luke wrote:Jder9720 wrote:My native language is Spanish and when i speak English i sound american because i have made tons and tons of listening input, so when i talk in English is almost as if i was "playing" a recorded audio in my mouth, this recorded version comes from all the input listening i've gathered through the years.
I'm curious about this. When I try to speak Spanish with a good accent, I use a lot of mouth movement that natives typically don't seem to need to do.
I was listening to a Spaniard today and he spoke some English with a reasonable American accent. Sounded a bit like actor Owen Wison. I noticed the Spaniard also did a lot of mouth movement and I could even see see the tension in his neck compared to when he was speaking Spanish.
Do you notice anything like that?
I've noticed this as well. I feel like my Spanish accent improved when I started
watching videos of Spanish speakers rather than just
listening to recordings. I've noticed that (many) Spanish speakers show their teeth more than English speakers, almost as if they're smiling when they're talking.
On flip side, in Japanese people tend to speak with a tight, narrow mouth. This actually has some evidence behind it, as there are said to only be three mouth positions in Japanese anime (closed, half-way open, all the way open) with little variation, which makes English dubovers notoriously difficult. (To be fair, the amount of diphthongs and crazy vowel sounds in English make me feel lucky that I grew up with the language.)
Assuming you've given it your all in developing a good accent, including but not limited to: studied the phonetics and phonology of your L2, analyzed IPA representations and anatomical graphs for tongue and mouth positions, analyzed breath patterns, studied prosody/intonation/pitch/etc., chosen an "accent role model", done extensive daily shadowing, had natives or even trained phonologists/phoneticians professionally analyze and critique your accent, you still (likely) may have L1 interference.
I'm convinced that L1 accent interfering with your L2 has just as much to do with
muscle memory as it does with one's mental perception of sounds. When I first started speaking German, my mouth
ached for an entire week. The same happened recently with my Spanish revival. Unless you have some special talent, I think it may be
required to let your L1 muscles/muscle memory atrophy a bit before you can truly reach your peak in accent formation as an adult learner. Sorry to hijack.
Edited for clarity