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Why the lack of native accent? | ||
Tags: Native Fluency | Accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dongsen Newbie Taiwan Joined 4631 days ago 30 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English | Message 17 of 30 14 October 2011 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Who knows? It is easy to know. I forget the exact statistics, but apparently native English speakers in England average one kid or less per family, Muslims average 5 or so. Completing the maths to work out what percentage of kids at school in 30 years time will be speaking Arabic at home is quite easy. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJdmY7pnUg Edited by dongsen on 14 October 2011 at 4:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5203 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 18 of 30 14 October 2011 at 5:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Only 20% of Muslims speak Arabic. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5387 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 19 of 30 14 October 2011 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As most British Muslims speak Urdu or Bengali together with English as their spoken languages, it is unlikely that there is going to be much of an upsurge in Arabic in England.
As to the white Jamaican accent - it is a fad of sorts. I grew up and live in South East London and heard this at secondary school - 20 years on, people who spoke like that then now tend to either be in the clink or speak with the usual 'Sarf Lund'n' accent (I would say cockney, but as one has to be born within the sound of the bells of St Mary le Bow to be a real cockney, South London is in a class of its own). In fact, I was in an off licence (liquor store to Americans) owned by a Jamaican who came over in the first generation the other day, and an underage white kid was trying to buy beer. When he spoke in his imitation Jamaican accent the shop keeper went into a rage yelling words to the effect of 'Why do you people always steal from us, is it not enough that you took us from Africa, now you are stealing the way we speak'. I found it quite funny, as did the shop keeper as the boy turned and fled. Edited by Elexi on 14 October 2011 at 9:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5947 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 20 of 30 16 October 2011 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree with this completely. For pronunciation, specifically, that a sense of identity is important. If you imagine trying to project to other people that "I am a Norwegian" however crazy or unlikely this is, that then it's more embarrassing to speak with a non-native accent. But if you hang on to a foreign identity, then part of your brain is not going to let go and speaking with a native accent is going to make you feel like an imposter. For children, this national identity isn't as strongly placed, so picking up another native accent comes without having to break down this barrier is easier. I hear this in Japanese class all the time, from people who are way better at Japanese than me, both listening and grammar, but who have lived in Japan but as a 'foreigner in Japan' so they hang on to bits of English sounds in their vowels. They've become fluent, but they're used to playing the role of "I'm goofy foreign guy" for laughs or other reasons. They do fine, and can survive and interact in Japan, but they don't get to native pronunciation. As for a person of age 2 not developing a native accent, this is just my speculation here, but the Nordic countries, Estonia (which is arguably Nordic, I think), and Japan too for that matter, are very tight knit, very tribal societies. The language and the ethnicity are tightly bound, and if you're the funny looking foreign kid, and you speak in perfect accent, once in a while you're going to get a "who are you fooling, you're not one of us" glare from the natives. It's a weird feeling, like their private space has been violated somehow. The easy response to this is to back off, to maintain a 'foreigner identity' by speaking with an accent, and then you can interact, fluently, but as a foreigner without the feeling of trying to pretend to be something that you not. This is kind of a trap though, because as a foreigner, you're given slack about incorrect grammar or strange word choice. With your taxi driver, an interesting experiment would be to test whether he can recognize correct Norwegian grammar. My guess is he's been living there long enough to know the difference, but he has these social barriers that stopped him from speaking correctly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| thatguyjae Newbie United States Joined 4616 days ago 7 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 21 of 30 18 October 2011 at 3:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My wife is the exact opposite of your Taxi driver.
She was born in The Dominican Republic but moved to New York City when she was 5 years old and has no accent! Her mother to this day speaks zero English even after being in NYC for over 30 years, her father speaks some English but has a very heavy accent and most of her family does not speak English. She grew up in a neighborhood that was almost entirely Dominican's so was around mostly Spanish. It amazes me because she has no Spanish accent and no New York accent despite spending most of her life there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| yassi Diglot Newbie Austria Joined 4651 days ago 34 posts - 49 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC1 Studies: Turkish, Slovak | Message 22 of 30 18 October 2011 at 9:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is a phenomenon I often notive when speaking to somebody with a Turkish background.
A good friend of mine was born, raised and educated in Austria, her parents are from Turkey and Turkish is the language she speaks at home and also to most of her friends. Her German is very good, but it's not native-like, she has a barely noticable accent and even makes some errors, such as "sie hat mit ihm geheiratet" (= she married with him) instead of "sie hat ihn geheiratet" (= she married him). In Turkish you say "onunla evlendi" and the -la means "with" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5515 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 23 of 30 18 October 2011 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think you may have answered your own question here. One of the most important factors is your local neighborhood, especially if you've grown up in a microcosm-culture that is not the same culture as that of the country you're in. For instance, in big cities in the USA, there are entire neighborhoods of Chinese, Mexican, Polish, Italian, etc. immigrants, who have absolutely no need to learn English, because all the shops and locals in their area share their culture. In such a situation, it seems quite likely to me that immigrants could maintain their accent, simply due to hearing it around them every day. Leaving your neighborhood would almost be like traveling to a foreign land. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5515 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 24 of 30 27 October 2011 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm skeptical, to say the least. That may be true to a VERY limited extent, but if so, it would be due to a very complex interaction of factors, certainly not just "DNA" as you blithely state. Also, I noticed in your profile it says you're doing "research on evolution of languages and their relevance to race". If you are indeed a researcher, why are you just coming in here and stating opinions as facts? I was under the impression that research involved asking questions and gathering information, not just spreading your own beliefs around. Edited by Jinx on 27 October 2011 at 12:44pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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