Comments on: Don’t Worry Too Much About Your Accent

By: Ramses

Ramses — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:39:53 +0000

@David
Sounds like you’re pretty much like me. The main difference between pronunciation and accent is often intonation and word length. My pronunciation is pretty much perfect, for example. My main problem is that I don’t open my mouth enough (common problem for Dutch and English speakers) and until recently I was really chopping off my words.

If you lengthen your words you’ll sound more like a native. Also, it’s difficult to spot the differences in intonation. Until this day I can’t really put the finger on my intonation problem (and I have spent MANY hours analyzing my speech). This could be solved my speaking (I think), but I’m not sure. Again, if I ask non-teachers I often get the comment they always though I was a native (this are the people outside of Spain). Spaniards mostly can tell I’m not native if they listen carefully, but can’t say from where.

This means that pronunciation and accent can be two different things. However, they’re mostly related directly (not in my case, though, which actually makes things nastier when you advance). One thing I did notice was that my accent actually improved by SPEAKING. Still, I’m listen carefully to myself when I speak (I’m perfectly able to do this after some self-training, so I think it’s something everyone can do) so that I can errors and such. This is how I tackled the lengthening issue (although I was not aware that I had this ‘problem’ and less that I fixed it – I just imitated native speakers right away when speaking with them).

I agree with you that most teachers SUCK when it comes to improving one’s pronunciation/accent. In college it was fully ignored in my first year (the MOST IMPORTANT year to fix any serious problem) and it was only introduced recently that the first years are learned how to pronounce the r (but nothing else, actually).

By: David

David — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:44:16 +0000

@Ramses: Isn’t accent, proper accent that is, directly related to proper pronunciation? I guess I don’t see how to have proper pronunciation without having proper accent. In my experience it has been extremely difficult to find teachers of pronunciation/accent. The usual comment is, “You have very good Spanish pronunciation.” I know, of course, that my pronunciation and accent needs work. How do I know? I ask others (non-teachers) and I get responses like “Yea, I can tell a difference but…, don’t worry about it. Your pronunciation is really good.” The problem is I DON’T WANT REALLY GOOD! I want to sound EXACTLY as if Spanish were my first language. Sometimes being a perfectionist with my language learning goes against me. I think.

David

By: LaPingvino

LaPingvino — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:48:46 +0000

Creo que aprendeste algo ahí en españa . Sabes que estaba ahí también en los últimas dias? Estaba en Madrid por el avión para São Paulo y después en ruta a mi casa. Estaba hablando mucho en Español por que los aviónes en que estaba son de Iberia. Tenemos que hablar otra vez muy rápido!

Haz bien ahí! Buena suerte!

Y… puedes ver que mi Español se vuelve ya mejor . Jajajaja…..

Ah… Também estava aprendendo bastante o português. Mas isso é totalmente uma coisa diferente, além das similaridades entre os idiomas…