PeterMollenburg wrote:reineke wrote:I have previously shared the story of a Chinese-Vietnamese family that moved to the US in the 1980s. Only the two youngest children (who moved to the US aged 5 and 7) achieved native pronunciation. No one else in the family achieved native or native-like pronunciation even though several family members moved to the US as young children. Their written and spoken language production is heavily fossilized. Almost everyone attended college.
Which is why, I argue that one can indeed achieve native like pronunciation outside the country/countries where the language is predominant. Immigrants often don't sound like those around them as they imitate those around them just through observation (i.e. listening to natives), which for me, perhaps not everyone, but me, is going to be flawed. Their own language system is heavily ingrained in them already. But if you sit down with language courses or other such tools for learning pronunciation and analyse the phonetics and strive to avoid the influence of your own native language while constantly mimicking and adjusting to the audio content to sound as close as possible to the recordings, chances are you can sound very much like a native indeed.
Not everyone wants to get rid of an accent or acquire a native-like accent. Some people maybe want to but it could be just not their main priority at the moment (especially if there's no problem in communication with natives).