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Who has the worst accent? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4868 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 89 of 91 30 October 2011 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
Then the question doesn't make any sense. TRACES of native language cannot affect comprehension. 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 90 of 91 31 October 2011 at 4:19am | IP Logged | |||||
I actually agree completely. The reason I made this distinction is simply because many of the previous posts talking about "bad" or "worst" accents were actually talking about the aesthetics and not about the difficulty of learning or the intelligibility. As I have mentioned a few times, one can assume that a related language is easier to learn than an unrelated language. So, all other factors being equal, we can assume that it is easier for a Swedish-speaking person to learn Norwegian than for a Spanish-speaking person because Swedish and Norwegian are closely related. Does that mean that a Spanish-speaker who learns Norwegian well--probably few of them but they exist--will be less intelligible than a Swedish-speaker? Probably not at all. Will the accent of the Spanish-speaker be "worse" than that of the Swedish-speaker in Norwegian? I don't know. Of course, if you compare the Spanish immigrant who has been in Norway for two weeks to the Swedish immigrant of two weeks, the difference is enormous. But is that comparison appropriate? When I listen to international speakers of English on the radio, I notice of course the various accents.But in terms of intelligibility, i.e. the ability to distinguish what the person is saying, I find that the most important determining factor is overall proficiency in English and not accent per se. What I have noticed is that the most proficient speakers have usually, if not always, been educated in Western universities and/or have spent some time in an English-speaking country. My observation is that accent is not really a problem or an obstacle to comprehension if a) it is not overwhelming and b) all the other elements of proficiency are present. Let me come back briefly to the example of Michel Thomas, the great language teacher. Nobody denies that he has a rather thick Polish accent in presumably all the languages he teaches and in English. But no one has ever remarked about his English being less intelligible because of his Polish accent. It doesn't seem to be an issue at all. Former governor of California, Arnold Shwarzenegger, has this rather strong Austrian German accent in his English. Is it worse or better than that of Michel Thomas? And more importantly, what effect does it have on intelligibility? None at all it seems to me. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6889 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 91 of 91 18 November 2011 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's the thing isn't it? How we judge something as the 'worst' is totally subjective.
Some of us will lean toward pronunciation, others intelligibility. Other areas we may consider could include intonation patterns, nuclear stress or something as specific as pitch and tone. The possibilities are endless. There's also my pet to consider... 'familiarity through exposure'. The more familiarity you have with a specific 'accent', the more intelligible it typically becomes, which in-turn, leads to a more positive perception often being formed. Those that drew attention to Vietnamese speakers early in the thread, perhaps it is through a lack of exposure that those negative conclusions have been founded. I can almost guarantee that to a Vietnamese English speaker, a fellow Vietnamese English speaker is one of the most intelligible, due to the vast amounts of exposure they have received throughout their schooling. Loaded question all the same. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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