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Why the lack of native accent? | ||
Tags: Native Fluency | Accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 30 12 October 2011 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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We have a number of times been discussing what it takes to get a native accent. A goal which is ellusive for most of us, but perfectly possible if you come to another culture as a child, particularly if you come as a very small child.
Today I got however a bit depressed, listening to the accent of my taxi driver. He had Punjabi as his mother tongue, but arrived in Norway age two. And yes he was certainly fluent, yes his accent was very good, but it was definitely not native. He messed up pronouns and articles and he had a definite non Norwegian accent, not a very strong one, but it was there. Now I admit that Punjabi is very different from Norwegian, but even so. He has learned Norwegian from age two. He has been to kindergarden, school, high school and university, but his Norwegian never became perfect. The really sad part was that he could not write his original mother tongue, he said he had been too lazy to learn it, even if his Norwegian shool had offered him a Pakistani teacher who could teach him. Now I wonder, how is this even possible? I find it hard enough to believe that adults never learn the language properly, but he came as a small child. I know I am being really picky, but still. Do any of you have any ideas of how this is possible? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5085 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 2 of 30 12 October 2011 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, in this case it seems perhaps he was just not very motivated at school, or
afterwards. Maybe as a young man he thought it set him apart or made him more interesting? But it is true that often when you have parents who speak another language, or who have a strong accent, you will pick up at least a little of their accent and never completely lose it. In my case, I know there are a few English words that I say differently to others who grew up with me in the same place, because of my mother's accent. Messing up pronouns and articles in what should almost be his second native language is rather strange, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5578 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 30 13 October 2011 at 12:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Identity, and in the case of native speakers of Indian languages in other countries the way they use their languages.
One of my childhood friends has an Indian grandfather. His other family is European; German/French as far as I know. His doesn't have any connection to the culture of his grandfather. He was born here, grew up here (and even has a von name). People see his skin colour and assume he's an immigrant, and they treat him that way. I witnessed well-meaning people slow down their speech for him, for example. (Germans can be quite bigoted even when they're trying to be nice.) Because Germany still has a relatively homogenic society, this kind of treatment can exclude immigrants and their descendants and discourage them from striving for a 'German' identity. The impression I get from my Indian classmates is that their being Indian, or maybe even being part of their own cast, contributes largely to their identity, and so does the way they use their native language, Indian English and German. I also sometimes get the feeling that one of them transfers features unique to Indian English to German. (And she certainly speaks German at a near-native level, it's simply that her way of expressing herself sometimes shows that for her, German is just one of several languages she uses daily.) ETA: Meaning, that as long as German (or Norwegian, always assuming that there is no fundamental difference in the social structure of both countries, as well as Punjabit speakers of India and Pakistan) isn't their only native language, even children who came as toddlers will get interference, and the social situation often doesn't motivate them to work hard to become a flawless speaker of either language. Edited by Bao on 14 October 2011 at 5:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5736 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 4 of 30 13 October 2011 at 9:57am | IP Logged | ||
Edited by mick33 on 13 October 2011 at 10:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6721 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 30 13 October 2011 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd say it has to do with identity.
Here in Sweden, it's not uncommon to hear a slightly different sounding accent if the speaker comes from a suburb with a high proportion of immigrants and immigrant descendants - regardless if the speaker has lived here all his/her life. There are even countless examples of people without an immigrant background who have neither their parents' accent nor the regional accent. The kids adopt a kind of RP. One can never predict how a kid will speak as a five-year old, as a youth, or as a grown-up. Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 13 October 2011 at 5:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jo15 Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4640 days ago 13 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 6 of 30 13 October 2011 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not really sure about this, I think it's a shame he never learned to write his native language (if it's something he regrets).
Yet, coming from Britain, I think accents are wonderful. I'm from the north, and when speaking with my friends my grammer is so appaling you'd think I never got past primary school. I catch myself saying "why" instead of "while/st," and "am me," not "am I," and a whole heap of nonsense that is purely down to lazy speaking and conjoining words with my accent. I also think this focus on "accent" and "non-native," is what puts alot of people off practicing learnt languages, myself included. I will panic in a bakery because I'm not sure what gender I'm supposed to be using, or I'm not entirely sure how that cake is pronounced. Yet there's people in the UK who live an hour away from me, and I can barely understand a word of what they say, and they are most definitely native English speakers. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6515 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 30 13 October 2011 at 1:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I remember one boy who had a Polish father and a Danish mother. He spoke with his father's accent until he was old enough to go to school, and then he almost from day to day dropped the accent and began to speak accent-free Danish like his mother and the other members of his family.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5242 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 30 13 October 2011 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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There' a wonderful saying in French that, I think, applies here: "Il ne faut pas chercher midi à quatorze heures." A literal translation would be: Don't look for noon at 2 o'clock. I see no reason to get depressed because an immigrant taxi driver has a slight foreign accent despite having arrived in Norway at the age of two. Instead of doing some rather simplistic math (arrives at age two therefore must speak just like any native Norwegian), just think for a moment how and under what circumstances people learn their native tongue.
It would seem in the case at hand that the person arrived with his Punjabi-speaking family into the Punjabi community in Norway. His home language was and probably still is Punjabi. He learned Norwegian in school and in the streets. How many Norwegian friends did he have growing up and how many does he frequent today? Is he married to a Norwegian spouse? How much formal schooling does he have? Once you answer all these questions, you can explain why that person speaks a certain way. Now let's take a hypothetical example (although I'm sure it exists) of a two-year old girl from Haiti adopted by a Norwegian couple following the tragic events of last year in Haiti. The child is brought up in an totally Norwegian speaking environment and completely loses whatever creole she knew. She even takes on a Norwegian name, has virtually no contact with the tiny Haitian community in Norway. She dates Norwegian boys and ends up going to university to become a doctor. If you close your eyes and listen to her talk, do you think you will detect any traces of Haitian creole? Would that person mix up her pronouns. I guarantee you not. What you certainly will hear is some regional Norwegian accent. All of this to say that our way of speaking is a product of our environment. Accents come from somewhere and are not related to the colour of one's skin unless that is a socially determining factor. This makes me think of all those Youtube videos of Caucasians or Africans speaking or singing in perfect Chinese of whatever dialect. People seem to be astonished to see a black person or a person of European speaking perfect Cantonese. But when you look beneath the surface, you find out inevitably that they were either born or grew up in China. So, although it may look a bit exotic, there's nothing unusual here. Edited by s_allard on 13 October 2011 at 3:07pm 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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