Re: Speaking without a foreign accent

From: Aidan Kehoe (kehoea_at_parhasard.net)
Date: 11/09/04 

Date: Tue, 09 Nov 2004 20:58:32 +0000

 Ar an naoiú lá de mí na Samhain, scríobh Ruud Harmsen:

> >Your examples don't really prove the general case of that statement,
> >though. Indeed, if native speakers can't, in general, tell that someone has
> >a foreign accent--as seems to be the case for the Dutch speakers of English
> >you cite, and is my occasional experience speaking English with Dutch
> >people--then the first one seems to prove the contrary.
>
> Unless perhaps if I hear the difference with difficulty, they hear it
> easily.

Nah. Once you can distinguish between and classify regional accents in
Britain and Ireland, as your posting history seems to indicate you can, then
your judgement of accents in English is as good as that of most of us, and
probably better than that of most Americans when they encounter speech from
this part of the world.

> OTOH, there are so many different _native_ accents of English it may he
> hard for a native speaker to distinguish an unknown native accent from a
> non-native one.

And there are so many other West Germanic speaking countries with excellent
educational systems and the desire to learn English to confuse the issue
further :-) .

> Just to avoid any misunderstandings, it is my opinion that most Dutch
> speakers trying to speak English, even if they do it quite well, do
> have heavy accents. I probably have an accent myself, even though I am
> interested in improving it since I was 17 (now 49).

Yeah. I don't assert that all Dutch people have native-speaker accents in
English; just that I have met enough who have, that I'm no longer surprised
as much as I would be when encountering a native-speaker English accent
in, say, a Spaniard who first came to an English-speaking country in
adulthood.

Perhaps it's a generational thing. I'm twenty-three, and while every Dutch
person I've ever tried to have a conversation with has had eerily good
English, the flawless ones seem to have all been my contemporaries.

> > > The same happens with people speaking Dutch: even if it is flawless
> > > and accentless, I somehow know when the person wasn't born here.
> >
> >Always? What about with Afrikaaners?
>
> The pronunciation of Afrikaans is very different from that of Dutch.
> Not different enough to cause too much comprehension difficulty, but
> still very different. If they are trying to speak real Dutch they have
> an accent.

Sure, most of them will, but one of them with, say, the exposure to Dutch
and length of time spent in the Netherlands of your Hungarian acquaintance
could have a good shot at this foreign-accentless ideal. :-)

> The same accent, BTW, as have Afrikaners speaking English.
> (Which I think is different from that of native English speakers from
> South-Africa; but I haven't heard that often enough).

I've yet to convince myself that I can tell a South African English speaker
(uuh, of English-speaking descent) from an Australian or a New
Zealander. Despite living with a pair of them, fresh off the figurative
boat, for a few months.

Come to think of it, one of them was an Afrikaner--nonetheless, he didn't
seem so comfortable with Afrikaans--but his mother was Irish, so that didn't
help with my judgement at all. Heh.

> > Plattdeutsch native speakers, if there are any of them left?
>
> Strong accent. Mind you, there are quite a lot of Low-Saxon speaking
> areas in the Netherlands to, with dialects closely related to
> Plattdeutsch dialects in Germany.

Again, they should get close to the ideal if they end up speaking a standard
Dutch with the accent of a Dutch Low-Saxon speaker.

But, yeah. You talk about regional differences being a big deal; presumably
that applies to the Low Saxon dialects as well, and as such, you'll be able
to pick it up. 

-- 
Like the early Christians, Marx expected the millennium very soon; like
their successors, his have been disappointed--once more, the world has shown
itself recalcitrant to a tidy formula embodying the hopes of some section of
mankind. (Russell)

Relevant Pages

  • Re: some more Irish vowels
    ... I have no idea why a Dutch writer, forty years ago, gave the following ... Mistakes that constitute a Dutch accent when speaking English. ... so Mary has the make vowel? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: some more Irish vowels
    ... I have no idea why a Dutch writer, forty years ago, gave the following ... Mistakes that constitute a Dutch accent when speaking English. ... I have no idea what the Cardinal Vowels are supposed to be. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Speaking without a foreign accent
    ... Indeed, if native speakers can't, in general, tell that someone has ... there are so many different _native_ accents of English ... it is my opinion that most Dutch ... I probably have an accent myself, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Accents
    ... >>> My mother, after a couple of decades living in England, had an English ... >>> accent when speaking Dutch. ... It used to irritate her terribly that Dutch ... the accent seeming so familiar. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • We need Language Exchange Partners, we can teach you Dutch
    ... We can teach you Dutch in exchange. ... I want to learn: French ... I know: Dutch, English ... Jennifer Kaster, 25 years old, Netherlands ...
    (soc.culture.netherlands)