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How do polyglots do it? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6386 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 105 of 159 10 January 2014 at 3:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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3 hours a week isn't a lot, but it's possible to spend them more efficiently than what high school offers you.
Let's say one does reach the intermediate level at school. And someone else reaches it in two languages. The time spent is the same. Are the achievements equal because the time spent on them is equal? I don't think so. It's also not a given that the person with two intermediate languages under their belt could have chosen just one language and gone beyond the intermediate level just by spending more time. Edited by Serpent on 10 January 2014 at 3:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| culebrilla Senior Member United States Joined 3786 days ago 246 posts - 436 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 106 of 159 10 January 2014 at 3:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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To Serpent: You can be more efficient at things, but it isn't like there are methods that cut down on work by a factor of 10.
I'll stick to topics that I know very well. In HS we would do only about 40km of training a week. However, we would do three track workouts a week. (400m repetitions to work on running economy, 1000m intervals to work on our maximum oxygen consumption, and 4 mile tempo runs run at 10K race pace to work on our lactate threshold) Several years after HS I would just do casual easy runs, averaging 97km/week because I don't have the stomach for the hard runs anymore and I just wanted to do it for fun. The first scenario is much more efficient in time. The end performance result was the same. However, if I had done 97km/week (a very modest number for a distance runner) with three hard workouts I would have been a LOT faster. The second scenario is much more effective, although with anything else, such as language learning, you plateau with the added work. Kind of like accent improvement or language improvement in general. Now if somebody does the workouts, eats well, sleeps nine hours a day, and does cross training like weight-lifting or bike riding, they really can't do anything else. There is a limit to your "efficiency" or also "effectiveness." Again, what are these "efficient" methods you speak of? Not everybody finds one way of learning efficient; we all have our own methods. To beat a dead horse, you may be a visual learner or an audio learner. Not everybody learns the same. Thus you can't use the same learning principles for every case. I don't find studying conjugation tables very helpful but others may. But let's keep in mind that grammar study is not evil. You don't study grammar and you will probably speak a very hard to understand speech. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| culebrilla Senior Member United States Joined 3786 days ago 246 posts - 436 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 107 of 159 10 January 2014 at 3:24am | IP Logged | |||||
Not all high schools or classes are the same. In some formal classes it ALL is in the target language. And in some classes there are discussion classes with one native teacher and five students that have to participate. Is this inefficient? In the stereotypical HS or college class there is a non-native speaker that barely speaks the language and conjugates the verb "to be" for the 87th time to the class of 30 and nobody speaks. Again, not all formal classes are like this. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5219 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 108 of 159 10 January 2014 at 3:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that it is an excellent strategy to choose a sample of a voice or accent that you like and then imitate it to perfection. I would, however, like to point out a few caveats or cautionary notes.
You have to choose your example carefully. Do you want to sound like a female forty-something newscaster? If this fits your profile, go right ahead. My caveat here is that we often forget that broadcasters in general tend to use a kind of trained neutral accent that is from nowhere. Where I live all the announcers of the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) have a similar CBC diction. It is pleasing to the ear but Canadians don't all speak like that. It's probably the same with the British BBC accent with maybe some slight regional variations. But if you want to go sound like a true native, then you have to choose a regional accent. Well, there's little problem. In Britain, do want to sound like Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Kate Middleton or Prince William? Or like a taxi driver from East London? There's a vast range to choose from. In the United States, you could choose from a wide range of regional accents and public figures or celebrities. Do you want to sound like Obama, John McCain or even Sarah Palin amongst many others? All you have to do is hire a good dialect coach and be prepared to spend lots of money and time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6386 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 109 of 159 10 January 2014 at 4:20am | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4079 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 110 of 159 10 January 2014 at 4:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well it depends. I am a male in my mid-twenties, and that newscaster
(https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=A7pUfwoKk8g) seems like the accent and word tempo could be used for anyone due to its neutrality. Obviously the one thing that I cannot imitate is her pitch of voice, because I have a deep voice, but everything else seems fine. I have watched CBC for a while until I stopped watching most Anglophone television outside cricket, but I that think a good, neutral and clear accent is provided by both Peter Mansbridge and Amanda Lang from The National. I am sure that Canadians know these two newscasters. Edited by 1e4e6 on 10 January 2014 at 4:32am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5219 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 111 of 159 10 January 2014 at 7:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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As I have said, there is nothing wrong with choosing any particular voice or accent that one likes. We often gravitate towards radio and television or movie voices because we hear them often and they are clear, well articulated and well regarded. A learner of English could certainly model their speech on a BBC or a CBC announcer with good results.
I just wanted to point out that this kind of speech, as pleasant as it sounds, is usually not a true and specific native accent. It should be said that movie voices are much more natural than they were 50 years ago. But keep in mind that people go to acting school for years to develop their speaking skills. Similarly, one could choose to emulate the voice of a character from a Spanish serie or a Columbian telenovela in order to work on fluency of dialogues. That is an excellent idea, and we all do it to some extent. But I think that we must not forget that real raw speech is not like that. So when we speak of sounding native, it's important to indicate what kind of native we are talking about. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4411 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 112 of 159 10 January 2014 at 9:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Exactly. A foreign accent doesn't matter in the slightest as long as it is not interfering with other peoples' comprehension. I work beside a French lady who has been in Scotland for close on 20 years. She knows all the local vernacular and is culturally comfortable in the language. I've never seen her having the slightest communication problem. She does however speak with a noticeable French accent, but what difference does that make? She could, I suppose, spend hundreds of hours trying to imitate native intonation but she's obviously decided that speaking English is more rewarding than behaving like a parrot. Edited by beano on 10 January 2014 at 9:55am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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