harhol Wrote:All that really matters is that you can communicate and that you don't sound like a bumbling idiot.

ta12121 Wrote:agreed! Accent is the last thing people should worry about

Clearly, in your opinions, but I do not agree. I want a certain command of a language, and for me, that includes accent, stress, timing and fluency - all of it. Of course, the difficulty of getting rid of one's accent is different for every person, but I think anybody can get very close with some effort. And I respect any person for making different choices, but you can hardly say we're really 'sniping' at his accent. It was just a -in my opinion deserved- remark and statement that some would do it differently and he could do (could have done) differently. And that has nothing to do with disrespect for someone.

harhol Wrote:[snip]but of course you're welcome to upload a recording of yourself if you want to show us how it should be done.

You know as well as me that nobody wrote that he or she could do better than him. This was absolutely beside the point.

A french accent is like the exception, not the rule. Maybe Russian too. Most of the time a bad accent will make you sound like the equivalent of a telemarketer. And we all know how much people love telemarketers.

An accent is a problem if it makes it hard for people to understand what you're saying, otherwise it may not be such a big issue.

Some people are satisfied with a slow, rote internalization of kanji from the top-down, happy with a kind of cursory surface reading ability till they've seen the kanji repeated enough times as they build their vocabulary--esp. if their main concern is speaking and just being able to read street signs that don't have ローマ字 or Japanese-English. I just wish they could understand how close they are to a fantastic method like Heisig and its variants, with so many people having learned the kanji fully, bottom-up in months and jumpstarting their contextual learning process exponentially.

I think it has to do with the fact that they can't easily see outside their own reading comprehension to appreciate the order of magnitude in difference there is. They think they're just fine. I see the same thing with English readers. It's easy for Heisig alumni to spot it because we look at such skills as a larval stage we've evolved out of. ;p

Personally I want an accent in Japanese. I want a British Japanese accent. ;p

shihoro Wrote:American's have awful accents but they can speak English quite well, considering. Australians need to make more effort. Please see me after class.

What do you mean? We've been dutifully preserving the accent for you. You're the ones who suddenly decided to deprecate of most of your /R/s and swap all the /A/s around. I guess you got lazy, but we didn't. Any time you're ready to re-learn how English is supposed to sound, we're here for you.

JimmySeal Wrote:

shihoro Wrote:American's have awful accents but they can speak English quite well, considering. Australians need to make more effort. Please see me after class.

What do you mean? We've been dutifully preserving the accent for you. You're the ones who suddenly decided to deprecate of most of your /R/s and swap all the /A/s around. I guess you got lazy, but we didn't. Any time you're ready to re-learn how English is supposed to sound, we're here for you.

British pronunciation of English is a quaint novelty, the decadent vestige of a fallen empire. ;p

KMDES Wrote:A french accent is like the exception, not the rule. Maybe Russian too.

Personally, I have no idea how anyone can find the Russian accent even remotely attractive, but this probably has to do with me being Russian. Incidentally, my own accent in English is an ungodly mix of Kazakhstani Russian (they say that Russians in Central Asia speak purer Russian than those in Moscow), Home Counties British and Dixie American (once you start using the word "y'all" you just cannot do without it).

nest0r Wrote:Personally I want an accent in Japanese. I want a British Japanese accent. ;p

Ah, so you mean a British accent in Japanese. At first I was confused, because the first thing that came to my mind when I read "British Japanese" was Yukio Mishima's accent. His voice and manner of speech sorta remind me of William F. Buckley.

It's all about the evil James Bond girls, and all the hot Russian actors in the 80s, usually being villians. Hawt. ;D

vonPeterhof Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:A french accent is like the exception, not the rule. Maybe Russian too.

Personally, I have no idea how anyone can find the Russian accent even remotely attractive

I think this has to do with gender. French, Russian, Italian accents (in English) are so hot when uttered by women (some of you might have guessed I'm a guy), but they sound perfectly stupid, rude, or pretentious when actualized by males.

My sweetheart is Russian. He's hot ...and a villian... which makes him hotter. ;p

So...where was I...oh yeah...kanji readings. :-) I took a look at some stuff. I reckon you can accurately guess about 35% of words with one common onyomi. That's with 72% kanji words (which is high like newspapers) and 50% Kanji-only words (no okurigana). (But you'd still have to look each one up because you'd have no way of knowing which ones are correct.)

This other bit of information surprised me: one study found that 8% of Japanese words in their corpora were heteronyms (different words, different pronunciations, same kanji. Eg. 曲　and 空間,　or "bow" in English.) That's a lot! I checked a sample of the Leeds frequency list and it was 7%. Mixing them up might create some amusing results involving goblins, live births at factories, and eating living things. And phonetic dictionary lookups might not catch it. haha. It'd be fun to read/write a short story filled with double meanings.

vonPeterhof Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:A french accent is like the exception, not the rule. Maybe Russian too.

Personally, I have no idea how anyone can find the Russian accent even remotely attractive, but this probably has to do with me being Russian. Incidentally, my own accent in English is an ungodly mix of Kazakhstani Russian (they say that Russians in Central Asia speak purer Russian than those in Moscow), Home Counties British and Dixie American (once you start using the word "y'all" you just cannot do without it).

Being a Russian myself, I can totally relate to this sentiment (doesn't matter if speaker is male or female). I think this is probably because accents are positive (interesting) and negative (may be difficult to understand) at the same time. However if accents from whatever your home country are obviously not interesting at all, and merely reflect a weakness in the acquired language.

Sorry it's off topic but, in my opinion, an accent is OK. Wrong pronunciation is not. I don't mean each phoneme needs to sound like a native speaker's, but if you meant to say a word and pronounced a different one, for example, if you were saying ビル (building) like ビール (beer), I think it would need to be taken care of. While Japanese phonemes are easy to pronounce and English speakers don't usually need much practice there if at all (unless you want to sound totally and completely like Japanese), mora and pitch are very important and should be treated with more respect imo. And it's best you get the basics of pronunciation from the start. Why? Because when you read, or even listen to, whatever language, you are vocalizing/re-vocalizing it in your head. If you know the correct pronunciation, reading can also be a training for pronunciation. There is only one thing I regret not doing when I first came to the states and that's I didn't practice all the phonemes which is very important in English. All those thousands of hours of reading and listening could have helped improve my pronunciation if I had done it from the get go.

Of course, you shouldn't be intimidated by thinking "Oh, my pronunciation is bad" or "How would my accent sound like?" or things like that when you speak. You should be all confident. It's YOU reaching out and using their language. YOU are the noble one. But that doesn't mean you don't need to pay attention to pronunciation. I think you or I have a problem if we pronounce a word in a way that can possibly change its meaning. Pronouncing Kanji's A with Father's A or Mother's A or Matter's A isn't a big deal in Japanese, because it doesn't change the meaning of it a bit. But saying it かーんじぃ is a problem because it can mean different things, like カーン爺 (Old Kahn). It has a meaningful difference and I think THAT will bug people.

Anyway, where can I find all those hot Russian and French women? I work with a Russian guy at work but he is like a shaved head, KGB looking middle age guy, who may be hot to some girls (Thora? ) and I find him kind of cool too, but as a straight guy, I'm not even a tiny little bit attracted. And he always sounds angry which kind of scares me

I don't trust Russians. KGB spies. They'll sleep with you then poison you with radiation so they can redistribute your wealth!

nest0r Wrote:I don't trust Russians. KGB spies. They'll sleep with you then poison you with radiation so they can redistribute your wealth!

Is this a reference to a Heisig story or a real-life event which happened not too long ago?

KanjiDevourer Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:I don't trust Russians. KGB spies. They'll sleep with you then poison you with radiation so they can redistribute your wealth!

Is this a reference to a Heisig story or a real-life event which happened not too long ago?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Chapman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_L..._poisoning