About accents

[Le Baron]

I thought about making a poll about this, but it would make it both superficial and oversimplified. So it has to be the hard way...

Outside of academic discussion (and even then) there's actually not a great deal said about accents and accent development in L2 learning. There is also a lot of supposition; notably from quarters where it is based upon tiny, limited studies. Also quite a lot of wish-thinking.

I'll be clear about where I stand. Adult learners rarely develop a completely convincing accent. The reasons for this at least are fairly well-known. However I'll make three general statements:

1. That if you begin as a monoglot it's very difficult to build a new sound system than the one you developed for your native language.

2. That if you began from a position of bilingualism, or even more and diverse languages (rarer), you'll still have trouble with languages that have sound systems different than the ones you internalised when you did.

3. That from the adult learning position development of a good accent (n.b. 'good'), can depend on work, i.e. accent training of whatever variety, input examples and also a good ear.

A 4th consideration, though not part of the above statements, is that having an accent other than the L1 speakers of your target language is, in the majority of cases, neither a disaster nor a failure to have learned the language properly.

And so here comes the disputed crux of this post: I don't believe that the majority of adult learners/speakers ever develop the sound system of their L2 languages. What strikes me is how much emotional response such a statement generates. In real-life and also all the usual online places. I also don't believe you get it from listening to 10 million hours of 'input audio' and come out the other end magically having some 'correct' accent. And that the older you get the harder it can be.

Most of all I find the fixation upon accent holds back a lot of people from using their language. It is one of the elements most controlled by circumstances out of the learner's hands, unlike the ability to really learn good grammar, to listen very well, learning a lot of words and developing the skill of 'fluency'. Those skills will get you a very long way in a target language, often as far as you usually need to go to be a functioning user. Accent perfection is theatre. The general public also loves it when someone sounds like a speaker of the language they are using, but turn out to be foreign. Very exciting. It is taken to be the pinnacle, even though someone with an accent can have the same (or better) vocabulary and understanding and even command of a language.

A 'bad' accent is admittedly never desirable, but there is a big gulf and continuum between 'bad accent' and 'sounding like a native/native-like', Think of all the people you know, famous or not, who have a good command of your native language or another one you know. Do you care about their accent? I barely think about it, I'm more charmed by the command and the accent is often a characteristic element. English natives seem very obsessed with being able to mask their origins (and very rarely achieve it anyway), whilst the majority of the foreign speakers of English they know speak with an accent??! You have people like the Dutch, those around me, with a good command of English and 99% have a pronounced accent. But they don't care because they can use the language and gain benefit from using it and it's enjoyable for both parties. Have you ever cared that when e.g. Sophia Loren speaks English or French she sounds Italian? Did it ever stop her or anyone else from effective use?

Accents are overrated. And just because some outlier says he did this or that and appears to have a superficially 'native' accent it means next to nothing. That's like buying the same brand of coat Brad Pitt wears and saying: 'this means I'll be Brad Pitt soon!' You won't.

[Axon]

I think you have to be even more granular than you currently are when talking about accents. Here are some statements I believe to be true:

- There are many monolingual people who can mimic other sound systems in place in their own language, such as someone pretending to be a foreigner speaking their own L1.
- Some people can do this better and longer than others with no training. We may all have friends who can do impressions, and we may all also have friends who are very bad at impressions.
- Through a combination of training and talent, many people can repeat words or phrases in a foreign language such that a native speaker of that foreign language would judge them as "perfect."
- Some people can take this further and produce independent speech in the language to achieve the same result.
- Some people are better than others at hearing something in a person's voice and deducing that they are not a native speaker of that language. Some people think that they are very good at this, but are not.

- It is rare, but certainly achievable, for adult learners of foreign languages to reach a point where native speakers who don't know them and aren't expecting to speak to a non-native don't realize they're listening to a non-native.
- It is very rare, but still possible for an adult learner of a foreign language to reach a point where most people they interact with, even for an extended conversation, assume they grew up speaking the language.
- It is very, very rare for an adult learner of a foreign language to reach a point where they can avoid anyone ever thinking that they are a non-native speaker. I can't think of any examples that come to mind.
- There are some combinations of languages and cultures in which bilingualism even from birth usually produces a noticeable foreignness in a person's speech, if not through accent then in terms of word choice or cultural knowledge. The further apart two languages and cultures are, the more likely this is to happen. It is a tremendous amount of mental effort to acquire all the necessary information to seamlessly switch between two cultures, and most families quite reasonably have no desire to enforce that kind of rigorous training on their children.

- For me personally, it is less pleasant to hear someone speaking at length with a "light accent" (i.e. sound and rhythm close to my own) but with many grammatical mistakes than someone who has a clearly audible accent but speaks with native-like word choice and grammar. This perception is also influenced by other things such as how enjoyable the conversation is, how well I know the person, and so on.
- The more I learn languages, the more I am impressed by people who speak good English by any measurement, and the more I notice small details that show the effort they put into it.

I want to also bring up the range of phonetic acceptability that native speakers have.

If you listen to oral histories or other recordings of people who are 1) outside your speech community and 2) from a different time period, you are probably going to hear things that sound simultaneously native and very unusual. Any audio recording of people born in the 19th century is basically guaranteed to surprise a careful listener with occasional consonants, vowels, or stress patterns that don't quite match anything today. And yet, despite historical sound changes, there's no "foreign" accent to the speech overall.

There are also stories from history about famous polyglots or spies who blended in perfectly with native speakers. I think in today's world where we have so much more audio available to us, language enthusiasts have a much narrower range of acceptability than other people. If I listen to a very advanced non-native Mandarin speaker, I can often pick out a tone or a sentence pattern that was used slightly incorrectly (even if the person is far more fluent and eloquent than I am). But would a regular Chinese person with no interest in foreign languages notice it, even subconsciously? Or was the bar to sound like a native much lower in a world with lower literacy and access to people outside your own speech community?

[FeoGringo]

Well I can't promise to be as articulate as the previous posters but I think there's a missing piece to all of this - self awareness - one's own ability to accurately judge their own accent and pronunciation. Countless times I've read on language learning forums about people saying "I have great accent and pronunciation" or "native speakers always say I have a great accent". In my humble opinion, most of these people are severely overrating their skills and/or misinterpreting polite encouragement from native speakers.

People saying "don't worry about the accent" are throwing the baby out with the bath water. At the other end of the spectrum is trying to achieve a native-like accent. A worthwhile or achievable goal? Maybe. Maybe not.

But there is something to be said for speaking clearly and intelligibly. Unless you have a talent or gift for mimicry (a whole other can of worms that maybe deserves its own thread) chances are if you decide to go the "don't worry about the accent" route, you will have a much higher likelihood of a heavy accent and native speakers may have more difficulty understanding you.

I would argue for most adult learners it takes some significant effort, practice and time commitment to reduce your native accent and speak clearly and comprehensibly to natives; or, in other words, significant time and effort is required to distance yourself from a "bad accent".

I understand the obsession with trying to achieve a native accent (it used to be my obsession). As a native English speaker, I will paint with a broad stroke and say we are used to tons of different non-native speakers (and foreign accented English) and save for your ignorant and racists types, most native English speakers are extremely forgiving and patient with non-native speakers.

Now turn the tables, have you ever seen those YouTube videos of "Celeb from the U.S. speaks XYZ language" - the comments section is usually brutal and biased. These celebs could have perfect grammar and a majority of the comments are "his XYZ is not that great, his accent is awful". Unfortunately, right or wrong, it seems many people do judge you (or don't take you seriously) based on your accent.

This concludes my semi-coherent rambling post.

[Le Baron]

But there is something to be said for speaking clearly and intelligibly. Unless you have a talent or gift for mimicry (a whole other can of worms that maybe deserves its own thread) chances are if you decide to go the "don't worry about the accent" route, you will have a much higher likelihood of a heavy accent and native speakers may have more difficulty understanding you.

I would argue for most adult learners it takes some significant effort, practice and time commitment to reduce your native accent and speak clearly and comprehensibly to natives; or, in other words, significant time and effort is required to distance yourself from a "bad accent".

I don't think it's one or the other extreme. I'd never say 'don't worry about the accent', because a bad accent can make the difference between being understood or not. There is indeed the problem of a bad accent sometimes getting in the way of the message, so getting the best accent you can get is always worthwhile. As you say it takes time and effort and usage with awareness; willingness to take tips and not feel too offended when people say something about your accent. Also, conversely, the issue to began with of people overestimating themselves because some random natives were either too polite (means you're not in NL) or they themselves just don't have a good ear when assessing you.

I think you have to be even more granular than you currently are when talking about accents. Here are some statements I believe to be true:

I agree with pretty much everything in your post. Especially the points about mimicry ability and the fact of 'good' language being much easier to listen to than 'bad' language no matter how good the accent is. Also the people who manage to blend to in, I'd always hope to be one of those, but I'm not sweating away trying to be that or nothing!

[german2k01]

Le Baron,

How can you understand those perfect grammar sentences if they are pronounced with a totally different sound system?

Have you ever listened in your target language for 6 hours a day and for 30 months straight without uttering a single sentence? How can you dismiss its effectiveness?

He is a student of Dr. Brown who was able to develop good pronunciation in Thai naturally through many hours of listening. It is easy on your ears to hear a less strong accent and your brain does not need to expend so much mental energy as compared to listening to a very strong accent.

Past 20 minutes in the video he is speakng Thai. You can judge his accent. Sure, it is not 100% that one acquires by birth. The problem is that the adults never test their potential and believe in what XYZ's researcher had said in the past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQOtVgirAsc

[s_allard]

I’m surprised that no mention has been made about the theory or idea of a critical period or age for acquiring something approximating native phonetics in a foreign language. One can quibble about the exact age from which achieving native-like is unlikely but it’s around 16-18 years. The key is to start early, the earlier the better.

I have no doubt that with lots of effort and some native talent for mimicry, one can achieve very good results at any age but in my observations, all the multilingual individuals with good accents I have ever met started their languages very young.

As has been pointed out, one doesn’t have to pass for native to communicate effectively in a foreign language. In fact, I believe that good grammar and great vocabulary plus a little foreign accent all makes for a compelling combination that many native speakers find very pleasant.

[Le Baron]

I’m surprised that no mention has been made about the theory or idea of a critical period or age for acquiring something approximating native phonetics in a foreign language. One can quibble about the exact age from which achieving native-like is unlikely but it’s around 16-18 years. The key is to start early, the earlier the better.

I'm taking that as given in the opening post, focusing on L2 learners who are generally past that point since this is the situation of a lot of L2 learners. I specifically avoided discussion about younger learners because it would have made the post long. In any case there are young learners who also fail to acquire good accents, for whatever reasons .

[leosmith]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQOtVgirAsc

His Thai is excellent, as is his pronunciations. He struggles with the r for some reason...it's like he forgets to pronounce it like Thais sometimes, but not always. He doesn't attempt to pronounce English words like Thais. He has some minor long vs short vowel issues. Finally, he tends to "play down" tones; native speakers will do this when they are speaking quickly, but not usually when they speak slowly like he does. Still, very impressive overall.

[leosmith]

Most of all I find the fixation upon accent holds back a lot of people from using their language.

I think it's the other way around. These days, there are tons of polyglots and teachers telling people that they shouldn't worry about their accents. It's a fad for some reason. Learners read post like yours and theirs, and instead of "don't wait until you have a perfect accent to start conversing" they take away "accent isn't important". So they don't start out studying basic pronunciation, and it fossilizes a bad accent, or one that could have been much better if they had just done a little bit of work up front. So sad.

[Le Baron]

Most of all I find the fixation upon accent holds back a lot of people from using their language.

I think it's the other way around. These days, there are tons of polyglots and teachers telling people that they shouldn't worry about their accents. It's a fad for some reason. Learners read post like yours and theirs, and instead of "don't wait until you have a perfect accent to start conversing" they take away "accent isn't important". So they don't start out studying basic pronunciation, and it fossilizes a bad accent, or one that could have been much better if they had just done a little bit of work up front. So sad.

Then they are perhaps reading it wrongly:

A 'bad' accent is admittedly never desirable, but there is a big gulf and continuum between 'bad accent' and 'sounding like a native/native-like'.

I also think what you say isn't quite the case. In the language learning communities and websites and YT and all the rest, a goodly number of people are obsessed with accents and 'sounding native'. Is anyone who advises: 'don't worry excessively about accent perfection' really suggesting 'don't bother learning the sound system at the beginning'? Maybe some students would take it that way, but were the ones likely looking for shortcuts all along.

If this worry was taken to the limit we can't say anything! So 'don't obsess over learning every last scrap of grammar' becomes 'learn no grammar'? I'm doubtful.