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"Perfect Pronunciation" | ||
Tags: Greek | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| W.N Groupie United States Joined 6065 days ago 47 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* | Message 49 of 131 04 December 2007 at 1:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
What age do people refer to when talking about accent acquisition? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6628 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes  Studies: Korean | Message 50 of 131 05 December 2007 at 11:42am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Oddly enough, I believe I have. I say oddly enough, because it was never a specific aim of mine. I first started learning the language in school, aged 14. Aged 20 I still had a strong foreign accent. Now, I can chat with natives for hours before they find out - and they find out because of the content of what I am saying. I also had work colleagues complimenting me on my language skills in my native language, when they heard me say a few word. One of the weirder experiences must be when natives won't accept that I'm not one of them... This happened for example once when I was looking for an opt out not to present and suggested that non-natives were exempt... or sometimes when I coach kids.
When I was at language school, I did standard pronunciation work (such as found in Baker's "Ship or Sheep"). Other than that, for about two months I recorded my own voice and compared it to the pronunciation of recorded words. Usually, this was along the nature of minimal pairs, contrasting similar sounds. Most of the time, however, I did no particular pronunciation work. The aim at the time wasn't to sound like a native, but simply to sound less foreign. After language school, I stayed on in the country. So I guess the technique you want is total immersion.
The standard educated accent, which is what most language material is based on. It was also the accent of the region I went to school at the time.
I'm not sure I understand this question. If you mean other accents of the target language, then no. I have always been in an international environment, where not only different regional accents, but various foreign accents are commonplace (in addition to foreign languages). If you refer to my native language, then only in as much as I twice refused to speak it for about four months at a time (except for once every two weeks an hour on the phone). I know you specifically asked not to have theories... but I still would like to share what I observed around me: those who are strongly embedded in their home culture and can't let go, find it harder to improve their pronunciation. These are people who prefer their own food, are clear that they don't want to stay in the country, strongly identify with their country, find local customs difficult to engage with. It's not about what you do, but how you feel about where you are. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6656 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 51 of 131 05 December 2007 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I think this is a lot of it right here. I believe, despite what so many people say that a native accent and intonation, or at least very near native, is obtainable by the majority of us. It's not magic, it's just training. A lot of that training is mental though: the people have to believe they can do it, and really want to. I put a lot of emphasis on accurate pronunciation when I speak Spanish or German, particularly German. A few times people thought I was a native speaker, but more often than not, they simply couldn't tell where I was from...I had a touch of an unidentifiable accent (which I'd like to get rid of and make it a clean accent). I listened to a lot of German music and unintentionally learned the basics of German pronunciation (I started in my early teens, so this might not quite meet your criteria, Volte). While in Germany, I took a phonetics class, which taught me a few things, but not much I hadn't already naturally learned. But really what I did was listen to native speakers intently and made many many many recordings of my voice which I would then listen to, looking for traces of foreignness. 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 52 of 131 05 December 2007 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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If you don't live in your target language country, it seems impossible to achieve a native or near native pronunciation.
For example,I have found an example of strong Spanish pronuntiation, but it sounds British to me. http://www.ompersonal.com.ar/omaccents2/Spain.htm What do you think about? Is it so Spanish pronunciation? Edited by slucido on 05 December 2007 at 3:23pm 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 53 of 131 05 December 2007 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
She definitely is aiming for a British accent with her English, which makes it harder for me to evaluate whether her accent is 'heavy' or not, but her prosody does seem like that of a native speaker of Italian or Spanish, especially around the middle of the clip, and her accent varies quite a bit during the clip. That said, I wouldn't call her accent heavy; it sounds fairly light to me. 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 54 of 131 05 December 2007 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
This is what I said earlier on this thread when I agreed with slucido. I do not agree with him, though, that you have to live in the country to achieve good pronunciation. Nor does it necessarily matter. I spent an evening the other day with an immigrant of 40 years to Canada, who worked in senior positions in finance here. His pronunciation was awful. I have met people in China whio have never left the country and yet who sound almost native in English. My Mandarin pronunciation is close to native, and was achieved without ever living in a country where Mandarin was spoken. On the other hand I listened over and over to Mandarin content, especially content with a heavy colloquial (if rather specialized) the Xiang Sheng. I have listened to MaxB (member of this forum) who learned his Mandarin in Sweden, and his pronunciation is probably better than mine. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| burntgorilla Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6232 days ago 202 posts - 206 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Danish | Message 55 of 131 05 December 2007 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't find that very Spanish at all, but it's like an exaggeration of an English accent. I doubt anyone would speak like that nowadays. It's not totally natural, but in an everyday situation I wouldn't pick up on it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| bushwick Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6032 days ago 407 posts - 443 votes Speaks: German, Croatian*, English, Dutch Studies: French, Japanese | Message 56 of 131 05 December 2007 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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the woman has a quite nice accent, but as already mentioned, somewhat exaggerated.
it's not even RP, it's actually more like those language tape actors :P, they all seem to sound like that. about achieving a perfect accent. it's definitely important to practice and just listen to the language a lot, but i've seen people struggling with accents even after long time immersion (my grandparents would be my closest example, they lived in Germany for 30 years and still kept an eastern european pronunciation). on the other hand tho, some people just get it right instantly. i never had problems with accent, with almost any language (now only korean maybe, but i can't even fake korean as i just didnt hear a lot of it) being complimented by native french and japanese speakers, and recently a turkish guy from my class was pleased with how i pronounced some turkish he thought me. i suppose it could be because of my multilingual upbringing, being raised with two unrelated languages and often imitating my mother speaking french as a kid. altough, this is somewhat contradictory as i've seen people being raised in similar conditions and not having good pronunciation. it seems like people with a good pitch often have the ability to reproduce the most akward sounds with ease... i don't know how to really recognize a good pitch tho' (i guess the reproduction of these sounds could be an indicator :P) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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