Since many comments in this thread converge towards language pronunciation:
When people are learning how to draw, they typically have to learn how to "unsee". To quote Betty Edwards:
students beginning in art generally do not really see what is in front of their eyes — that is, they do not perceive in the way required for drawing. They take note of what's there, and quickly translate the perception into words and symbols mainly based on the symbol system developed throughout childhood and on what they know about the perceived object.
Learning how to pronounce sounds in a new language is the same. A lot of people will pronounce foreign words with how their brain thinks it should sound, using their native language as a baseline. The trick is to try to get rid of any phonetic preconception you might have, and pronounce sounds as you hear them from native speakers. It takes practice, but it's a learnable skill.
(Which is why romanization of Asian languages, for instance, is a trap for new learners: if you're learning Japanese, the latin alphabet should have no place whatsoever in your learning. It's a tempting, but false path)
For drawing like for speaking, kids are naturally good at this. (except while language acquisition happens naturally for kids, deliberate drawing practice rarely does)
The romanisation part is ridiculous, but pops up all the time.
English and French spelling is as far removed from each other as anything. Anybody learning a foreign language will have to come to terms with the fact that the letters work slightly-to-moderately different for each language, whether those are European or Asian languages. Danish and Swedish are practically dialects of each other, but the spelling and pronunciation are miles apart. Trying to read one with the usage of the other will sound as stilted as any transliteration of any "non-alphabet" language.
Alphabet is the only official way to type out pronunciation of mainland Chinese, so trying to avoid the alphabet for Chinese is basically impossible.
Vietnamese, like several other Asian languages is Alphabet with diatrics, so again, you have to use Alphabet. There is nothing magical about Asian languages that gets contaminated by the Alphabet.
As for Japanese, the kana alphabet can be transcribed to Alphabet without information loss, so it is in no way a poor substitute. You also have to learn romanisations in order to type on a keyboard.
The bottom line is, you have to learn new sounds when learning a new language and you have to learn new spelling. shi in Japanese or Chinese are quite close to English, at least compared to how close ta is to the English pronunciation of "shi", so the alphabet acts as a nice mnemonic structure for learners.
> A lot of people will pronounce foreign words with how their brain thinks it should sound, using their native language as a baseline. The trick is to try to get rid of any phonetic preconception you might have, and pronounce sounds as you hear them from native speakers. It takes practice, but it's a learnable skill.
There's actually a trick that, for me at least, makes this a lot easier. If I learn to speak English with a heavy accent of someone with a different native language, it will then be easier to transition into speaking that other language. It almost separates learning a new language from learning to pronounce that language.
The key is that it's a lot easier for me to hear and practice the sounds of a new language when I can hear the differences between my pronunciation and correct pronunciation and it's most easy to hear those differences in my native language. With enough practice on the accent, the rhythms, tongue positioning and overall mouth habits that the speaker I'm aping hasn't yet learned to drop become second nature such that when I transition over to speaking that other language, I already have correct habits.
As an English speaker, it's so easy to find YouTube clips of people who barely speak English to copy that I can learn to do a pretty convincing accent in an afternoon at this point, though it took take me a couple of days the first few times I tried it.
> (Which is why romanization of Asian languages, for instance, is a trap for new learners: if you're learning Japanese, the latin alphabet should have no place whatsoever in your learning. It's a tempting, but false path)
I don't really believe this. Spanish, French, English, and Swahili are all written in the same alphabet, but have wildly different pronunciations. There's nothing magical about using Roman letters (and I have a chip on my shoulder about this after studying Japanese because, while converting Japanese to a romanized system has actual sound arguments against it, "it would sound like English" is trotted out constantly even though it's nonsense).
>, and pronounce sounds as you hear them from native speakers. It takes practice, but it's a learnable skill.
This sounds plausible and I want it to be true but I have doubts that every phoneme of every world language can be discriminated by adults after the early-childhood language acquisition. (The so-called "critical period."[1]).
I think a fascinating example even within one language such as English is the "pin" vs "pen" pronunciation.[2]
And plenty of other 2nd-language learning examples such as English speakers missing the delicate "zh" sound in French "bonjour" and always pronouncing it with the hard "j" -- or trying to pronounce the Vietnamese "Nguyen" as "when" or "win". There's a (tonal) phoneme in Vietnamese that's nonexistent in English so it's very possible English listeners can't even hear it as a new distinct sound they have to replicate. The "when" or "win" is the closest approximation they will ever hear and because of that, they will always sound non-native.
I agree with the idea but disagree about the romanisation part. There are many reasons why people should start with romanised versions first. The main reason is that one should concentrate on the language first and on complex writing later, otherwise there is too much information to process. The other reason is that any useful actual writing in those languages will be done in the romanised alphabet (i.e.: on a computer). The barrier of unlearning the pronunciation of different characters is no larger when learning Chinese pinyin while being english, than learning Slovak pronunciations of Latin letters while being French.
Indeed. And just as most people can't see things accurately, not can they sense what's going on inside their mouths. AFAICT each accent has a signature pattern of muscle tension and positioning of jaw, pharynx, etc.
As someone who learned to speak fluently in a different language, I believe the trick is to study the IPA of both your native language and the one you want to learn. This is especially true if you come from a language like English which isn't a phonetic language.
It sets a common ground for you to work with. There may be some vowels that may be undistinguishable for both native speakers. However, you'll likely to come across some that requires a developed ear to differentiate the two. This is the reason why you probably have an accent. Focus on tongue placement, emphasis, change in pitch, etc.
Of course, this won't help much to actually speak in a different language, but for accents I found this method incredibly helpful. It's the micro side of things that most people overlook.
As someone who is currently learning to speak in a different language, I would agree with this wholeheartedly. I learned IPA in a university course and have found it very useful for learning languages, especially because most native speakers of the target language may not be aware of the phonetics of that language.
That is a wonderful video. The gibberish she speaks in Each language sounds pretty convincing, although I noticed my relationship with each language affected how it sounded a lot.
French and Spanish: I've heard them around but never spoken them. She sounded perfect.
Swedish: I used to be able to speak it but have forgotten. She sounded even more convincing than in French.
Japanese: I speak it now but not natively. She sounded pretty rough and not all that Japanese to me.
English: My native language. My brain tried so hard to make sense of it and pulled out snippets of words but there was no grammar there.
There's a fantastic English-sounding song by an italian singer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8 Prisencolinensinainciusol by Adriano Celentano. It hurts my brain when I try to pick out meaning from the phenomes.
She just crammed the Semitic sounds in a few made up words sparkled by some real Arabic words and that's it but she should have been making more effort in imitating the rhythm and intonation (prosody) [1] to fool the native Arabic speaker ears that what she speaks was actually Arabic.
I always loved Robert Greene's story of when he was young and living in France he got hired at a hotel while he was pretending to be Irish. He talked about it in an interview that got a little into how much of a method acting exercise it became. He actually took the job and got sucked into an alternate identity for years!
Does anyone have any advice on how to hear the distinction in sounds that aren't in your native language? For example an English speaker learning Chinese tones or a Japanese speaker learning L and R differences. It seems like this is a huge wall to learning accents.
Find recordings of "minimal pairs". Those are words where the only difference is a single sound that you are trying to distinguish. I have a book called "Fluent Forever" explaining about that, and the author sells sets of Anki flash cards to train on those minimal pairs for certain languages.
Yes. Do a lot of listening and do minimal pair drills. I don't think Chinese tones are that tough, but it can take a long time to train the ears when the actual sounds of the language are different, e.g. Taiwanese where there are aspirated, plain and voiced versions of a bunch of consonants. Basically k/g of English mapped to 3 different consonants, as did p/b, t/d, etc.
There are books (and, better but more expensive, teachers) that address directly the mechanics (e.g., tongue, lip, etc., positions) of making the sounds.
In essence, bypass hearing the difference (that comes later, through use) and skip straight to making the sounds.
Probably works better for unfamiliar phonemes than tones, though. Different issues entirely.
I haven't done their courses but check out the Mimic Method. It is an intriguing way at learning a language that focuses on the IPA-based sounds in that language.
I think that's her way to explain that she doesn't try to use her own words with an accent (like most people would do), but she memorizes the sounds (think IPA) and mouth positions and tries to reproduce that as exactly as possible, even if in some cases the sound means another word in her own accent.
> a doctor who uses homeopathic medicines, massage techniques and energy work
I wonder if there are any people who market homeopathy targeted at vocal training. How would that even work (I mean, in terms of similia similibus curentur or whatever)?
I love accents and flavors of speech. A couple of thing I noticed when I was a bit younger. In California, words that end with "-ty" are pronounced "-dy." Eternity -> Eternidy. Also, In Southern California at least, you measure distance in time. "How far away is the store?", "about five minutes."
Wow. This is really hard. I like to play a Russian accent for fun and would like to improve it, but I guess I'll stay with YouTube channels to do that.
the window of mastering an accent closes once you hit your late teens. After that your brain cannot hear the correct pronunciation and merely maps it to closest sounding sound in you mental library. Once you can't hear it, you can't speak it. It is much easier and useful to learn the "flow" of the language than trying to make new sounds .
People always use colin Farrell as an example of adults who mastered an accent but forget that his native language is phonetically close to the language he is supposedly mastering.
[+] [-] GuiA|9 years ago|reply
When people are learning how to draw, they typically have to learn how to "unsee". To quote Betty Edwards:
students beginning in art generally do not really see what is in front of their eyes — that is, they do not perceive in the way required for drawing. They take note of what's there, and quickly translate the perception into words and symbols mainly based on the symbol system developed throughout childhood and on what they know about the perceived object.
Learning how to pronounce sounds in a new language is the same. A lot of people will pronounce foreign words with how their brain thinks it should sound, using their native language as a baseline. The trick is to try to get rid of any phonetic preconception you might have, and pronounce sounds as you hear them from native speakers. It takes practice, but it's a learnable skill.
(Which is why romanization of Asian languages, for instance, is a trap for new learners: if you're learning Japanese, the latin alphabet should have no place whatsoever in your learning. It's a tempting, but false path)
For drawing like for speaking, kids are naturally good at this. (except while language acquisition happens naturally for kids, deliberate drawing practice rarely does)
[+] [-] wodenokoto|9 years ago|reply
English and French spelling is as far removed from each other as anything. Anybody learning a foreign language will have to come to terms with the fact that the letters work slightly-to-moderately different for each language, whether those are European or Asian languages. Danish and Swedish are practically dialects of each other, but the spelling and pronunciation are miles apart. Trying to read one with the usage of the other will sound as stilted as any transliteration of any "non-alphabet" language.
Alphabet is the only official way to type out pronunciation of mainland Chinese, so trying to avoid the alphabet for Chinese is basically impossible.
Vietnamese, like several other Asian languages is Alphabet with diatrics, so again, you have to use Alphabet. There is nothing magical about Asian languages that gets contaminated by the Alphabet.
As for Japanese, the kana alphabet can be transcribed to Alphabet without information loss, so it is in no way a poor substitute. You also have to learn romanisations in order to type on a keyboard.
The bottom line is, you have to learn new sounds when learning a new language and you have to learn new spelling. shi in Japanese or Chinese are quite close to English, at least compared to how close ta is to the English pronunciation of "shi", so the alphabet acts as a nice mnemonic structure for learners.
[+] [-] curun1r|9 years ago|reply
There's actually a trick that, for me at least, makes this a lot easier. If I learn to speak English with a heavy accent of someone with a different native language, it will then be easier to transition into speaking that other language. It almost separates learning a new language from learning to pronounce that language.
The key is that it's a lot easier for me to hear and practice the sounds of a new language when I can hear the differences between my pronunciation and correct pronunciation and it's most easy to hear those differences in my native language. With enough practice on the accent, the rhythms, tongue positioning and overall mouth habits that the speaker I'm aping hasn't yet learned to drop become second nature such that when I transition over to speaking that other language, I already have correct habits.
As an English speaker, it's so easy to find YouTube clips of people who barely speak English to copy that I can learn to do a pretty convincing accent in an afternoon at this point, though it took take me a couple of days the first few times I tried it.
[+] [-] emodendroket|9 years ago|reply
I don't really believe this. Spanish, French, English, and Swahili are all written in the same alphabet, but have wildly different pronunciations. There's nothing magical about using Roman letters (and I have a chip on my shoulder about this after studying Japanese because, while converting Japanese to a romanized system has actual sound arguments against it, "it would sound like English" is trotted out constantly even though it's nonsense).
[+] [-] jasode|9 years ago|reply
This sounds plausible and I want it to be true but I have doubts that every phoneme of every world language can be discriminated by adults after the early-childhood language acquisition. (The so-called "critical period."[1]).
I think a fascinating example even within one language such as English is the "pin" vs "pen" pronunciation.[2]
And plenty of other 2nd-language learning examples such as English speakers missing the delicate "zh" sound in French "bonjour" and always pronouncing it with the hard "j" -- or trying to pronounce the Vietnamese "Nguyen" as "when" or "win". There's a (tonal) phoneme in Vietnamese that's nonexistent in English so it's very possible English listeners can't even hear it as a new distinct sound they have to replicate. The "when" or "win" is the closest approximation they will ever hear and because of that, they will always sound non-native.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period#Second_languag...
[2]https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/14y6tc/til_m...
[+] [-] yoz-y|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dharma1|9 years ago|reply
I think this likely also works for perfect pitch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Cb1qwCUvI.
Neuroplasticity is very different for kids, but there are probably techniques that can enable learning like this with adults - just takes longer.
[+] [-] joggery|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bkgunby|9 years ago|reply
It sets a common ground for you to work with. There may be some vowels that may be undistinguishable for both native speakers. However, you'll likely to come across some that requires a developed ear to differentiate the two. This is the reason why you probably have an accent. Focus on tongue placement, emphasis, change in pitch, etc.
Of course, this won't help much to actually speak in a different language, but for accents I found this method incredibly helpful. It's the micro side of things that most people overlook.
[+] [-] vinay427|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wallflower|9 years ago|reply
"What Languages Sound Like To Foreigners" https://youtu.be/ybcvlxivscw
[+] [-] laurieg|9 years ago|reply
French and Spanish: I've heard them around but never spoken them. She sounded perfect.
Swedish: I used to be able to speak it but have forgotten. She sounded even more convincing than in French.
Japanese: I speak it now but not natively. She sounded pretty rough and not all that Japanese to me.
English: My native language. My brain tried so hard to make sense of it and pulled out snippets of words but there was no grammar there.
[+] [-] sangnoir|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _samihasan_|9 years ago|reply
She just crammed the Semitic sounds in a few made up words sparkled by some real Arabic words and that's it but she should have been making more effort in imitating the rhythm and intonation (prosody) [1] to fool the native Arabic speaker ears that what she speaks was actually Arabic.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_%28linguistics%29
[+] [-] jpatokal|9 years ago|reply
...and note that she's genuinely fluent in only 3 of those!
[+] [-] gotofritz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wenderen|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sethammons|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mysterypie|9 years ago|reply
https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_jones_as_a_one_woman_global_...
[+] [-] apendleton|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xiaoma|9 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/vLXAZsCwGwM?t=9m54s
[+] [-] laurieg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivers99|9 years ago|reply
They're only about $12 (per language) on his web site here: https://fluent-forever.com/product/fluent-forever-pronunciat...
[+] [-] xiaoma|9 years ago|reply
This drove me nuts when I was learning: https://toshuo.com/2010/the-hardest-thing-about-taiwanese-ph...
[+] [-] dragonwriter|9 years ago|reply
In essence, bypass hearing the difference (that comes later, through use) and skip straight to making the sounds.
Probably works better for unfamiliar phonemes than tones, though. Different issues entirely.
[+] [-] wallflower|9 years ago|reply
http://mimicmethod.com
[+] [-] stevekemp|9 years ago|reply
I moved to Finland and couldn't differentiate between ö and o for the longest time. But after living here for a year it became easier.
[+] [-] Singletoned|9 years ago|reply
> “For me it’s not an accent. I know people who do brilliant accents. But I don’t know how to do that.”
[+] [-] Shorel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gotofritz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrkgnao|9 years ago|reply
I wonder if there are any people who market homeopathy targeted at vocal training. How would that even work (I mean, in terms of similia similibus curentur or whatever)?
[+] [-] stefantalpalaru|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sethammons|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rzor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oxplot|9 years ago|reply
* Record own voice speaking passages of above material
* Play back, compare, adjust and repeat
Do above for countless hours
[+] [-] dominotw|9 years ago|reply
People always use colin Farrell as an example of adults who mastered an accent but forget that his native language is phonetically close to the language he is supposedly mastering.
[+] [-] tatotato|9 years ago|reply
Funniest one I've seen in a while.