Accents

SillyMe wrote:

There is no need to improve an accent. Sometimes some work on pronunciation is required, but no more than that. Everyone should just make sure that he could be understood and that is enough. I've seen a lot of people who thought they were fluent in the language enough to imitate a native pronunciation. Needless to say everyone had hard time understanding them. What is that for? Perhaps you have never met a foreigner who thought that he could speak with an Irish accent. You even cannot imagine the sequence of sounds generated by this person. I don't know how but  you  misunderstood  me.  I was talking about my friends who would have hard time understanding me if I started speaking with a stupid accent. To conclude I want to say that accents are evil, because they imply various patterns of speech. Why should one learn for instance American accent? To be understood better by Americans, but it means that all other people will have hard time understanding this person. It seems senseless to me. Proper pronunciation is important but only to a sensible degree of course. Overdoing is just as bad as underdoing. Just make sure that you can be understood and be happy with that.

From my own experience, I can say that it's a very rewarding challenge. At least in my case americans say that I have no accent, and they have no trouble understanding everything I say.

Now, accents are part of a culture... be it in a country or in regions of that country. It may seem useless to you, but learning the american accent has given me the ability of having great conversations with many many americans. What about british people? They have no problem understanding americans, so I'm sure they'll have no problem understanding me... and I have spoken with british people, too. No communication issues.

If your friends have a hard time understanding you when you start speaking with a "stupid" accent, then you need to analyze if you're really learning the target accent or not. It's not the accent's fault. How can it be?

Now, if you are not a native English speaker (I assume you're not), I would like you to tell me the difference between these two sentences:

"You knew your brother did a bad thing, did you?"
"You knew your brother did a bad thing, did you?"

Is the difference between those two an accent matter, or a pronunciation matter? What does each question mean?

Things like that can't be found in languages like Spanish. So that is a matter of mastering an accent up to an "acceptable" level.

Kooyeen wrote:

Ok, I don't know what to say, if you don't want or don't need to learn a variety of English, it's ok, no one forces you. I just have a couple of comments: Also a lot of my friends complain that they have a hard time understanding native speakers (they speak fast without a half of the letters in their words, another half sometimes is usually changed to totally different sounds. LOL! This one made me smile! They are not speaking fast, it's that you are listening too slowly. Seriously, I thought the same... before starting to learn American English seriously. I thought "they don't pronounce words properly, most sounds are left out...", well, that's not true. It was me who wanted to pronounce words my way, me who didn't want to leave out any sounds. And I didn't understand a single word. And I had the same old excuse that every learner has: "They talk too fast! It's impossible to understand!" Why should one learn for instance American accent? To be understood better by Americans, but it means that all other people will have hard time understanding this person. It seems senseless to me. Proper pronunciation is important but only to a sensible degree of course. To be understood by Americans... well, chances are you need to learn American English to understand Americans, actually. And anyway most people understand American English, because it's extremelly widespread (movies, music, etc.). The best thing for a learner is to choose either American or British English as the main variety to learn, and be able to understand both British and American English.

Kooyeen, I totally agree with you. If someone says that they speak very fast, it's just that the person wants the natives to speak slowly for him/her. Even worse, thinking that they don't pronounce THEIR OWN language is just silly. How can an English speaker, or an italian, a french, or even Spanish speakers from other countries tell me that I don't know how speak my own language? It's just nonsense! The same applies for americans: how can I tell them that they don't know how to speak their own language?

And you're right on the second point. American English is the most widespread variant of the English language. There are many advantages to learning the American accent.

Say that learning the accent is stupid is just an excuse for not saying "I'm not able to learn it."

SillyMe wrote:

LOL! This one made me smile! They are not speaking fast, it's that you are listening too slowly.

Don't worry, I was kidding.

SillyMe wrote:

I don’t think so. I have never spoken to an American. I watch only dubbed films and like them that way. I don’t listen to contemporary music, I like classical music. So, I think American English isn’t present in my life.

No wonder you say accents and pronunciation are not important, then! So you are free not to care about spoken English at all. But many ESL learners want to speak with natives, want to be able to watch original movies, and want to understand the music they listen to. So you can't say accents and focusing on pronunciation are useless... useless to you, but vital for most learners.

And even if your goal is just to be able to communicate, I believe learning either BrE or AmE is still the right choice. Those are the most common varieties, and they should be (they are, actually) the varieties every learner in the world should try to learn. If everyone spoke English the way they felt like, no one in the world would be able to communicate. Italian-English maybe would not be understood by speakers of Japanese-English, or Greek-English. But maybe American English with a little bit of Italian accent would be perfectly ok to speakers of American English with a little bit of Japanese accent.

In other words, I think learning the most spoken (and learned) varieties is an advantage for communication. And even if a learner is not interested in comuunication at all, they should try to learn one of the major varieties anyway. Why? Because you never know what'll need in the future. Maybe you'll need to communicate... And it's not a great thing to start improving your pronunciation after you've been mispronouncing everything for many years. That would be really tough...

Hi,
I'm sorry, but I really don't think most of what you said makes sense at all. But maybe it's me who doesn't understand, so let me comment on your post:

Could  you  please  find  at least  one  place  in this  thread  where  I said  that  pronunciation  was  useless.
Uh, but what's the difference between accent and pronunciation? I think they are the same! When someone has an accent, they pronounce words in a certain way. When someone pronounce words in a certain way, you can say they have a certain kind of accent.

I was saying that it should have been proper to some extent.
Proper? And how do you define proper? Is pronouncing like the Brits proper? Is American English proper? We are all definitely pronouncing words in a certain way, which determines our accent. You you are saying that we should have a proper accent. And what is it? Is Chinese-English a proper accent? American? Jamaican? Your accent? Why yours and not other accents?

Accents  do make  speech  inaccesible for most learners especially for those people whose English isn't good enough.
Again, we all have an accent, it's the way we pronounce words and sentences. Accents are a problem sometimes, because people that have very different accents migh not be able to understand each other. But you are talking about learners, so what accents "make speech inaccessible" for learners?

So, I don't like the situation when for example something would be written as "I don't want to..." and you hear instead something like "I-don-wannah..."
Well, that's the way Americans often say it. I usually say it that way. It's perfect. You said "...and you hear instead..."... so what should be hear? English is not read the way it is written, and it's not written the way it is spoken. Spoken English is one thing, written English is another. I know, it's a mess, and it's weird. I find this is one of the most difficult things about English. If you understand this, then you'll understand why there's nothing wrong in saying "I bake choo a pie?" when reading "I baked you a pie".

 It doesn't make the language accessible for everyone. That's the main point. You should respect your listeners speaking properly and in as simple as possible way to be understood by a majority of people. This majority isn't americans, these people are from all over the world with different backgrounds and levels of English skills.
OK. So what is this accent we should have when speaking properly and that would be easily understood by everyone, both natives and non-natives? Can you point it out or describe it? I don't think there is one. I already told you my opinion: if you want an accent (=way of pronouncing, kind of English) in order to make yourself understood, either you pick British English or American English. The reason is that those varieties are the most "proper" for communication, they are "mainstream" English. Just look at international news, reports, etc: most of them are in BrE or AmE. No wonder those two are the varieties taught to ESL learners.

Let me know what you think.

SillyMe wrote:

"You knew your brother did a bad thing, did you?"   "You knew your brother did a bad thing, did you?" Is the difference between those two an accent matter, or a pronunciation matter? Neither. The intonation is the key. You have used an intonation stress to emphasise those words in the sentences. It has nothing to do with an accent. A lot of languages have the same mechanism for this purpose. People rarely speak in a monotonic way. They need an intonation to emphasise their ideas.

You missed it, my friend. Intonation is part of an accent. And those specific intonation patterns I just showed you can be found in some languages, not all (you won't find it in Spanish, for example). Those patterns have a specific purpose, so there's reason for learning at least the "basics" of an accent.