There was a lady who I thought had just came to the U.S. But she told me she had been at her current job for 23 years. I couldnt understand a word she said. It happens all the time. Geez, what do these people want us, who are trying to have a conversation with them, to do? When their accents make the english language, their foreign language.
2007-08-24 15:24:54 · 23 answers · asked by kolorz 4 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
You people turned this question into a racist thing, all I was talking about was your accents. Just try to speak English without your accents(Im not talking about dialects) Sorry you took it that way. No hard feelings?
2007-08-24 15:45:08 · update #1
They probably still speak their native language at home and with their friends. This would make it hard for them to lose their accents.
2007-08-24 17:09:26 · answer #1 · answered by ... 4 · 0⤊ 3⤋
I agree with many of the responses here. You come across as bigoted. How arrogant you are to criticize people who speak English as a second language. You forgot one very, extremely important detail: English is their SECOND language, which means they speak another language better than English. So, how many languages do you speak?
The reason some people have accents is because they learned the new language at an older age. Anyone who learns a new language after the age of about 12-14 years of age will have an accent. This is common knowledge. So, if you try to learn French or Italian or Spanish or Ukrainian or whatever, you can be sure that you will have an accent, and most probably it will be a heavy accent.
I don't have an accent when I speak English or the above-mentioned languages because I learned them when I was about 8 years old. However, I know that if I ever get up enough guts to study German (I've been putting it off for years), then I will probably have a heavy accent.
Please be more tolerant. You probably sound funny to them too.
2007-08-24 17:47:57 · answer #2 · answered by Sabrina(Susananita) 6 · 5⤊ 0⤋
This is actually a very good question:
according to the works of steven pinker and Lev Vygotsky Language acquisition especially a second language has a whole different set of rules than acquiring a first language.
After about age 10 anyone who starts learning a second language will have problems with accent and grammar. After age 15 there is usually a permanent accent.
The older a person is at the acquisition of a second language the worse their accent and grammar will be. They may understand the language very well but their mouth and grammar language are usually permanently fused to their first language and they base any new language on their mother tongue. That is why they will speak with a language even if they were in the country for 23 years.
There are classes one can take to minimize accent and improve grammar, but one must work very hard.
So the actual answer to your question is they are stuck on their original language and that is why English pronunciation is very hard for them.
2007-08-26 13:32:49 · answer #3 · answered by 我比你聪明 5 · 3⤊ 0⤋
English has somewhere between 40-50 phonemes. Languages like spanish have considerably less phonemes, so it's harder for them to produce the phonemes that we have in English producing an accent. However, as other people have pointed out, you would probably have an accent when speaking spanish because we don't have the 2 "r" phonemes (the rolling one and the tongue "flipping" one, though as a child I remember the taco bell commercial "yo quiero taco bell" so I can flip my tongue like a native... my rolling is awful though). Even people who speak languages with many more phonemes than english can still have an accent because some phonemes in English (like the th's in there and theology) are quite rare in other languages. However, I will say that it's easier for English speakers to learn to speak a romance language (like spanish) without an accent than it is for a native spanish speaker to speak English without an accent... but when I say easier, that doesn't mean that you don't have to try. It still takes a lot of practice, but you have less, new phonemes to learn than they do. So the point it, a person's accent depends on the phoneme "inventory" of a person's native language. Just because a person has a strong accent doesn't make them stupid. I know people that speak better English than most Americans yet they have incredibly strong accents because it's very hard to change.
2007-08-24 16:55:33 · answer #4 · answered by rfiskt 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Really, you must be trying to get a rise out of people, right? How well do you speak any language other than your own? And, I get that you probably think that anyone who can't speak your dialect with precision should probably "go home", but let me ask you this...where did you and your family originate? Plymouth?
By the way, the official language of the United States isn't called "United-Statesen", is it? I think it's called "English". Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a true Englishman? Can be somewhat trying, understanding their vernacular, can't it? Well, guess what? It's not YOUR language HE is screwing up, it's HIS language that YOU have demolished. Bet that never occurred to you, huh?
It would be nice if people could be a bit more tolerant in the year 2007.
2007-08-24 15:41:58 · answer #5 · answered by jmdrt 2 · 8⤊ 0⤋
You probably picked it up off your parents, and it's only more obvious because you live in Australia where the English accent is quite different from the Australian. Being a New Zealander, I also use long vowels for words such as "grass" and "dance", and would pronounce "million" as "mill-i-on". I picked up a slight German pronunciation from one of my parents as well, so I sometimes say words differently to my friends, even though we have similar accents. The Australian accent is generally harder on A sounds, so there's quite a notable difference between the English and Australian.
2016-05-17 08:04:51 · answer #6 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You're not making sense. You say you didn't understand a word she was saying but obviously you were able to understand that she's been in her job for 23 years. By the way, I'm not a native English speaker and EVERYONE understands me. I bet you don't speak any foreign language, so you better be quiet.
2007-08-25 03:01:46 · answer #7 · answered by The baby penguin 5 · 4⤊ 0⤋
Hey, don't you watch the news ?
That IS a racist thing nowadays. Besides, do you think that you can go to the market or the drug store and ask for an accent ?
Furthermore, yanks don't speak so good an english either
2007-08-27 14:05:27 · answer #8 · answered by nadie 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Well, its because they aren't used to speaking English. They were born speaking another language therefore, their tongue isn't accustomed to the form of words in the English language. Some people master it, and for some people its harder.
When you go to a different country you will also have an accent if you try to speak their language...
2007-08-24 16:03:19 · answer #9 · answered by Christy 3 · 4⤊ 1⤋
Actually, you've asked quite a large question -- so large that it is related to the topic of my Ph.D. dissertation. So I won't regale you with all the linguistic theory here, but I'll just mention that it is quite common for people to speak with an accent, even if they learned a language a long time ago. I have found that careful listening helps a lot.
2007-08-24 16:46:42 · answer #10 · answered by drshorty 7 · 4⤊ 1⤋
I hear you!!!
And you should hear those English speaking people trying to speak a foreign language when they go abroad..
What do they want people in those countries, who are trying to have a conversation with them, to do?
.
2007-08-24 15:44:18 · answer #11 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 0⤋