Accent Formation in Foreign Languages Part 4: Perspective

[bodomar47]

Mexicans have good American accents!

[YouStoleMyTube]

I don't really aspire to sound completely like a native. All I worry about is fluency and overall understanding. Accent can come later. I guess what I'm aiming for is an accent that is perfectly understood, and not incredibly ugly, but rather somewhat pleasant and amusing.

[kingdomabcdefg1]

I'm an international from Asia. I came to the US in 2005, and I've been here for about 4 years and 8 months.

I just realized that most of the people I have just met and who asked me to hang out are Asian American (5 out of 6). I did tell them I'm not American. I talk to non-Asians as well, but they don't ask me to hang out . My roommate told me maybe they thought I was Asian American. I just think it's interesting and wonder if it has to do with what you said about "being one of them."

[kingdomabcdefg1]

I LOVE this video of yours!

[Jorgereken]

These videos really helped me, I've been studying phonetics as an addiction for over a year, and with your lecture I found out my motivation, which was mostly as you said, try to sound like a native. And I did disregard my grammar and my vocabulary.

Now I've got a flawless modern british accent but I failed my IELTS.

So with all the things I learned from your videos I know where is the problem and how to deal with this situation.

From Mexico thank you.

[jceja24]

Its interesting thought, the more angry people get, the thicker their accents get...

[peacewalker7]

It is very nice of you to give away all of this free information and knowledge, based on actual experience through the years. No voy a tratar a aprender tan mucho idiomas como tu has aprendido, pero tu eres un bueno modelo a imitar y un ensenador y erudito verdadero. Hoffentlich werde ich die Sprache dass ich nun lerne richtigaussprechen konnen! Mit viel schwer Arbeit. Und vieleicht irgendwann werden unsere Wege kreuzen. Hasta entonces

[darcyperkins]

His comment about resonance is interesting. I have been told i have good french and german accents. when i speak these languages i am aware of shaping my mouth in different ways and using my tongue teeth etc in different ways and this creates a perhaps a different feeling or tension in my mouth, but not of "shifting my resonance" as he puts it. Because he's using his speech organs in a different way and it feels different perhaps he thinks he is shifting something in his mouth. I don't think so

[Andreo919]

You have really changed my perception of accents.

Thank you so much for your videos!

[Finlander01]

Prof. Arguelles makes a very good point that you shouldn't make a fuss about acquiring a perfect accent. Many Russian speaking learners of English, for example, (I'm a Russian speaker myself) especially young ones, seem to be very anxious to sound like a native American or Brit. When you reach the point of speaking the target language fluently (idiomatic and grammatically correct) youd probably even want to retain some of your foreign accent as part of your identity or individuality.

[darcyperkins]

This assumes that you lose part of your identity by speaking a different language or with a different accent.

[awfulguitarplucker]

@Finlander01 its a matter of a very very ancient issue: bein accepted by a group of people useing something in Nature is used widely: THE SOUND! (who,ironically , is the most ancient Sense amongst the others) and,since we HUmans,are animals alike the others (even too much oftenly) we DO THE SAME! we want to imitate PREFECTLY the "call" of that kinda "species" ,who,in this case are native inhabitants,as animals do! only..well..me should remmeber we are not THAT similar to to Animals!

[thibaulthalpern]

Very interesting ways of looking at accents. Most people can't hear any accent in my English. When I first moved to North America, i had a heavy accent and somehow over the years it mostly disappeared. There are occasions that it comes up such as when I do slideshow presentations or sometimes in other areas.

[rakmanenuff2]

Thanks for these excellent videos :)

A "native" accent is also an accent, IMO. It's not possible to have a neutral accent that *noboby* would judge.

[mednos]

No offence but I feel sometimes that you're just talking way to much on the subject, pls try to bring more structure in what you're saying, sometimes it's really annoing to me to follow you but still all you've sad is very intresting.

[thibaulthalpern]

Wow. Spoken like a true student who has never taught or made serious presentations before. I also teach at the university level and sometimes get snarky comments like these from students who have never taught. And when they do teach and make presentations, they realise how difficult it is.

[fakeconcerns]

I met someone - a student at my university - who I did not know was French until someone told me so. It took me 20 minutes or something before they told me this. Now when I listen to her talk I still hear an almost pristine American accent. The only real issue this person has is that they can sometimes sound a little robotic in their speech pattern, as if they spent a lot of time perfecting it systematically.

[aGeilini]

-Syng títlingur lítli! eg skilji teg væl.

mær leingist at hoyra títt ljófagra spæl.

the poem refers to the language as a singing bird, that is most comforteble in its own country.

but the sentence "tí meðan eg lítil í vøgguni lá",(when i was little in the craddle lay) is the one i that find to to have the most secnifikance.

[aGeilini]

Tú sang eitt so vakurt og yndisligt ljóð í morgun, tú uppi á mønuni stóð.

Syng, títlingur lítli, eg skilji teg væl.

Mær leingist at hoyra tít ljóðfagra spæl

fjarløgdum londum er fagurt og frítt, har syngja fuglar so lokkandi blítt: best hugnar mær tó Føroya grund og lagið, tú títlingur syngur um sund.

Tí meðan eg í vøgguni lá, tú satst, sum tú

[Solstisol]

Tenerife, Spain, Africa.

Hello professor.

I've recently discovered and become a fan of your lectures on Youtube. Here I was surprised to hear you say you've never met any non-native English-speaker with a flawless English accent.

How, then, would you rate another Youtube polyglot: Luca, an Italian living here in Spain?

To me his English sounds very correct American...

[wrath231]

Very informative...by the way, what region are you from?

[alto5alto]

People love to hear foreign accents! As long as one speaks fluently and everyone can understand, no worries!

[mednos]

I dont agree here, it really depends on the countrie and culture, americans in general seem to love accents but Russians for example dont do at all, they will be making fun of you speaking with a strong foreign accent.

[thelinguistblogger]

Very true. A lopsided knowledge of anything is going to be a cumbersome thing.

[jonmahoney04]

I have had the experience myself where speaking with a native accent was problematic. Living in Russia, when I would tell people that I didn't speak Russian in Russian they wouldn't believe me. I assume that they were saying something like, "Haha, you can stop joking now." It can certainly be an issue. I thought about just speaking with a purposefully poor accent.

In Brazilian Portuguese I've had some of the same issue when I have to spend time trying to convince people I'm not native.

[anne241163]

Ok, what's next Professor, you're my favourite waste of time (as Bette Middler sings it)! Seriously, I speak Norwegian, English, French at home with my Algerian husband, understands a lot of written German, Dutch, Spanish and Italian. Am studying Spanish at home. I can read Arabic (slowly) but find the grammar very difficult. Not sure where to go from here...

[somethingsmatter]

very informative.

Just a hint, maybe in the future try to put the camera further away from your face. The camera's proximity to your face distorts the perspective a little.

[SonicMountain]

Interesting lecture. I'm Swedish myself, & I've never met a foreigner who spoke without an accent. I've worked with Latin-American women who had lived in Sweden for 10-15 years or so but could not form a sentence, while the men spoke more or less well. English-speakers will always have a drawl, & the French always sounds French. Same with the Danish, or the Norwegians. You know where they're from. But that's ok. The main thing is that they can communicate with little or no problem.

[concertmatell]

Very Insightful Professor, thanks for taking your time to share your great deal of knowledge with the rest of us!

[hagsmunamadurinn]

One of my qualms in striving to attain an accent-less spoken english is simply that there are so many native accents to choose from. Should a go for american english or british english - and then further on, which subset of those categories should I choose? I can speak accentless Icelandic and Danish so from there I can speak english with both danish and icelandic accents. There is really alot I can choose from. And since a haven't commited to one accent, I end up having a bewildering mixed one.

[MaBu888]

I have a perfect American 'standard' accent, a perfect British received pronunciation. But that is because I am lucky to have sophisticated auditory memory and a distinct capability to imitate sounds of almost any language. In that way, I have learned to pronounce classical (restored pronunciation) Latin in a very perfect way. I've got a few videos to demonstrate that. I am bad at all languages besides English and my native Estonian, when it comes to vocabulary and grammar. EXEMPLI GRATIA

[Nevermindja]

I find this video and all of your other videos incredibly interesting. Foreign language and linguistics has appealed to me for some time now as a potential career.

I've been learning German for two years and I spent two weeks as an exchange student last summer in Germany. I was told that my accent was "cute". Of course, I would like to be able to speak fluently and accent-less, but it is highly satisfying to be told that it is, at least, a cute accent rather than an annoying accent.