Accents

I was talking with two international students today--one Korean, one Vietnamese--and we got into a discussion about accents.

Accents, we decided, make language learning hard. I, as a native English speaker, don't have too hard a time understanding different accents. English, Chinese, Arabic, Australian, Western, even Cockney, I'll understand well enough. Growing up, you hear all sorts of English dialects and accents. I may even have a little more experience with accents than some, since I grew up in a college town with a lot of internationals.

It's different for a learner. You learn with your teacher's accent, and it can be hard to transition to another. For example, the difference made it harder for the two students today to understand each other, and they also said it was hard to understand people who spoke different dialects of English. And they're not the only ones.

Dr. I., who I mentioned in an earlier post, has been in the US for quite a while, but her mother hasn't been here as long. She says her mother understands English pretty well here--but, if they're an hour south, she has to translate for her mother.

A friend of mine, J., is from eastern Europe and learned British English pretty early on. When she came to the US, though, she could barely understand what people were saying. In many ways, she had to relearn the language--but she speaks English like a native now.

I haven't had too much trouble with this--yet. Part of it is that I'm still in the US and don't have to function in another language. Here's what I think is relevant for me:

-I'm learning France French, not North African French or Quebec French. A funny story I once heard about an American teacher who knew France French but was in Quebec: she was at a meal and offered more food. "Non, merci," she said. "J'ai plein." I'm full. Things went from normal to awkward, and she couldn't understand why her Quebecois friends were acting so strangely--until she realized that, in Quebec French, "j'ai plein" meant "I'm pregnant."

-I'm learning Modern Standard Arabic. That's the printed, political, and academic language. The reasoning is that, though it's not how people regularly talk, it'll do academically and it's understood--if not spoken--everywhere. Dialects are offshoots of Modern Standard; for example, Egyptians pronounce "J" as "G" and many Saudis pronounce "Q" as "G." I've got a friend who's teaching me some Saudi dialect, though, and I'm very grateful for it.

If you know where you want to go, try to learn the dialect and accent.