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"Perfect Pronunciation" | ||
Tags: Greek | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 6816 days ago 646 posts - 688 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 81 of 131 07 December 2007 at 11:03am | IP Logged | |||||
This is extreme and nonsensical. My formula. 1) Listen to the language one hour a day 6 days out of seven, while doing chores, driving etc. During this period you acquire vocabulary and enjoy the language. If you do not enjoy the language, quit. Listen especially often to content that you like, with the accent and intonation you want to imitate, and a pleasant voice. Imagine you are that person. 2) After a period of time, and assuming you enjoy the language, start repeating what you hear. You will be aware of what is hard to pronounce, but do not worry about it. 3) Wen you feel confident start recording yourself and comparing. Identify the difficult sounds. Slow down the recording and repeat the sound. Work on a few sounds each week. 4) Do the same as 3) with a focus on rhythm or intonation. It has been my experience that once people start pronouncing in a language, their pronunciation will improve only a little. In other words be careful when you start speaking. If you cannot hear the sounds you will not pronounce well.So work on hearing them first. If you already have ingrained an accent you do not like, you should still follow these steps. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6491 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 82 of 131 07 December 2007 at 11:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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Just a comment to the expressions "why bother" and my own "that's enough for me". I can understand that many members here want to get a really native pronunciation, i.e. a pronunciation that corresponds in every way to the pronunciation of the target language at one precise location in the world. As I wrote this is not an important issue for me - I'm satisfied with an eclectic mix of everything I hear. However this doesn't mean that I have condoned a sloppy and inconsistent pronunciation consisting of elements that aren't used anywhere in the world. I would rather compare it to the situation where there is an established common version of a language in spite of lots of regional differences - except that in this case there is no common version except mine. And the same idea applies to both grammar and vocabulary. I can only see a reason to adhere to one variant if I'm actually surrounded by natives who speak a certain way.
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| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6463 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 83 of 131 07 December 2007 at 11:22am | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe is extreme, but it make sense, because achieving native pronunciation is a extreme goal in itself. I am strongly sceptic about the "record and compare yourself" thing. If you don't get feedback from a educated native speaker, maybe you are wasting time recording yourself and comparing. Maybe my English voice sounds to me very native in my recordings, but that not means it sounds well or native to English speakers. Why? Obvious. I don't have English native ears. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 6816 days ago 646 posts - 688 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 84 of 131 07 December 2007 at 11:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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Slucido,
If you cannot hear it you cannot pronounce it. Learn to hear it. You do not need a teacher. You need to do it yourself.IMHO 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6463 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 85 of 131 07 December 2007 at 11:48am | IP Logged | |||||
I can hear it, I can repeat it and they understand me, but I don't know if I am pronouncing it like a native speaker. Why? Because I don't have native speaker ears and sure in the first place I am not hearing the words like a native speaker. Then I need "feedback". I can know if I am hearing words like a native speaker if a native speaker tells me I am pronouncing the words like a native speaker. We are talking about native speaker pronunciation and not something lower. If the average Joe has those extreme goals, he should pay the price (or the prize): money, hours, sweat, tears or... a monolingual native wife... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6227 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 86 of 131 07 December 2007 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sluicido, you are doing exactly what I asked for people to avoid: that is, theorizing. You've made your opinion clear, but it doesn't gain credibility through repetition. For what it's worth, what you're suggesting is significantly more intense than what a French-speaking guide I had in Brussels said she was told she needed to do to get rid of her French accent in Dutch; the speech therapist advising her claimed it would take 3 hours/day. If I recall correctly, this was to be over the course of months, not years. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6463 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 87 of 131 07 December 2007 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I was kidding a little, but I was metaphorically speaking and not theorizing. It seems that a lot of people here think native pronunciation is something that everyone can achieve. I don't believe that. Even sometimes educated native speakers have pronunciation problems with their own language. For example, it is not weird finding Spanish people who don't pronounce correctly the roller "r" (perro, carro). It is possible the correction, but they usually need a speech therapist. If people are serious about native pronunciation (dialect or standard pronunciation), they spend money with that purpose. There aren't shortcuts unless you are a gifted person. My native pronunciation method for the average Joe is: 1-MONEY, 2-sweat, 3-tears and 4-countless hours. And nobody can guarantee you that you will succeed. Be careful. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6227 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 88 of 131 07 December 2007 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
By definition, native Spanish speakers have a native accent in Spanish, even if they have a speech impediment. My father, a native Italian speaker, happens to have the particular one you mentioned. It's rare, though not unheard of, for him to be mistaken for a non-native speaker. Likewise, I've been mistaken for a non-native speaker of English a few times, even in my childhood, when I'd only lived in English speaking countries. To me, a native accent means that you're fairly consistently taken to be a native speaker by native speakers who hear you. I took a short course with a Russian girl once, who Italians couldn't believe wasn't Italian - they would have multi-minute question/arguments with her, disbelieving her when she said she wasn't, and then keep bringing it up in disbelief. She'd only been living in an Italian-speaking area for a year. This would be perhaps the canonical example of 'perfect pronunciation', to me. The name of this thread is perhaps misleading. It's not about standards of perfection that native speakers themselves cannot meet. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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