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"Perfect Pronunciation"

  Tags: Greek | Pronunciation
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6198 days ago

4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 9 of 131
01 December 2007 at 5:45am | IP Logged 
Denitsa wrote:
I couldn't find specific information on how exactly she did it (except that she studied in a language school and later in an university in Bulgaria), but apparently the English pronunciation of the Bulgarian journalist Ralitsa Vassileva is good enough to allow her to present the world news on CNN.
Some videos can be found here.


She's clearly fluent, and has a good grasp of idiom, but she does have what sounds to me like a clearly non-native accent as well. Her language skills are clearly excellent, and it would be interesting to know in more detail how she achieved her current level, but she doesn't exemplify the particular skill I started this thread to ask about: that is, she doesn't have a native pronunciation of English.

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Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6662 days ago

1251 posts - 1733 votes 
5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French

 
 Message 10 of 131
01 December 2007 at 6:08am | IP Logged 
I've met two people with a clearly huge talent to foreign accents. One is bilingual German-Turkish, and she was able to repeat Polish words, sentences and even tongue twisters without foreign accent, although she doesn't speak Polish at all. Unfortunately I haven't heard her speaking a foreign language. The other one is native Russian/Kazakh, and she speaks English and German with no foreign accent (the natives claimed so). When I met her, she had been learning German for two or three years, through immersion.

What's important, both are musically talented, both study/studied singing at the academy of music, both are bilingual. I guess without an ear for music you just can't learn the perfect pronunciation, no matter how long you're exercising, shadowing, being immersed etc.
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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6198 days ago

4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 11 of 131
01 December 2007 at 6:11am | IP Logged 
Julie wrote:

What's important, both are musically talented, both study/studied singing at the academy of music, both are bilingual. I guess without an ear for music you just can't learn the perfect pronunciation, no matter how long you're exercising, shadowing, being immersed etc.


Interesting theory. That said, most children manage, regardless of musical talent, and I know a number of musically talented people who don't. My Italian accent can legitimately be regarded as somewhere between 'bad' and 'terrible', despite the fact that I've been involved with music (singing and playing instruments) since I was 3 years old.

Edit: I should perhaps mention that I'm not actively and regularly involved in music at this stage of my life; but I still was when I started learning Italian.


Edited by Volte on 01 December 2007 at 6:12am

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Gilgamesh
Tetraglot
Senior Member
England
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Speaks: Dutch, English, German, French
Studies: Polish

 
 Message 12 of 131
01 December 2007 at 6:26am | IP Logged 
It's interesting you should write about this because I had the thought of uploading a few sound clips onto this page. However, I can't seem to get them converted to MP3 because I recorded them with a mobile phone and it's some other (weird) format I never heard of before. I can, however, send them by mail to whom is interested.
I don't like to toot my own horn or anything, I just want to contribute to the discussion in this 'active' way of participation.
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Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6662 days ago

1251 posts - 1733 votes 
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Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French

 
 Message 13 of 131
01 December 2007 at 6:39am | IP Logged 
Volte wrote:
Interesting theory. That said, most children manage, regardless of musical talent, and I know a number of musically talented people who don't. My Italian accent can legitimately be regarded as somewhere between 'bad' and 'terrible', despite the fact that I've been involved with music (singing and playing instruments) since I was 3 years old.

Edit: I should perhaps mention that I'm not actively and regularly involved in music at this stage of my life; but I still was when I started learning Italian.

It's more a shy hypothesis than any theory :). Most children manage because, as many scientists claim, it's easy to learn pronunciation until some age.

About the music issue: I think it's not exactly about being involved in music or being able or not to play an instrument or sing, it's more about how good ear for music we have (people with absolute pitch would probably learn pronunciation easier than others), if you can play by ear etc. And of course it's still not enough, you need much contact with the target language, preferably immersion.
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Sulis
Groupie
United Kingdom
Joined 6210 days ago

60 posts - 66 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 14 of 131
01 December 2007 at 7:28am | IP Logged 
Volte wrote:
Denitsa wrote:
I couldn't find specific information on how exactly she did it (except that she studied in a language school and later in an university in Bulgaria), but apparently the English pronunciation of the Bulgarian journalist Ralitsa Vassileva is good enough to allow her to present the world news on CNN.
Some videos can be found here.


She's clearly fluent, and has a good grasp of idiom, but she does have what sounds to me like a clearly non-native accent as well. Her language skills are clearly excellent, and it would be interesting to know in more detail how she achieved her current level, but she doesn't exemplify the particular skill I started this thread to ask about: that is, she doesn't have a native pronunciation of English.



Yes - her accent is extremely good, but it is clear that English is not her native language.
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Hencke
Tetraglot
Moderator
Spain
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Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin
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 Message 15 of 131
01 December 2007 at 7:36am | IP Logged 
Julie wrote:
I guess without an ear for music you just can't learn the perfect pronunciation, no matter how long you're exercising, shadowing, being immersed etc.

No no, I absolutely refuse to believe that. It would mean I have no chance at all.

I do believe someone with musical talent can have an easier time getting there. The rest of us, who are hopeless at music, just have to work a little harder.
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furyou_gaijin
Senior Member
Japan
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540 posts - 631 votes 
Speaks: Latin*

 
 Message 16 of 131
01 December 2007 at 10:11am | IP Logged 
Allow me to auto-plagiarize something I wrote some time ago with a different purpose... In the context of this
forum it's stating the obvious in many places but I have no passion for re-editing it...

=========

Pronunciation is traditionally the most underestimated component of the language study yet a very important
one. Professional linguists carried out tests where the same texts containing a number of grammatical errors
were recorded by several groups of people, ranging from native speakers to foreign learners with varying
degrees of accent. The results clearly showed that native listeners tend not to hear many grammar mistakes
when the text is recorded with excellent pronunciation. Similarly, when the same text is read with a bad
pronunciation, native speakers pick out all grammar mistakes and even claim to hear additional ones.

A common strategy for learners of any language is to stop working on their pronunciation once they have
attained a certain point where they are satisifed with how they pronounce things. Typically, as soon as they can
make themselves comfortably understood, other aspects of the language study take priority and the accent
remains forever.

Another fact is that the absolute majority of learners have no idea about phonetics and how sounds are formed
(on the conscious level) and no 'good ear' that allows them to absorb the same info on the subconscious level.
And no 'trained' tongue that allows them either to imitate what they hear or to produce what they have
consciously know they have to produce.

Most learners (unless they have been given formal training in phonetics) do not seem to pay any attention to the
fact that even the most basic sounds differ from language to language, with very few absolute equivalents. They
tend to concentrate only on the 'missing sounds', such as the English [th] for the continental learners of English,
or the ostensibly different sounds, such as the French [r] or the Russian [ы].

Yet the English [t] is different from the American [t] which in turn has nothing in common with the German,
French, Italian or Russian [t], which are much closer but are all different amongst themselves, too. The same
applies to [s], [k], [m], etc. The same applies to the vowels.

Once most learners have mastered the 'missing' or the 'ostensibly different' sounds, it is the most basic sounds -
i.e., the ones they have paid NO attention to - that account for the largest part of their accent. Take any
foreigner who speaks English and listen to them carefully: their [th] may be perfect but their vowels and most
consonants will be all over the place - these will be the vowels and consonants of their native tongue.

(In fact, it is one of the greatest strategies for picking up the pronunciation of your target language - listen to
how natives speakers of that language distort your own native tongue and learn to imitate the sounds they are
making.)

Most textbooks for written for the general public (as opposed to specialised editions concentrating on phonetical
issues) propagate most horrible lies for the sake of practicality and simplicity: they will tell you that the Japanese
or the French {p} sounds like the English {p} in 'prawn' or some similar nonsense. Micro-differences in intensity,
tone, volume, attack, lip and tongue position are IGNORED. Those learners whose own phonetic listening and
imitation skills are short of excellent will NEVER pick up on those differences by their own will and as a result will
always retain some accent.

Having said that, some languages are closer phonetically to each other than others. The German or the Russian
base, for example, is an excellent starting point for a mastery of French or Italian, or Japanese, whereas Swedish
or Dutch, for example, are disadvantaged by the lack of some properly voiced consonants.

But the most peculiar European language - phonetically - is English. It is relatively easy to find a German who
speaks accentless French or Italian. Or a Flemish person who speaks accentless Russian. Yet it is very uncommon
to find learners who manage to speak English without any trace of an accent as a result of their adult studies.

For exactly the same reason, it is highly uncommon to find English native speakers who manage to lose their
accent completely in any other language as a result of their adult studies. This is often portrayed as lack of
talent but in fact has nothing to do with it. It is just that the English base is extremely remote from that of most
other languages.

Etc., etc...

=========

As for real life stories, I have come across 3 people with perfect pitches for accents. One is a good old friend of
mine who started off as a professional linguist but since then moved on to other things; he's a very advanced
user of 3-4 languages in his current job and utterly uninterested in picking up any others. Another one is an
English actress I was going out with a couple of years ago. She only spoke English but could imitate almost any
kind of speech in an almost immaculate way, phonetically. (I even started teaching her Italian as I felt that talent
was going to waste.) The third and the most amazing one was a French driver who spoke perfect Parisian French,
perfect Randstad Dutch and perfect British English, from having lived in the last two countries in his adult life.

I can't explain any of the above or speculate about the 'techniques' they may have been using.

In contrast, one of my friends has been going to some very specialised and highly acclaimed English
pronunciation courses in London, for many months. Without any noticeable change in his accent.

Edited by furyou_gaijin on 01 December 2007 at 10:12am



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