Ustlach
Dec 4, 2009, 9:27 AM
Post #7 of 13
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Re: [joannar] long-timers, what canīt you still pronounce well in Spanish?
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I think there is a lot of physiology (just can't make my mouth do that), or something close to that, involved in accents, especially with older people, and by older, I mean over 10 years old.
It is almost impossible for virtually 99% of people who speak a foreign language (other than their mother tongue) to overcome their accents (to the point of being able to fool a native speaker) unless they started learning the foreign language very early in age. Of course, there are always exceptions.
Look at people like Henry Kissinger whose command of English far exceeds that of a majority of Americans, yet his accent is atrocious and he has never been able to improve upon it. There are numerous such examples.
I have been involved with foreign languages and people who speak foreign languages all my life. My grandfather was an immigrant from Germany and spoke beautiful, educated English, but he practically whispered it because he was ashamed on his German accent, which he could never shake. I started learning German at age 12. Too late. I will NEVER fool any German into thinking I am a German. Most of them think I am Dutch or Danish. I started learning Italian when I was 19. I once rode alone, through the night, on a train from Venice to Turin with an Italian lady whom it took all the way to Turin before she realized I was not Swiss-Italian, but only when there was a lot of light and she could see me well. She said she thought I must come from Ticino, the Italian canton of Switzerland, where they are many ethnic Germans, and was surprised when I did not transfer trains in Milan. No Italian I know has ever, will ever think I am Italian, but they are terribly impressed that I speak Italian as well as I do and they appreciate that I bothered to learn it. I think most Mexicans have the same attitude about us gringos who bother to learn Spanish.
Accents can be charming. I love hearing English spoken by native French or Italian speaking people. But French and Italian, sound so bad when spoken by an American who cannot get reasonably close to the accents. As a matter of fact, all the foreign languages I speak sound just awful to me when spoken by most Americans. The American accent comes through very strong because some people just don't even try to pronounce the foreign language correctly at all, or it comes through so affected because the speaker is trying too hard to sound native and it just is not happening.
I remember seeing fellow graduate students screw their mouths up, pursing and protruding their lips, then speaking German, and they really thought they sounded like Goethe himself. It was all I could do to keep from laughing in their faces.
I long ago came to the conclusion that the best policy is to try to pronounce the foreign language well enough that when a native speaker hears it, he does screw his face up in pain and horror, trying to figure what in the hell I am trying to tell him.
Mexicans, at least ones I deal with here in Sonora, are not used to seeing elderly gringos, all blond and blue-eyed (I have not gone gray yet), with Spanish coming out of their faces. And certainly not pretty good (eg. conjugated verbs), fairly well pronounced Spanish. Several of my Mexican friends still get a pained expression on their faces when I speak to them; I think they are trying to show me how hard they are trying to follow what I am saying. And alas, that is the problem. Not the accent, but the their psychological state of unpreparedness hearing a gringo speak Spanish and then the choice of words and expressions. Mexican Spanish has patterns and rhythms (syntax) to it that I cannot yet duplicate or even immitate, so my Spanish is all translated and that is what throws them.
So don't sweat the accent. Accents can be delightful and disarming. And impossible to perfect.
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