People often say that they don't care about having good pronunciation because they only want to communicate. They say they can communicate even with bad pronunciation. They find their communication skills satisfactory.
But perhaps native speakers find bad pronunciation unpleasant and hard to understand. If so, seen from their perspective, such communication is not satisfactory at all.
The Antimoon webmasters think that having good pronunciation is an important component of the ability to communicate:
http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronuncwhy.htm
We claim that a strong accent puts the foreigner at a disadvantage when it comes to social interaction with native speakers. But perhaps we are needlessly troubling our readers with this issue. We don't know.
Therefore we are looking for comments from native speakers who have had contact with foreigners. Do you sometimes find foreign pronunciation unpleasant? Do you enjoy talking with foreigners even if their accent is very strong?
I'd like to quote a portion of an interview with a native speaker of French who talks about poor pronunciation of some learners. She says that she finds their accent comical, and that she often gets impatient when listening to poor French. On the whole, she seems to get little pleasure from conversing with foreigners whose French accent leaves a lot to be desired.
"When I am learning a new language, I try to have just as little foreign accent as possible. There are two reasons for this. One comes from my contacts with foreigners who were speaking French. I sometimes found their pronunciation very comical. I wouldn't actually laugh out loud at them, but I felt as though I was doing them a favor by taking the time to let them struggle with the language. I would usually become quite impatient and 'tune them out,' or I'd try to finish the sentence so that we could get on with the conversation. The other reason why I'm so concerned with pronunciation was that in dealing with 70 Success with Foreign Languages foreigners, I found that their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary didn't make a big difference. The heavier their accent, the less they were understood. So I have concluded that for me, learning pronunciation is just as important as learning grammar if not more so."
The interview comes from the book "Success with Foreign Languages: Seven who achieved it and what worked for them" by EARL W. STEVICK. You can download this book from here:
http://www.sil.org/LinguaLinks/LanguageLearning/BooksBackInPrint/SuccessWithForeignLanguages/SuccessWithForeignLanguages.htm
It's in pdf format and it's free.
We once went to a conversation class taught by native speakers (Americans). Before the class started, the teacher said to us: "So, do you speak good English?". Tom replied "We think so", and the guy said "It sure sounds like you do".
Notice that we just said three words, and the teacher could already tell if our English was good or bad. Why did the teacher think our English was good? Because of the difficult words we used? No. Because we used advanced grammar structures? No. It was our pronunciation.
Reply to Tom :
If I'm not being too personal, Can I make some comments about this topic.
- What you're trying to say learning pronunciation is a key factor and should be the first priority.
- If teacher did realize that students English was good. Why you people
went to a conversation and why teacher was ready to teach you English.
- You mean If we students have full commands on having good pronunciation we can give a good impact to others even we don't know
so many vocabularies and grammar rules.
- It's a stupid question for you as far as giving the answer is concerned.
If that tom was your, how was your pronunciation nice and impressive to
that native teacher. Even your first language is polish and ofcourse at that
time you had a strong impact of your polish dialect.
- you see every person has different vocal sounds with along some taste
of native language. If we learn pronunciation of each or every word and pronounce it accordingly. Is it possible our accent will be similar to britons or
Americans. Will we have reduced a taste of our own native language.?
Is it easy to judge whether this person has first language as polish or English. when you have full command on foriegn dialects.
- What is the importance of learning pronunciation in order to have foriegn
dialects?
<<<<
- If teacher did realize that students English was good. Why you people
went to a conversation and why teacher was ready to teach you English.
>>>>
We wanted to have a conversation with an American. The class was free, too.
<<<<
- You mean If we students have full commands on having good pronunciation we can give a good impact to others even we don't know
so many vocabularies and grammar rules.
>>>>
Yes, exactly. A few days ago I read a message making the same point in a forum about software development. I'll quote it here:
"A person who masters a foreign language but has a strong accent is perceived as non-fluent. A person who has a perfect pronunciation but has only a limited vocabulary is perceived as being much further along in learning the language."
<<<<
- It's a stupid question for you as far as giving the answer is concerned.
If that tom was your, how was your pronunciation nice and impressive to
that native teacher. Even your first language is polish and ofcourse at that
time you had a strong impact of your polish dialect.
>>>>
You are misusing the word "impact" (among other things).
When that class took place, my English was basically as good as it is now.
<<<<
- If we learn pronunciation of each or every word and pronounce it accordingly. Is it possible our accent will be similar to britons or Americans.
>>>>
Yes, of course.
<<<<
Will we have reduced a taste of our own native language.?
Is it easy to judge whether this person has first language as polish or English. when you have full command on foriegn dialects.
What is the importance of learning pronunciation in order to have foriegn
dialects?
>>>>
I'm not sure what you mean here. Specifically, I don't understand your usage of the words "taste" and "foreign dialects".
I think that the better your accent, the better you will be treated, and the more comfortable people will feel when dealing with you.
If you have poor pronunciation you will not be understood and that's all there is to it. But as I have argued before, a slight foreign accent is very attractive to most native speakers. I completely disagree with what the previous post says although it may be true of wherever Neil comes from. In my experience a slight foreign accent can actually be an advantage and - from the British point of view - it is MUCH better than hearing a non-native speaker speaking with an American accent.
<<<<
In my experience a slight foreign accent can actually be an advantage and -from the British point of view - it is MUCH better than hearing a non-native speaker speaking with an American accent.
>>>>
What do you mean by "slight foreign accent" and how can it be an advantage?
I am a non-native speaker of American English and I've had ZERO difficulties interacting with people in Britain. I wonder what kind of foreign accent would have made my experience "much better".
Well, I'm an exchange student in the U.S. at the moment. This is my seventh month and I really didn't have any problems at all. I mean it's harder for me to understand people trying to speak my language or even to hear them talk in Spanish... that's seriously HORRIBLE! So, I don't think that Americans, British people or anyone else should complain about people trying to learn their language in order to be able to communicate.
Especially French people, how many of them are able to speak, let's say, only one language without an accent, I mean if they study a language at all? WELL, I don't know anybody, they should better not complain about other people that are at least trying to communicate with them! French people should look at themselves first and then think about if they still want to laugh about others and make fun of the way they are trying to talk since the French are not able to understand a word.
I'm 18 years old; and, I personally grew up bilangual and studied three more languages. That means that I speak Greek, German, and English perfect, and I'm still working on my French and Spanish. And if anybody wants to make fun of the way I talk then they should better prove that they know at least as many languages as I do.
Wednesday, January 02, 2002, 19:21 GMT