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Is it wrong to find accents amusing? | ||
Tags: Accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6459 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 17 of 25 08 December 2011 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As a Canadian in the States, I've had some comments on my accent. The most interesting moments came in my German class when I pronounced words such as "Maus" and "Haus."
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4856 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 18 of 25 08 December 2011 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
What was wrong with those words? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6503 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 19 of 25 09 December 2011 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I like listening to different versions of the languages I know, and apart from differences in slang and vocabulary I don't find it difficult to accomodate to different dialects - maybe because I have heard worse things before. Of course you will always be able to dig up some old farmer with no teeth who can utter something totally incomprehensible in his personal version of local dialect, which probably would cause problems even for his own grandchilden from the big city. However those extreme dialects are not what we hear on TV or when travelling - except in a certain Norwegian TV program, where locals from different valleys actually competed in speaking their dialect in such a way that not even the inhabitants of the neighbour valleys could understand them. That was fun.
I also listen to TV programs with a slightly humoristical edge because people don't hide their speech differences there - unlike the news broadcasts. German zoo programs are also very entertaining (and not only because elephants systematically are referred to as "Mäuschen" or "Schnecke"). And when I travel I do make a point of listening for specific traits in the local vernacular. For instance I do like to hear Southern Germans making those drawn out uvular R's, and the only time I have visited Brazil I rejoiced in their drawn-out diphtongs - even though I couldn't understand them back then (pre-HTLAL). The latest example of this is the kind of Spanish the tinerfeños/as speak on Tenerife (I guess most have their roots in Southern Spain). For instance they don't count uno, dos tres, but "uho, doh, treh". But it was quite easy to understand them, and I even had some success in eavesdroppping in busses and restaurants. The trouble is, when I hear such particularities repeatedly during my travels I begin to incorporate those sounds in my own speech, but when I return home I return to my usual bland mix of different accents (mixed with bad habits of my own) because I listen to different sources. Edited by Iversen on 09 December 2011 at 12:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| floydak Tetraglot Groupie Slovakia Joined 4654 days ago 60 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Slovak*, English, German, Spanish Studies: French | Message 20 of 25 09 December 2011 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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one more example of legendary press conference, which somehow fits to this topic:)
ps: probably only for football fans http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCFj9lf8IQE&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqp64q7kHmw (same with English subtitles) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kwai-Chang Tetraglot Newbie Switzerland Joined 4545 days ago 8 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English*, French, German, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 21 of 25 09 December 2011 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What is really amusing is when the non-english speakers poke fun at the way they speak English themselves. There was a brilliant advert for a language school doing the rounds in Deutsch-Schweiz a couple of years ago....
Scene: 2 German coastguards relaxing with a cigarette one night outside their post. The alarm goes off and they rush inside and switch on the short-wave radio. A very panicky Englishman can be heard through the static, "Mayday, mayday, small craft in severe difficulty." The German coastguard replies "Hamburg station 4 receiving, please give us your position." The panicky Englishman gives his location, and shouts, "For God's sake help me, I'm sinking, I'm sinking!" The two Germans look at each other rather puzzled, and one of them reaches for the transmit switch, flips it on, and asks, "Vot exactly are you sinking of?" Then comes the language school ad. Who says the Germans don't have a sense of humor? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5181 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 22 of 25 09 December 2011 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
Here is the commercial. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5062 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 23 of 25 09 December 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
@Mapk, looks like no one is going to explain to you why what @SamD wrote is amusing. The general English Canadian accent is known in the US for its distinct pronunciation of the "ou" dipthong as sounding like the "oo" dipthong in "loose" to American ears- ex: about-"aboot". I can imagine that the English Canadian pronunciation of the German "au" dipthong (which is similar to the "ou" in English) in German might sound like an English "oo". Don't worry, as a non-native speaker of English you wouldn't be expected to know that dialectical difference. Even most English people I've met can't spot the difference between American and Canadian pronunciation. Edited by iguanamon on 09 December 2011 at 4:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4856 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 24 of 25 09 December 2011 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you, iguanamon.
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