Ooh, yeah, that’s a good point!
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He is speaking like a Rio de Janeiro native.
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Has it already been discussed here about how people learn to speak with a native accent in a foreign language?
Remembering how I learned, it’s funny to think back on fellow USian students whose syntax/grammar was more proper than mine (as in they never messed up the cases) but they sounded like an American reading the words, you know? Kind of clunky.
I never thought before about where some of us pick up the skill to somewhat match the local accent, and others just don’t. Even after months or years.
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When I learned German at school I had instruction in proper pronunciation. I distinctly remember reciting “am abend esse ich immer Eis” to learn the use of the glottal stop, the forced “uh” sound used with words that start with a vowel. If you didn’t learn it you would run words together, like "a maben desseich immerEis:
We also watched German TV and listened to radio so we got exposed to a few different accents too. There were some longwave stations that could be picked up in the evenings. I also did a few student exchanges in Germany. I can still do a decent Swabian accent.
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I remember when I was told I had a cute accent by someone I worked with in Belgium. Took me a moment to grok that, as of course I thought he was the one with the accent!
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Königin-Katharina-Stift Gymnasium, by any chance?
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You might be able to guess where my daughters did their student exchanges!
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It might have something to do with the ear. There are some people who struggle to hear themselves as well as others. I notice it more when singing with a lot of people or in exercises when people are asked to repeat what another person says. While doing those exercises on Zoom I can see the confusion on other people’s faces when someone in the group doesn’t repeat what they heard - but they clearly believe that they did.
My accent changes based on the people in my language conversation groups. I’ve caught myself mimicking the various voice talent in Duolingo, because they don’t all pronounce words the same way. That’s how I pick up accents and various singing styles, through listening and repetition.
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For me, I’m not actually trying to get a native Norwegian accent. Somehow it feels fake to me. I want people to hear that I am German in the same way they can hear when someone is from a particular region in Norway when they speak. That doesn’t mean I want to speak broken Norwegian or that I want to mispronounce things, but I do not worry about getting the accent exactly right.
I’ve always wondered whether I was the only one doing that
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Nope.
And unless you’re undercover and have to blend in there is no need for ir.
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In that case my US midwestern accent is almost impeccable.
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Today’s installment of “fucking Duolingo”
Ok, cool.
Sigh.
And yes, I know the proper literal romanization of “Tokyo” is “Toukyou”, thank you very much. But FFS, have some consistency, Duolingo.
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On the flip side to that: a Chinese friend described how he listened to the different Australian accents when he was learning English, to find the one most pleasing to his hear. He picked the rural Australian accent with its extra-broad vowels because he loved the sound of it. He lives in Sydney (not rural), but his accent is reasonably convincing.
I think in his case, making an attempt at the local accent helps diffuse some listeners’ racist first impressions.
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