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Sarnek’s Log - TAC ’15 (Rätsel, Sleipnir)

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Sarnek
Diglot
Senior Member
Italy
Joined 3974 days ago

308 posts - 414 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English
Studies: German, Swedish

 
 Message 137 of 176
29 April 2015 at 10:24am | IP Logged 
Here's a thought: I wonder if people would speak a foreign language with a better accent/with
no accent at all if they didn't rely on written resources...
1 person has voted this message useful



garyb
Triglot
Senior Member
ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4966 days ago

1468 posts - 2413 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, French
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 138 of 176
29 April 2015 at 10:37am | IP Logged 
Sarnek wrote:
Here's a thought: I wonder if people would speak a foreign language with a better accent/with
no accent at all if they didn't rely on written resources...


Interesting idea. I once read an argument against reading too much as a beginner/intermediate, because as you read you tend to pronounce the words in your head which could reinforce incorrect pronunciation habits. I don't know whether that's true, but it wouldn't surprise me, and it's food for thought.

I certainly developed a lot of bad pronunciation from high school French, although it's hard to say whether that was due to too much written material, not enough spoken material, or lack of explicit instruction on sounds and prosody. Most likely a combination of all of these.
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daegga
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Austria
lang-8.com/553301
Joined 4280 days ago

1076 posts - 1792 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian
Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic

 
 Message 139 of 176
29 April 2015 at 1:09pm | IP Logged 
Sarnek wrote:
Here's a thought: I wonder if people would speak a foreign language
with a better accent/with
no accent at all if they didn't rely on written resources...


It has its own problems.
Just an example:
When I was in my teenage years, people would talk about "Saufpark". It's not a park to
get drunk at, but a tv series. The same people had no problem with the "th" sound in
general, but they had never seen the word written down and this was what they heard.

If you don't have written sources, you'll need some proper phonetic training before it
makes sense to study a language with different phonology than your own, otherwise
you'll act like a small child saying eg. "Scheibenwerfer" instead of "Scheinwerfer" (<-
ben> is pronounced /bm/ or only /m/), "Nut" instead of "Blut", "Binne" instead of
"Spinne" (all real world examples here :) )
just because this is what you think people are saying.

Edited by daegga on 29 April 2015 at 1:16pm

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Sarnek
Diglot
Senior Member
Italy
Joined 3974 days ago

308 posts - 414 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English
Studies: German, Swedish

 
 Message 140 of 176
29 April 2015 at 3:24pm | IP Logged 
daegga wrote:
Sarnek wrote:
Here's a thought: I
wonder if people would speak a foreign language
with a better accent/with
no accent at all if they didn't rely on written
resources...


It has its own problems.
Just an example:
When I was in my teenage years, people would talk
about "Saufpark". It's not a park to
get drunk at, but a tv series. The same people had
no problem with the "th" sound in
general, but they had never seen the word written
down and this was what they heard.

If you don't have written sources, you'll need some
proper phonetic training before it
makes sense to study a language with different
phonology than your own, otherwise
you'll act like a small child saying eg.
"Scheibenwerfer" instead of "Scheinwerfer" (<-
ben> is pronounced /bm/ or only /m/), "Nut" instead
of "Blut", "Binne" instead of
"Spinne" (all real world examples here :) )
just because this is what you think people are
saying.


Could it be perhaps because they Germanised the
sounds (for social reasons)? For example in Italy
we tend to Italianise every English word, so for
example we (me included I must admit) pronounce
"Game of thrones" as "gheim of frons", or even
"gheim of trons". It's not a
pronunciation mistake, it's just that it would
sound weird to say it in perfect English.

Well I don't know about that. I mean you could
obviously make small mistakes at first but then
you'll get it eventually. After all, this is how
children learn.

Edited by Sarnek on 29 April 2015 at 3:56pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Elenia
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
lilyonlife.blog
Joined 3615 days ago

239 posts - 327 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto

 
 Message 141 of 176
30 April 2015 at 2:01am | IP Logged 
I remember reading that accent acquiescence begins in the womb. I'm not sure how true
this is, but I think the problem is losing the ability to hear/reproduce certain sounds.
I don't think this loss is irreversible, and it's probably not even very serious for the
most part. But I know it took me ages to hear and reproduce the difference between
l'amour and la mort, for example, and that's a case where the written word should have
probably given me a clue!
1 person has voted this message useful



Sarnek
Diglot
Senior Member
Italy
Joined 3974 days ago

308 posts - 414 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English
Studies: German, Swedish

 
 Message 142 of 176
30 April 2015 at 9:11am | IP Logged 
Elenia wrote:
I remember reading that accent acquiescence begins in the womb. I'm not sure how true
this is, but I think the problem is losing the ability to hear/reproduce certain sounds.
I don't think this loss is irreversible, and it's probably not even very serious for the
most part. But I know it took me ages to hear and reproduce the difference between
l'amour and la mort, for example, and that's a case where the written word should have
probably given me a clue!


It could be that the children's ability to acquire new phonemes and produce them naturally somehow stops once they learn their native language(s), but probably not because of how we're built (so that this ability would stop working forever but you
can still get a good accent with some proper training in phonetics), but simply because there's no need for such a function any longer, and therefore it atrophies and remains asleep until called upon again (ie. learning a new language). If this is
true, it must mean that this ability could be restored with "just" some hard work and patience, and the later in life you do this the harder you must work. Written texts would then only hinder this process or maybe corrupt it altogether, as even if
there were a 1 phoneme = 1 symbol correspondence in a language (italian is one the closest in this regard amongst the languages that use the latin script, but even then there are some exceptions) written texts would leave out the prosody and the
natural melody of the language, which may change depending on whether it's a statement, a question or a command, the number of stressed/unstressed syllables, the emphasis and other pragramatics reasons.
But I wonder to what extent does a training in phonetics help in the process of "reactivating" this lost ability.

Edited by Sarnek on 30 April 2015 at 9:16am

1 person has voted this message useful



daegga
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Austria
lang-8.com/553301
Joined 4280 days ago

1076 posts - 1792 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian
Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic

 
 Message 143 of 176
30 April 2015 at 3:10pm | IP Logged 
Sarnek wrote:

But I wonder to what extent does a training in phonetics help in the process of "reactivating" this lost ability.


It helped me at least to become aware. I'll just stay in my native language because it's easiest for me to explain:
Northern Germans have a distinct accent to us southerners, but I used to think they speak just like us (when speaking Standard German), just with a different accent. But in fact, they use a different phonology. So when those northerners would use [z] in a German word, I would hear [s] but I would also hear that the accent is quite different. Nowadays I hear that they actually pronounce it [z] and know that part of the difference in accent is because of this. Vowel quality is another big part by the way.
But then, I should've had this ability natively because of TV, and maybe it was just dormant.
It's much harder when languages have different discriminative borders between phonemes (think of the difference in voiced/unvoiced in English/French respectively) or even more phonemes in a certain range (eg. Swedish rounded closed vowels vs. /u/ and /y/ in German).

Edited by daegga on 30 April 2015 at 3:11pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Sarnek
Diglot
Senior Member
Italy
Joined 3974 days ago

308 posts - 414 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English
Studies: German, Swedish

 
 Message 144 of 176
30 April 2015 at 4:53pm | IP Logged 
daegga wrote:
Sarnek wrote:

But I wonder to what extent does a training in phonetics help in the process of "reactivating" this lost ability.


It helped me at least to become aware. I'll just stay in my native language because it's easiest for me to explain:
Northern Germans have a distinct accent to us southerners, but I used to think they speak just like us (when speaking Standard German), just with a different
accent. But in fact, they use a different phonology. So when those northerners would use [z] in a German word, I would hear [s] but I would also hear that
the accent is quite different. Nowadays I hear that they actually pronounce it [z] and know that part of the difference in accent is because of this. Vowel
quality is another big part by the way.
But then, I should've had this ability natively because of TV, and maybe it was just dormant.
It's much harder when languages have different discriminative borders between phonemes (think of the difference in voiced/unvoiced in English/French
respectively) or even more phonemes in a certain range (eg. Swedish rounded closed vowels vs. /u/ and /y/ in German).


I also hear the northern s as [s], why do you think it's [z]?

Of course maybe you won't recognise all the nuances at first, but you can in fact tell most of the sounds apart. For example, the German close-mid back
rounded vowel [o] like in "Hotel" or "Boden" is different from the same sound Italian or swedish have, and even though they had the same name when I first
started studying German phonology, I could clearly hear that they were different. Many months later I've discovered it was actually due to the different ways
swedish and Italian and German protrude the lips when uttering the sound. Same applies for the swedish [s], which is still described as a voiceless alveolar
fricative but you can hear that it's different from its Italian/german counterpart by paying close attention; whether you are able to perfectly produce the
sound, that's another matter, and is why I wonder if you need to be trained in order to solve this problem (which I'm quite sceptic about, but at the same I
can't find any other solution).


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