Archive for May, 2009
Friday, May 29th, 2009
In a spelling bee, the sound of a word can be misleading, and not just because of the announcer’s English accent. I will be the first to admit that I am a bad speller. I think a lot of my mistakes can be attributed to growing up in an area with a regional accent.
My hometown in the Ottawa Valley is known for its twang, or regional accent. I read about it when studying linguistics at university. Over the years, I have worked with a number of ESL teachers and seen them explain pronunciation techniques, or even run accent reduction courses based on a word’s spelling. My favourite pronunciation training tip is that feet is held longer because of the double e. No mention of voiced and voiceless constants.
Some sounds, like the schwa, take on a number of different spellings.
about
open
sculpin
I know there is the big Scripps National Spelling Bee going on right now. You can see in this video how much Trevor Mahony struggles with the schwa. It helps me understand how Ottawa Valley’s regional accent contributed to my spelling test struggles in elementary school.
Tags: accent, accent reduction courses, English accent, Ottawa Valley, pronunciation, pronunciation training, regional accent, Scripps National Spelling Bee, spelling bee, Trevor Mahony
Posted in Language and Culture | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
An NBC report claims that accent reduction specialists are a hot new trend in emerging professions. Education is no stranger to trends. In terms of language instruction, your grandparents might recall the method of direct translation, or the grammar translation approach, especially if they lived in Asia where it is still quite popular. There is also the direct approach, or as it is sometimes more well known, the Berlitz method. The 1930′s saw a surge in the reading approach, which focused mostly on vocabulary. The 1960′s favoured audiolingualism, which focused on learning by listening. The list of language learning approaches goes on.
Accent Reduction is a growing field but unlike some of the trends mentioned above, our methods are based on proven clinical techniques anchored in speech pathology. Jennifer Madigan explains how this works in her TV interview. I would caution people not to be taken by accent reduction methods that are simply the direct approach in disguise. For example, the direct approach is often used by actors. Do you recall Jennifer Garner in Alias? In that link you can watch her speak French. She spoke a number of languages for her role as super spy Syndey Bristow. I’m sure she can’t speak that many languages in real life and simply memorized some lines in other languages. What do you think of her French accent? I think Vaughn’s is better.
Those kinds of techniques have their limitations. If you want accent reduction training, be cautious. You want proven techniques that will help you for a lifetime, not methods that get you through a “scene” of one minute in your life.
Tags: accent, accent reduction, Alias, Asia, Berlitz, French, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Madigan, NBC, trend
Posted in Accent Reduction Techniques, Language and Culture | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
The common difficulty that native speakers have when trying to understand a foreign accent is that certain sounds are influenced by the person’s mother tongue. In some cases, it may only be one or two sounds that cause a change. A French speaker may say the word “the” as “za”, and a Polish speaker may say the word as “da”. One or two sounds being off can be compared to a bump or two on the road of understanding. But when there are too many bumps people will really struggle to understand you.
That said, even one word misunderstood can make all the difference. Check out this hilarious video to see what I mean.
Tags: accent, French, mother tongue, Polish
Posted in Language and Culture | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
Check out this video where the speaker explains if the trend to learn English is good or scary. Certainly, the Chinese students shouting English sentences in mega groups gives me a shock. Is this a manner of English imperialism or the opening of minds to a global sea of ideas? I notice that the way the guy says I want to speak “perfect” English has an accent. Not quite perfect.
Tags: accent, Chinese, English
Posted in Language and Culture | No Comments »
Monday, May 25th, 2009
Do you know your accent comfort zone? Have you ever found yourself in this situation? You’re waiting in line to buy something, or waiting in line to get on the bus, but there is a person in front of you asking for something and the clerk or the bus driver can’t understand what that person is saying because of his or her accent. Then you step in to clarify and say, “He wants to know if you go to Burrard Station.” Afterward, both people look at you with eyes that seem to say “How did you understand?”
I grew up in the Ottawa Valley, which is known for having a distinct accent. In my youth, I had a lot of part-time jobs that forced me to understand some of the heaviest accents. I recall one customer at the gas station. He’d always ask for ten dollars worth of gas but would just pull up to the pump and say “Ten.” When I finished he would pass me a ten dollar bill and say “Thanks.” But to be honest, his ten and his thanks sounded the same to me. At the grocery store, one of my co-workers loved referring customers to me that no one could understand. “Oh, ask Jeff that is in his department.” Then I would find out that the customer was wondering what time the delivery truck was leaving.
Later on when I went to university, I had a Chinese landlady. She used to give me small renovation jobs on some of her 16 properties. I couldn’t understand her very well at first, but after working for her I picked up what she was saying too. Whenever she called our house, my roommates would make me talk to her because I was the only one who understood her.
Now that I’ve been working with people from all over the world for the last 10 years, my comfort zone for understanding others has gotten quite broad. This is not the case for everyone. There are still people who hang up on those annoying telemarketing calls with the added insult of “Call me back when you learn to speak English.”
Tags: accent, Add new tag, Chinese, comfort zone, Ottawa
Posted in Human Resources | No Comments »
