Pronunciation – it’s a delicate skill.

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rapidlearner
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Re: Pronunciation – it’s a delicate skill.

Postby rapidlearner » Thu Sep 07, 2017 6:21 am

I'd say, you can't learn pronunciation perfectly unless you live in the target country. however you shouldn't undervalue the effect of learning right phonetics for the words, finally what gets you through a native pronu is the way you give your sentence tone for various sentences (question, or simple statement etc)
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Re: Pronunciation – it’s a delicate skill.

Postby Elenia » Thu Sep 07, 2017 10:32 am

rapidlearner wrote:I'd say, you can't learn pronunciation perfectly unless you live in the target country. however you shouldn't undervalue the effect of learning right phonetics for the words, finally what gets you through a native pronu is the way you give your sentence tone for various sentences (question, or simple statement etc)


Simply not true, just like it's not true that you can't learn a language outside a country where it is spoken. I refer you to forum member PeterMollenburg for an example. His French pronunciation is excellent. Now perfect is of course a different matter. I don't really think that perfection exists in language learning (not only do I, a native Brit with a university level education, make occasional pronunciation mistakes, I also have a weird accent that doesn't always correspond to my London born-and-bred heritage and sometimes even get asked by other people if I'm American. No American has ever made that mistake, of course, but there you go. Accent is no cut and dried thing.)
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Re: Pronunciation – it’s a delicate skill.

Postby reineke » Thu Sep 07, 2017 4:21 pm

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.
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Re: Pronunciation – it’s a delicate skill.

Postby tarvos » Thu Sep 07, 2017 4:47 pm

I'm with Elenia. I don't really care about whether my pronunciation is 100% perfect, just that it ticks all the right boxes so that people understand what I'm doing and don't feel any impediment when talking to me.

My accent is only good in languages I've studied as a child, so in Dutch, English and to a certain extent in French. The first two are native, my French isn't native but it's quite good. Other languages I am obviously not native in, although my Spanish pronunciation has fooled a few people. :p
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Re: Pronunciation – it’s a delicate skill.

Postby tastyonions » Thu Sep 07, 2017 5:27 pm

I figure that if I sound nothing like this, I am probably doing okay:



:lol:
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Re: Pronunciation – it’s a delicate skill.

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Sep 08, 2017 11:24 am

rapidlearner wrote:I'd say, you can't learn pronunciation perfectly unless you live in the target country. however you shouldn't undervalue the effect of learning right phonetics for the words, finally what gets you through a native pronu is the way you give your sentence tone for various sentences (question, or simple statement etc)


In my experience, for pronunciation, location makes no difference. Were I surrounded by French speakers living in France and never sat down to analyse phonetics and copy sounds at slower speeds, to study tongue position etc, chances are I'd struggle to produce native like pronunciation. In Australia, I feel that I've done a pretty good job of sounding close to native French (in terms of pronunciation) because of my concerted effort using textbooks, courses, audio, IPA and so on. None of that matters with regards to location.

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.
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Re: Pronunciation – it’s a delicate skill.

Postby Uncle Roger » Fri Sep 08, 2017 11:59 am

Elenia wrote:
rapidlearner wrote: I don't really think that perfection exists in language learning


Even better, it doesn't even exist in language speaking, not in everyday life at least. Forget actors, TV and radio speakers that will most likely have trained or the whatever top percentile of the naturally talented individuals. Everybody makes "mistakes" and the language spoken by native speakers must, by necessity, include a number of deviations from that golden standard, a standard that hardly exists in sufficiently big numbers anyway.
I've heard many foreigners speak a much more comprehensible English than bottom quartile Glaswegians or Geordie people, or better Italian than supposedly native speakers coming from remote rural communities...
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Re: Pronunciation – it’s a delicate skill.

Postby reineke » Fri Sep 08, 2017 12:13 pm

"Because implicit knowledge is acquired ‘subconsciously’, without the involvement of Working Memory processing, it is used by the brain very rapidly, effortlessly and usually accurately (native speakers only make 10 mistakes every 1,000 words !)."

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I'd trade my foreign language skills with those of a rural native any time.
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Re: Pronunciation – it’s a delicate skill.

Postby rdearman » Fri Sep 08, 2017 12:18 pm

reineke wrote:"Because implicit knowledge is acquired ‘subconsciously’, without the involvement of Working Memory processing, it is used by the brain very rapidly, effortlessly and usually accurately (native speakers only make 10 mistakes every 1,000 words !)."

G Conti

I'd trade my foreign language skills with those of a rural native any time.

Move to the country then. :)
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Re: Pronunciation – it’s a delicate skill.

Postby reineke » Fri Sep 08, 2017 12:34 pm

rdearman wrote:
reineke wrote:"Because implicit knowledge is acquired ‘subconsciously’, without the involvement of Working Memory processing, it is used by the brain very rapidly, effortlessly and usually accurately (native speakers only make 10 mistakes every 1,000 words !)."

G Conti

I'd trade my foreign language skills with those of a rural native any time.

Move to the country then. :)


I don't think they serve native language processing with creamed corn and candid yams.

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