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Authentic Regional Accent in Target Lang | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4085 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 1 of 44 12 April 2015 at 4:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I have a habit of using a regional accent in most languages that I speak, usually
choosing a very specific region that most interests me (not saying that the other region do not), sometimes even I end up with a combination like in Spanish, (Peninsular + Rioplatense) or Portuguese (Lisboa + Minho), and sometimes I switch between two, like in French (Continental or Québecois). I do this in my native language, English, quite often, having lived in both the UK and USA gives me a strange facility to do use both an English (Manc and Geordie, RP if needed) and American (Northern California/Bay Area/San Francisco or skater/LA/Tony Hawk), in pure forms, in addition to what I use now, which is a strange mix of all of them. I fooled some people in university for a year by putting on an Australian accent and pretending to be from Melbourne by trying to speak like Shane Warne to see how they would react, and it seemed that it worked. Likewise I tried Pretoria-style South African accent for a few months in university with some people and it worked as well. This was, however, more of an experiment than something that I do on a regular basis. I was wondering if I can use whatever I can do in manipulating my accents whilst speaking English to apply them to training a completely authentic, foolproof or near- foolproof, accent in L2, L3, L(...), L(n), L(n+1), as in whatever languages I already have or add later. I wonder if anyone else focusses a lot in trying to do this, to try to choose a very regional pinpointed region accent and try to master it and sound like a native from that particular region. One thing that some people have said is that some natives, although at first they cannot sense whether the speaker is native or not due to an excellent accent, might be offended upon finding outbecause they think that the foreigner is making fun of them. Is this really the case with some interlocutors. I have heard that if one tries to speak Scottish as a foreigner or with a Scottish accent whilst speaking English when one is in Scotland, some natives might take offence. I have never done this when I was in Scotland, so I cannot vouch. But if I have to speak with an Argentinian and adjust completely by using the up and down Italian tonal wave-like accent with zheísmo, voseo, interjections like che, boludo, pelotudo, I already have fooled quite a lot of them already. I usually am able to imitate whatever I immediately hear, and I listen to at least 2 hours of Argentine television per day. I also have a strange habit of morphing sometimes my accent similar to that of the interlocutor. But does anyone else do this with their target language accents? If a foreigner speaks with an indistinguishably native-like accent and you find out that they are non-native does it seem weird? I have heard a few foreigners speak English with an accent that sounded completely native. They were very few, a Lithuanian, some Dutch, some Scandinavians, but I was more impressed than found it weird. Edited by 1e4e6 on 12 April 2015 at 5:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3894 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 2 of 44 12 April 2015 at 6:41am | IP Logged | ||
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When I moved to the UK, straight out of school, I spoke an English that was very clearly British, but not regional — people assumed that I belonged without being able to place me on a map. I don't think I'd ever "put on" a very specific identifiable, regional accent. It's far too much like making fun of people. But, I'll admit, my vowels shifted quite a bit while I lived in Aberdeen, so that I sounded a lot more like the people around me. No one even batted an eyelid, but I'd never go as far as to put on a stereotype Scottish accent (I don't even know what that means, really, since Weegies and Highlanders sound nothing alike to my ear). I still have trouble saying "Aberdeen" with an RP accent.
RP is the only accent I've ever "put on", as a full package, and indeed done any specific training in, since I wanted to present as very neutral as possibly the only foreigner when interviewing for jobs in England , but no one can really take offence at that since it's not associated with a maligned class or region. My opinion might change when I finally achieve the "where in France are you from?", in which case I might start picking up more regional "Breton peasant" sounds, but I doubt my opinion will really change about "full package" regional accents. Pretending to have a particular class and history isn't likely to go over well, when you're someone with greater privilege. You might say that's exactly what I'm trying to achieve with Breton, though. I'm shifting all of my sounds and a number of words towards how older people speak in my village and the surrounding parishes. No one is going to think I'm a native speaker, though and Breton is a bit of a special case, I think, because there is a lot of ill will against the standardised media accents amongst native activists, and the language itself is something of a class and history marker. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4085 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 3 of 44 13 April 2015 at 3:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I guess if you live there you do not sound like making fun of the natives, but I tend
to pick a very particular place. For example, after going to Bergen I like the city, so I try to use Bergen speakers as a basis for an accent. I also like Tromsø, so when I do Norwegian I try to focus on whatever people from Bergen and Tromsø sound like. I like Göteborg, so I try to use exactly the natives to imitate when speaking Swedish. The problem is that I do not live in any of those places (yet?), so I am not sure how they would see it. When I lived in Newcastle (UK, not New South Wales in Aus), there were some friends that I had when I went to university from Continental Europe who mimicked the Geordie accent. I never thought anything about it, and I never observed how natives reacted, but I thought that it was interesting. Some were in the B levels in my estimates, but they had a Geordie-like accent. I am not B2 in any of my Scandinavian languages, so in such an example, what would a native think if a B-level foreigner uses their accent from their hometown?\ Likewise with regards to other languages, I like to go to pinpoint accuracy on certain areas, like trying to mimic Lyon's accnent in French, in Spanish, I like to mimic those from Chamartín or Atocha in Madrid, or industrial working class accents of the Zona Oeste (Ramos Mejía/Morón/San Martín), or Zona Sur (Avellaneda/Dock Sur) in Buenos Aires of Rioplatense accent, despite never having lived in any of those places. I have only lived in Anglophone countries. When I put on accents in English, I pretended to be from very specific areas too, like East Melbourne or the Yarra Valley, VIC, or when I used South African accent, I pretended to be from Pretoria-Nood in Gauteng Province. The reason I use specific accents is that, in addition to sounding like a native, it might be better to sound like a native from a certain, defined area than being a native who sounds standard but cannot tell exactly from where she or he comes. So I guess that what I do is that instead of sounding standard but non-descript, like in English how many BBC reporters use RP, or if you watch CBC (Canada) news, Peter Mansbridge or Amanda Lang, their accents are so standardised that you have no clue exactly where they live or from where they came, whilst I try to pick a defined area for accent that can be drawn with a marker on a city map, usually no more than 15 to 20 km². Edited by 1e4e6 on 13 April 2015 at 3:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5129 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 44 13 April 2015 at 6:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I am duly impressed:-) I speak a local dialect in Spanish (Andalusian), but only because that is what I
learned living there. And I guess that in principle I speak the local dialect of Orleans where I learned French, but it seems to be close enough to Parisian for no one to point that out. Educated French speakers seem to avoid too much of a local accent anyway. In English I sadly have more of a mid-Atlantic accent. Not quite American, but not British English anymore either. In my other languages my level s not high enough for me to have a particular accent - but again really impressed at your abilities in this field:-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4502 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 5 of 44 13 April 2015 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't have a regional accent in my languages, except maybe in French where I use
Belgianisms because I lived there, and in English I can mimic almost every accent, but I usually use my Canadian one. In the others? Forget it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alphathon Groupie Scotland Joined 3975 days ago 60 posts - 104 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Scottish Gaelic | Message 6 of 44 13 April 2015 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Personally, I wouldn’t take offence if a non-native English speaker were to speak with a Scottish accent as long as they were actually doing (or trying to do) a real accent and not a stereotype. They could even fail miserably and I wouldn’t really care as long as they were being sincere. That said there are plenty of Scots who wouldn’t even accept that I’m Scottish, despite the fact that I’ve never lived anywhere else, purely because my parents are English (although they both have ancestors from all parts of these isles, including Scotland, as well as further afield). I imagine many of those people may have a different attitude towards foreigners trying to imitate their accent. There are also plenty of native English speakers (mostly English and American in my experience) who will do a “Scottish accent” which sounds nothing like anyone who’s actually from here, and is basically a stereotype. It’s also frequently used mockingly rather than endearingly. (The phrase “Och aye, the noo” springs to mind.) If a non-native were to try, for whatever reason, many people might tar them with the same brush. I can’t really speak to other languages though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gogglehead Triglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 5870 days ago 248 posts - 320 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Russian, Italian | Message 7 of 44 13 April 2015 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I lived in Buenos Aires for 2 years, about 10 years ago. I learnt Spanish there, and speak with the Porteño accent. However, the curious thing is, that after 4 years of living in Andalucia, Spain, I still speak like an an Argentinean and am frequently mistaken for one. Strange, and I have no idea why.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5225 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 44 14 April 2015 at 3:28am | IP Logged | ||
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The interesting thing about this thread is that it goes very much against that well-known observation that it is
nearly impossible for an adult language learner to attain native-like accent in the target language. The case here must be one of those exceptions. I think there is a fundamental distinction to be made between the ability to imitate a foreign accent and the true mastery of a specific language variety. In other words, being able to imitate a specific variety of spoken Argentinian Spanish is not the same as having the spoken competence of an Argentinian native from that geographic location. I can't speak for other languages besides English and French but I have never met an adult learner of either of these languages who has acquired native-like ability in either language. Now, I have met people who are totally bilingual or multilingual, and in all cases they learned their languages as children or at an early age. But for a 25- year old English-speaker learning French to the point of being taken for a native of the Outremont arrondissement here in Montreal, I believe that it is nearly impossible. I certainly have never seen it. Of course, we see actors achieving good foreign accents through lots of work with professional dialect coaches. Think, for example, Meryl Streep. Or the many British and Australian actors working in the US. But none of them claim to actually speak the various regional varieties that they may be called upon to use in performance. As for people being offended when somebody uses a regional accent, I think it's only a problem if the whole thing is incongruous. If one sounds native-like, then one will be considered native and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is more when one attempts to imitate usually some less prestigious variety and ends up sounding condescending or mocking the local speech. For example, this would be the case of a university professor talking about an academic subject but using lower-class speech. This is not good. Edited by s_allard on 14 April 2015 at 4:03am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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