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Who has the worst accent? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 81 of 91 26 October 2011 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
I take your point, s_allard, and I completely understand where you're coming from. I agree that clearly no one (or very few people, at least) who responds to this poll will have a view that is overarching and holistic enough for their response to carry any weight beyond that of personal experience. So, maybe we should just consider this poll a poll on personal experience, rather than on "truth" or "fact". We don't need to draw any particular conclusions from it, either. Maybe we could even use it to draw conclusions about western bias, which might be genuinely interesting. Or how cultural linguistic isolation influences one's ability to deal with "unintelligible" accents – that would be a fascinating topic as well. ETA: Oh, I just thought of something – too late. If only we'd asked everyone who voted to post a reply saying what their vote had been and where they come from/currently live. That could have given us a really interesting picture. Edited by Jinx on 26 October 2011 at 2:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4878 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 82 of 91 26 October 2011 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The question can formulated in another way. Who has the biggest trouble with English
pronunciation? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5252 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 83 of 91 26 October 2011 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
Not a bad suggestion. I would suggest "most" instead of "biggest." It's quite clear what we are talking about, i.e. speaking English, and there is no suggestion of good, bad or worst. Then we could scrap the country divisions and use language families instead. It goes to show how a little bit of thinking could avoid some unnecessary arguments. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6731 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 84 of 91 26 October 2011 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
I haven't voted at all since "All of the above" isn't among the options. I'm usually not that impressed by any nationality I hear. (I'm from Sweden, I've lived in the same neighbourhood all my life, but have heard spoken English on a daily basis since I was about 9 years old - that's 29 years now.)
While people from some regions seem to have more trouble, there are bad examples even in countries where English is "everywhere". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6372 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 85 of 91 30 October 2011 at 8:12am | IP Logged | |||||
That would be very little thinking indeed, since it would change the topic. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5000 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 86 of 91 30 October 2011 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think Scandinavans and Dutch people would have the best English accent, as their languages have similar vowel system to English, I think.
It's often said that they speak good English. but for Polish people, it's not so easy, too many vowels! it's very hard for us to tell apart English vowels. On the other hand, Poles would have easier to learn Chinese, as we have similar consonants. Arabs - they have only 3 vowels, (long and short): a, i u. even o is hard for them! they would have hard time to learn English's 12 vowels. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4878 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 87 of 91 30 October 2011 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Consonants are difficult too, because they are all different from Slavic. Germanic
peoples have an advantage in consonants too. Chinese pronunciation is extremly difficult for Slavs because of both consonants and vowels. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5252 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 88 of 91 30 October 2011 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think we are mixing up two separate things. One is the difficulty to acquire a language because of differences in phonological systems. The assumption here is that the more the languages are different, the harder it is to go from one to the other. That seems pretty logical. although I'm sure there are nuances. The other issue is the end result in terms of intelligibility or aesthetic preference of a certain accent in the target language, let's say English. Considering that nearly all adult learners of a language will retain traces of their native language, which accent do we find either most pleasant or most intelligible? This has nothing to do with how difficult it was to get to this endpoint.
When we are judging aesthetics, it is of course totally subjective. But I bring this up because I believe that at high levels of proficiency in the target language, native speakers can often prefer the speech of a foreigner to that of a regional variety of the native language. In other words, a slight foreign accent combined with good grammar and vocabulary may be more pleasing than some low-status native language variety. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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