So you'd rather have someone who is unable to properly express his ideas but it sounds pretty, than someone who can express them but sounds foreign? That's placing values on language as a means of communication right there =/.

nadiatims: I think that native mistakes versus foreigner mistakes is a bit too subjective to be worth a discussion, so I'll end that here. However, it's a bit silly to accept mistakes from one party but not the other's. I've been on international forums where the worst English was spoken by the only English person there, which I found funny. Really bad mistakes. Horrible spelling too, and not in the "I rite kewl so it's intenshonal", but in the obviously well-thought posts but with horrible English. Comment on it and he'd say that since he's a native he's totally allowed to do it. As someone who did spend years and years learning every aspect of the language that concept makes me sad.

And I understand about the accent thing now and agree .

My order of emphasis is:

1) Accent
2) Vocab
3) Grammar

My reasoning is that if you don't constantly focus on working on your accent, then you will slip up. I'm learning Hindi and I'm just now starting to understand the difference between इ and ई or  उ and ऊ as these sound really similar to an English speaker. Looking back, if I had known to differentiate them from Day 1, my life would have been so much easier. I'm not suggesting abandon everything until your accent is flawless, but rather every time you learn a word, work a lot on your pronunciation of the word.

Secondly, I emphasize vocabulary. I have a mostly passive understanding of Gujarati (my native language, it has deteriorated greatly since I started school in America) because I understand a huge amount of vocabulary, but am unable to remember the grammar forms to express myself. Even if you understand just some words of a sentence, you can piece together its meaning regardless of knowing how the verbs are conjugated or how the particles are placed.

Thirdly, though, to gain a solid understanding of the language, grammar is needed.

I sometimes feel this way. Even though I add learn new sentences in anki everyday I feel that I am not really learning. I watch drama, anime ,you tube in Japanese without subs. I am immersed in Japanese. But I am not hearing the new stuff that I am learning this makes me thing I am doing something wrong. Anyone else feel like this? Anything I can do to get out of this rut?

Zgarbas wrote:

So you'd rather have someone who is unable to properly express his ideas but it sounds pretty, than someone who can express them but sounds foreign?

I'm imagining two people.  One person is able to form completely perfect english, but their pronunciation is terrible.  They have to repeat themselves 4 or 5 times to be understood. 

The other person has almost 0 grammar.  Their sentences might sound like "I store go now.  you together come?" but each individual word is perfectly understandable.

My argument was that I would much rather talk with the second person.  It's usually easy to figure out what they are saying from context, but the first person is almost completely not understandable. 

Of course, you really couldn't have a "deep" conversation with either person.

HonyakuJoshua wrote:

Zgarbas wrote:

nadiatims: I think that native mistakes versus foreigner mistakes is a bit too subjective to be worth a discussion, so I'll end that here.

How on earth did you jump to this conclusion? Nadiatims made a perfectly valid point?

What conclusion? I just said I'm not getting into it since I see no way in which that subtopic could develop in a productive manner? Sure, a select few mistakes will be typical to a foreigner, but they're only a small percentage and usually restricted by a certain foreigner's personal background (like the plural thing with the Japanese people, though that is also not really a problem with someone who has plurals in their native tongue...).

I'm imagining two people.  One person is able to form completely perfect english, but their pronunciation is terrible.  They have to repeat themselves 4 or 5 times to be understood.

How exactly does one go about with pronounciation so bad they'd have to repeat themselves multiple times in order to be understood, assuming they know enough English to having gone through the basics? I'm honestly lost here and cannot see how that would happen, short of one party not having read the most basic lessons in English or the other not even trying to understand.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I know how badly spoken English sounds, I don't doubt its existence. But an accent bad enough to make it that hard to understand is hard to come by from anything but complete beginners, who wouldn't have good grammar in the first place. I've met people with good English but heavy accents, but none heavy enough to make it incomprehensible, and if it was bad enough to be incomprehensible their command of English was... basic to say the least.

Similarly, foreigners here tend to never really learn Romanian pronounciation, even after 10+ years of living here. We're not talking occasionally mispronouncing things, it's about pretty much ignoring the existence of certain vowels, messing up diphtongs, etc. I can't say I ever had to have them repeat something, though, cause it's not that hard to just understand it anyway =/.  Surely as a native you can just automatically take a mispronounced word and know what it was supposed to be without much trouble?

Other native English speakers=/? How were they incomprehensible?

While it's very possible that Zgarbas is able to comprehend what speakers with thick accents say, such a skill is definitely not commonplace. Growing up as a child of a Tagalog native speaker and having had several international contacts and friends, I too have grown accustomed to a wide variety of English pronunciations. Furthermore, I have a brother who talks as quickly as Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network. I say these things not to brag, but to show what kind of experience and background is necessary to make sense of nonstandard pronunciation.

While it may be effortless for you, Zgarbas, I assure you that many, many native speakers struggle with non-native pronunciation. I've honestly lost count of the number of times I've heard native speakers complain about the accents of foreign professors whom I've had no problem understanding. Even amongst native speakers, particularly strong accents or unfamiliar accents may pose problems (e.g. an American hearing an Australian or a Briton hearing a Southern Drawl). Moreover, I've heard American native speakers of English complain over and over again about British, Australian, and even other American accents. Just do a search on Jeff Bridges in True Grit. You'll find plenty of Americans who have no idea what he's saying, despite him speaking in an American accent.

Last edited by vileru (2012 July 07, 7:38 pm)

partner55083777 wrote:

Zgarbas wrote:

Other native English speakers=/? How were they incomprehensible?

Usually by slurring their speech or trying to talk too fast.  If they slow down and carefully pronounce everything, I'm sure I would be able to understand them, but I normally need to ask them to repeat themselves sometimes 3 or 4 times. 

I find it very hard to believe you can understand everyone you talk to with little problem.  Have you ever heard an Indian person speaking English?  Or someone talking in Singlish?  Or someone from England who is from the countryside?  Or someone from a ghetto in America?  They are all speaking English, and most of them are considered native speakers, but for me they are all very hard to understand.

But...rather than language mastery/skill isn't that just people's way of speech?

I've spoken to people from around Europe speaking English, Americans from various places (can't remember where every single one was from, but they were people Nebraska, Utah, California, Chicago, Texas and New York), Canadians (including French-Canadians), Australians, New Zealanders, Irish folk, Scots, Brits from pretty much all of central and northern England. As for foreigners, I've spoken to people from pretty much all the countries in Europe, as well as people from Japan, Russia and Zimbabwe, so I got to see quite a few heavy accents (granted, if you only count the ones that had heavy accents, it's not as many). That's disregarding media, which is the only place I've encountered ghetto America and Indians. No idea what Singlish is, but wiki says it's about as similar to English as Jamaican, so I don't think I'd understand anything indeed. Some were extended conversations, some were week or month-long interactions, some were just passing chats or me trying to desperately explain why a yellow filter cigarette is and why they don't have any.

Americans were no trouble (can't say I had trouble with Americans in movies either; Googled some scenes with Jeff Bridges, I have to strain a bit cause of his funny talk, but I get the most of what I saw; maybe I saw some easy to get scenes). Australians and New Zealanders were also easy; French Canadians were Ok when not slipping in French words, and normal Canadians were Ok. Occasionally had to ask the Irish guy (Dublin Irish, not UK Irish) to repeat a word since he talked reaaally fast. Scots were Ok. As long as it wasn't cockney never really had a problem with the Brits, maybe a bit of Birmingham might stump me. Europeans weren't a problem no matter how heavy the accent, Russians and Zimbabweans either. Occasionally had to ask the Japanese to repeat a word (I recall not understanding "college", "Schengen" and about a handful of others, but nothing of considerable amount). Have to watch ghetto movies with subtitles; not sure why Indians would be a problem from what I saw in movies but I'm sure you have more say on that matter.

So, that's a bit of a summary. Aside from problems on their side when not being able to express what they want properly, as long as they say it right I get it despite regional variations. Granted, I did undergo classes in British&American slang and got to talk to people from across the world, which helped(not to mention growing up among people with heavy Eastern European accents), but it's not like an Eastern European accentuates the words the same as a Japanese, so technically it's still restarting the comprehension process from scratch. After about a few hours of talking to someone with an unfamiliar accent I stop straining and just get it, even copying their accent in the process for easier mutual understanding.

Maybe I am just good at it, but this is a new issue for me =/. In my native tongue I rarely have issues with different accents (which we call accents despite the fact that regional vocabulary covers kinda half of what each of us are saying, and many regional "accents" are basically subdialects) and never really care when foreigners pronounce things completely wrong, just figuring out what they wanted to say with a bit of straining =/. Our regional variations are quite extreme, but people from around the country still understand one another.

But still, if people have issues with natives from other regions, why put this issue in the same barrel as language ability? It sounds to me like the issue is with the listener who is not trained to understand/does not try/automatically rejects the speaker's accent, rather than the speaker's inability.