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Some thoughts on accent and pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6163 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 17 of 43 27 April 2008 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||
I've heard a pretty good example of that exact thing but I found the better the accent and pronunciation the less the mistakes were noticeable, I know this because I've heard it. Of course, he still spoke quite well, but in same cases was very off. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6700 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 43 27 April 2008 at 5:55am | IP Logged | ||
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One could indeed say that there is a drawback in having a good accent but otherwise bad skills.
Imaginary scenario: the avid student finishes all three volumes of Pimsleur (or any other method said to give good pronunciation), goes to the country where the language is spoken, is taken for native while greeting the hotel staff, but can't hold a decent conversation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5900 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 19 of 43 27 April 2008 at 10:52am | IP Logged | ||
Hmm, I am that avid student almost completing the three volumes, but I'm definitely not running that risk! No way that a Russian or a foreigner could take me for a Russian or even for a foreigner with plenty of studying or living in that country... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Makrasiroutioun Quadrilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Canada infowars.com Joined 5897 days ago 210 posts - 236 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Armenian*, Romanian*, Latin, German, Italian Studies: Dutch, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 21 of 43 27 April 2008 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Speaking with a nearly native accent gives the other conversing party the right to speak much more eloquently (full expressions, locutions, idioms, nuances, word plays, etc.) since he or she will assume that you have reached that level, or worse, that you are a native so you ought to have no problem understanding, the reasoning will go. This might lead to an awkward moment, or they might be disappointed that your level isn't as high as they thought it was.
It is also my personal opinion that far too many people who learn languages overconcentrate on "getting the accent right" even after having reached a perfectly comprehensible and acceptable accent. Time would be better spent learning vocabulary, advanced expressions, derivations, finer points of grammar, reading in the target language, speaking with natives, etc. Hypothetically, I would rather have a vocabulary of 10,000 with an imperfect and non-native accent than a vocabulary of 1000 with convincing native accent. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| biki2 Diglot Groupie United States vatoweb.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6813 days ago 57 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Arabic (Written), Catalan, Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 22 of 43 27 April 2008 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Professor Arguelles,
Thank you for your concise summary of accent ability. This is something I've been curious about, but had yet to read anything substantive. I have one question: do you often encounter students with inconsistent accents? I seem to fall into this category in Spanish, as I seem to oscillate between levels 2 and 6 on your scale. I was first exposed to Spanish in New Mexico has a child, and although I didn't learn to speak it until I was an adult, I learned to pronounce certain words, street an town names, etc, as a bilingual New Mexican would. I later studied the language in Mexico, Ecuador and Spain and found the further away I went, the worse my accent got. In Mexico my accent never caused problems, in Ecuador I got an occasional strange look, but did fairly well. In Spain, my "yanqui" accent stood out and was a source of good-natured amusement. It seems I do well when I have a similar accent to imitate. But in Spain the accent was so different, instead of adapting, I regressed back into American English accented Spanish. And because I have a good ear for accents (I credit lots of PBS and shortwave listening as a kid), my accent grated even on my own ears. It was frustratingly inconsistent - one word or phrase sounded near-native, the next like a tourist with a phrase-book. I suspect, like all language learning hurdles, the only solution is more practice. But I'm curious if you've seen similar problems with your students. Are most people who speak with variable accents able to hear the inconsistencies? Or are people, on average, blissfully unaware? Thanks, Justin Peters 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7047 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 23 of 43 27 April 2008 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I do not know that there is anything specifically different that one needs to do for tonal languages per se; rather, for any subjectively difficult language, if developing good pronunciation is a serious goal, it is necessary to highlight the 4th thing I said you could do, namely, get and implement feedback from face to face interaction with a native speaker at an early level.
It is certainly a fact that slowing down and speaking in a louder, clearer voice will improve your pronunciation. Yes, Mr. Peters, I think that, while accent and pronunciation can generally reach and stay at a given level, they can also be quite variable and subject to both internal and external influence. I do not know that the oscillation that you experience is the norm, but it is not strange—I have both seen it in my students, and experienced it myself. While living abroad, if you have limited your general contact with your mother language but then spend an afternoon conversing in it, the next day your acquaintances may comment that you sound “different.” This kind of comment, in turn, can further affect your confidence and thus ability to speak. Furthermore, as you note, different natives can have very different judgments of your accent. Some may truly think you are one of them, while others may know that you are an American the second you open your mouth. At any rate, I think that the fact that you are perceptively aware of these facts bodes well, not ill, for your continued development, as it indicates a high degree of language consciousness. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7047 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 24 of 43 04 May 2008 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Did I ever really write that I deliberately seek to retain a “rather heavy foreign accent?” I certainly do think that level 6 on the chart with which I began this thread is the ideal accent, but I think it better to describe that as “distinguished” or “charming” than as “heavy.” However, I know from experience that something like 75% or 80% of all language students share the aspiration to pass for a native, and, from that perspective, any tell-tale foreign accent is all too “heavy.”
So yes, I do want to retain a foreign accent when speaking any foreign language. Why? Well, first and foremost, because I know that I do not have any choice. Just as I can play the flute nicely enough but would never be able to actually give any kind of real performance, so also while I am certainly more gifted in discerning and imitating new sounds than the average human being, I am not particularly good at this for someone who is as interested in languages as I am – at any rate, I have had many students who clearly have more talent in this regard than I myself do. Luckily, this is not very important to me. I would say that I study languages 50% for the same reason that a mountain climber climbs mountains – because they are there, because I love to study and to learn, because I find the phenomenon fascinating, because I relish attaining ever deeper levels of understanding of how languages work and are related to each other, because I simply enjoy writing exotic scripts… Another 49.9% of my motive for studying languages is to read classic literary texts of great books in their original tongues of composition. Only about 0.1% of my motive for studying languages is to actually speak them – I have never once conversed in most of the languages I have studied, and I probably never well, and I do not mind this fact. Finally, though, for those that I do speak, why on earth would I want to pass for a native when I am not? I myself, when I meet someone who speaks English just as I do, immediately expect him to use the same wide range of vocabulary correctly, to understand the same range of idiomatic expressions and cultural references that I do, and, above all, and with allowances for an occasional misspeak, to express himself with grammatical and other structural perfection. If he errs too much in these regards, I will unconsciously and instinctively and uncharitably begin to suspect that may be a fool or an ignoramus or a boor. If, however, I can hear that he is actually a foreigner, I will be reminded of this precisely when he errs, and on these same occasions I will instead instinctively feel only great admiration for his high level of achievement. I myself would also like be given this measure of understanding for my imperfections, and to receive recognition and appreciation for all the time and hard work I have put into my foreign language studies. There is no credit in speaking a language like a native if you are a native or even if you have lived in it for decades, and if you sound like this, how will people know that you are not or have not? Only if I first had perfect vocabulary, perfect cultural idioms, and perfect grammatical control of a foreign language would I want to have a perfect accent in it. I do not have these things in any language, and I do not believe I would even if I had concentrated upon only 1 foreign language my whole life long. It is for these reasons that I believe level 6 is ideal, 5 wonderful, and 4 fine – in other words, it is for these reasons that I "deliberately" "seek to retain" a “rather heavy” foreign accent when speaking any foreign language. Edited by ProfArguelles on 05 May 2008 at 7:56am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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