Evil_Dragon Wrote:Yeah, this year's winner is not too bad, but it's nothing too impressive either - at least to me. I've spoken to a handful of people who left a far greater impression on me, even though she's of course better than most non-natives I've met in Japan.

Well, sure, we might know people who have become almost indistinguishable from native speakers, but I imagine they'd feel weird entering a speech contest. They consider themselves bilingual. There might also be advanced learners in the world who are better, but they weren't contestants that day. I'd like to see these winners get the credit they deserve for their accomplishment ... and guts. It'd be a shame if they were to Google-stumble onto web criticism. (not directed at anyone in particular)

Hopefully it doesn't make others shy away from public speaking. It's already hard enough. Javiczy posted the info thinking some people here might be interested.

zachandhobbes Wrote:Mushi, I value accent more than anything else in a language.

If someone can communicate with an average level of speaking for a language learner, but with a flawless accent, he sounds much more fluent to me than someone who has a high level, but with a terrible accent.

I've met Chinese doctors who can speak speeches to English speakers about diseases, with bad accents. They just don't come across as intelligent, not because they are dumb, but their accent just sounds so lame.

I think, like Vileru said, it is all about the type/degree of accent that you have. People with slight accents can be seen as intelligent, charming and even sexy, but a very thick accent will be seen as just the opposite. I think my accent is quite slight in Japanese but I have no interest in getting rid of it completely. It is part of who I am and I quite like having one. (If only I could learn to say English words with a katakana accent. Nobody understands me when I say them with an American accent! )

zachandhobbes Wrote:If someone can communicate with an average level of speaking for a language learner, but with a flawless accent, he sounds much more fluent to me than someone who has a high level, but with a terrible accent.

I've met Chinese doctors who can speak speeches to English speakers about diseases, with bad accents. They just don't come across as intelligent, not because they are dumb, but their accent just sounds so lame.

Exactly! This is obvious after watching almost any American movie that has a character with a thick foreign accent. There's countless movies that portray people in positions of power as comical (because they sound funny) due to their heavy foreign accents, even though they are obviously intelligent.

Sure, these are extreme examples, but I think it applies to those with lighter accents as well, just to a lesser degree. A good example is my mom, who came to the U.S. almost 30 years ago from the Philippines. Her accent is not very strong, and her vocabulary and grammar is better than many college students I've met. Yet, some of my friends make fun of her pronunciation every now and then. I know that my case isn't isolated because many of my friends also have parents who immigrated to the U.S. decades ago (mostly from Asia), and these friends have experienced the same thing. Although, it's worth noting that this probably isn't much of a problem for those with attractive accents (in the case of American English, this includes British, French, Spanish, Italian, and a few other accents). At any rate, I think this shows that, ideally, your accent should either match that of native speakers or another accent that is widely respected. Why? Because you'll earn a lot more respect that way.

Considering these guys are supposedly the cream of the crop international business types that have studied Japanese at University and their speeches are prewritten and presumedly checked by native speaker friends, I would have thought they'd be better than that. Their fresh off the boat gaijin accents were kind of hard to understand at times, though I guess nerves must play a part. I wonder how good their comprehension is? not great I'm guessing. Judging by their accents they haven't spent much time listening to real Japanese audio. I get the impression these guys can probably translate their way through a newspaper and maybe have 1kyuu but would have trouble watching a movie or reading a novel.
Granted I think it takes a good ten years or so to get a perfect accent and isn't really a goal worth aiming for, most exchange students (and even some english teachers) sound much more natural than this after only a year in the country (unless they live in an English bubble).

So, anyone going to post a 10 minute demonstration on Youtube? I think it'd be a cool challenge.

What should be the subject? Can we make a competition of it? Can there be a prize?

Length of stay in Japan is one of the four criteria the judges consider. I assume they believe that someone who has lived in Japan will speak better Japanese. So to some extent, the speakers are assessed with respect to their individuals abilities, not some absolute standard. In other words, it's possible for the winners to be less proficient than some of the others.

edit: (Language, content and delivery are the other criteria.)

Also, one of the stated purposes of this contest is "to encourage and reward the efforts of students of the Japanese language".

So can we give these guys a break now? :-) They don't all have "fresh off the boat accents" and there's more to it than accent.

I don't think accents are bad. A lot of proficient European speakers I hear have slight characteristic differences in their pronunciation, but they still speak clearly and fluidly. You can't say that for people who omit っ, n their んs, replace カタカナ with English etc.

In some cases improvement could simply mean reading two lines of text and practising a little. Pronunciation can be learned like any other part of a language. I think this "politically correct" way of looking at people who clearly have problems leads to it getting overlooked as an area to focus on.

I'm speaking generally about bad pronunciation. I don't think all of the people in the videos were bad, and it definitely takes some guts to go through with something like that.