabulary than a mutual friend who spoke
like a native but didn't have the same level of Spanish. They said it was far easier to
talk to me, because I understood and could give more complete answers than her (mind
you - her Spanish is still quite good, but I am more accustomed to living in Spanish
than her).

Clearly an accent isn't always an impediment to understanding, and I'd take the 'you
know more' compliment over 'she has a better accent' any day.

On the other hand, it's a clear problem when your accent is thick enough to impede
understanding. I've heard people speaking English and have had no idea what they were
saying. Likewise, I've said things in Italian that went un-understood until I wrote
them and my pronunciation was corrected (usually I was emphasizing the wrong syllable).

The idea that a "thick" accent doesn't impede understanding -- however comforting -- is
always subjective, and your friends' opinion, who are used to your accent, is sure to
differ from that of people you speak to for the first time.

Considering I've lived in two Spanish speaking countries without problems in this
regard, and have relations with many Spanish speakers outside of those countries, I'm
going to say that my American accent has not caused problems in understanding, but
nonetheless it's obvious I have an American accent. That doesn't make me
incomprehensible, just as much as someone with a German accent isn't incomprehensible.
I have a friend from Barvaria that has an accent, he's easy to understand but his
accent is DISTINCTLY German.

But why spend 10000 hours perfecting an accent rather than on vocab and grammar? Maybe
if you have all the time in the world, or wish to pass as a native speaker it's a
worthwhile goal but for many of us that's not our intention in learning a language. I
want to be able to communicate with little confusion on both sides.

No one is saying one shouldn't strive to speak accent-less for maximum understanding,
but I'm of the school of thought that grammar/vocab takes precedence in this regard. At
least with languages where accent will not significantly ruin understanding. That is to
say an American speaking Spanish. An American speaking Arabic WILL need to work on
their accent because even slight variations to a word can make it incomprehensible. I
imagine this problem is more compounded with tonal languages like Mandarin.

I do not understand where the 1000 hours of perfecting the pronunciation comes from. I speak several
languages, and have studied languages at school, at the University of Oslo, in private classes and by using
media or by living the language. My hours spent specifically on pronunciation training are as follows:

Spanish. 0
French.   0
English. 15
German. 0
Italian.     0
Russian   0

And yet I am always complimented for my pronunciation. Not that it is perfect, but it is fairly good. So I simply
do not get what the fuss is about. You learn a new word, and part of that process is to know what it means,
how to use it, how to spell it and how to pronounce it.

Why should pronunciation be treated separately from the other elements? Do you ever spend 1000 hours on
learning how to spell words? How can you learn vocabulary if it does not include the correct pronunciation?

Now if in "accent" all we mean is the wrong r or l, then it is no problem, but whoever has heard the joke about
the Italian tourist in London who consistently uses wrong vowel length and other minor mistakes, you know
that seemingly small nuances can get you into a lot of trouble.

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tarvos
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Message 212 of 255

26 April 2013 at 10:10am | IP Logged

I agree with Solfrid here. It's like the French habit of not ever being able to stress
the correct part of the sentence. (I love how Assimil makes a note of this; please stress
the right syllable because it's not necessarily the same in French!)

I learn the pronunciation first in every language, and that usually takes me all of 10
minutes to check the phonemes and stress rules, and then I just listen to the audio and
pick it up! But I don't spend hours on pronunciation unless I need to learn a totally new
phoneme (like the rolled R for Russian).
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garyb
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Message 213 of 255

26 April 2013 at 11:15am | IP Logged

Some of us spend hours working on pronunciation because we need to just to be understood, to not sound terrible, and to be taken seriously. I've seen Solfrid Cristin's video from a while ago and it seems obvious that she doesn't do specific pronunciation work because, well, she doesn't need to. Some people do just pick it up almost naturally as they learn the language, and I think the people making the "why the hell would anyone need to spend significant time working specifically on pronunciation?!?" arguments come under that category and so don't understand the necessity of it for those of us who don't share their ability/skill/talent/gift/whatever you want to call it. People like me aren't as lucky. I had to do a not-insignificant amount of work just to be understood in French, another good chunk to not immediately give myself away as an English speaker, "sounding good" is very much still a work in progress, and sounding anything like a native speaker is decidedly beyond the point of diminishing returns and I could probably learn a whole other language or three with passable pronunciation in the time it would take me to get there.

I think it also depends on the language. In French, a good accent is key to being taken seriously by native speakers and not having them switch to English, while in English we're very used to and tolerant of foreign accents. I think a lot of French teachers fail to understand that, and think that since they get by just fine with their heavy French accent in English, their students don't need to work much on their accents in French either.
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luke
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Message 214 of 255

26 April 2013 at 11:36am | IP Logged

garyb wrote:

I think it also depends on the language. In French, a good accent is key to being taken seriously by native speakers and not having them switch to English, while in English we're very used to and tolerant of foreign accents.

Good point.

With a language like French, I wonder if the "silent period" approach is helpful for pronunciation later on. Myself, this time around re-learning French from scratch, I gave myself several weeks of listening and understanding before I started vocalizing. I don't think my accent is a problem in any language I speak, except possibly for English :)

Also, for French, I did listen to and vocalize with some of the lessons in Smart French. I didn't really spend a lot of time on that course, nor have I finished it, but as far as pronunciation, it uses a super-slowly pronounced, then normal speed pronunication to a lot of exercises. That is helpful if one has trouble understanding what exactly is different between French and English.

Of course, for French, there's also the FSI French Phonology course, but I have only done lesson 1 of 20 in that course. I thought of SmartFrench as a modern French phonology course. It's meant to be more than that really. There is also treatment of the many spellings that sound the same, and a simplified approach to verbs. Some day soon, I'll give SmartFrench some attention again for help with the many spellings of a particular sound.

Edited by luke on 26 April 2013 at 11:46am
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tarvos
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Message 215 of 255

26 April 2013 at 11:45am | IP Logged

Quote:

I've seen Solfrid Cristin's video from a while ago and it seems obvious that she
doesn't do specific pronunciation work because, well, she doesn't need to. Some people
do just pick it up almost naturally as they learn the language, and I think the people
making the "why the hell would anyone need to spend significant time working
specifically on pronunciation?!?" arguments come under that category and so don't
understand the necessity of it for those of us who don't share their
ability/skill/talent/gift/whatever you want to call it

You're seeing the results after years of practice speaking Italian, French, German,
Spanish and English. I will bet you my bottom dollar it wasn't like that at the
beginning, and it wasn't for me either. I have had to spend concerted time on my
pronunciation in many languages, it's just been easy because it's always the first
thing I fix and pay attention to. That's not a gift, there is effort put into it, it's
simply combined with learning the rest of the language.
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garyb
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Message 216 of 255

26 April 2013 at 12:20pm | IP Logged

tarvos wrote:

That's a reasonable point, she's certainly been speaking these languages for a lot longer than I've been learning mine, so there's been ample time for the pronunciation to develop "naturally" assuming that she was at least mindful of it like Arekkusu says. I don't think that invalidates my argument though: I've seen people who pick up pronunciation quite quickly just from listening and repeating, whereas trying to do that just led me to develop bad habits and a complete lack of awareness of the difference between certain similar sounds that I had to correct with focused work; more generally, some people decidedly have more of an "ear" for it than others, and the others either take far longer to pick it up correctly or have to compensate for it with specific work.

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