Re: USAGE: pronunciation mimicry (was: rhotics)

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 22:16:16 -0500, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
> Poster:       Sally Caves <scaves@...>
> Subject:      Re: USAGE: pronunciation mimicry (was: rhotics)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Oh, but it's not totally acquired!  Of the gifts of foreign language
> learning, I count a good mimicry of the sounds the easiest.  There is all
> the rest, of course.  The mastery of vocabulary, idiom, reading and writing
> knowledge, comprehension, and so forth and so on.  Actually, I wish it came
> more easily to me.  I have friends who can pick up a language in six months,
> and are babbling away cheerfully with thick accents.
>
> Sally

Mimicry of sounds is I think easiest. I think though I have a
perceptible American accent to my Spanish, but I'd often get asked
where I was from rather than people asking me where in the US i'm
from. I remember the facilitators in college would always commend me
on my pronunciation. Of course those who'd always compliment me on my
accent said I pronounced things very well, but they may have just been
polite.

Funnily, in Mexico, one of the professors at the university we were
visiting had been in Queretaro for over 20 years and she still had a
very noticeable American accent. She pronounced it well, but I could
still figure out when she spoke she was an American by the way she
pronounced things. Sort of like a very slight Mexican accent to those
who learned English as a second language who emigrated from Mexico,
but speak otherwise impeccable English.


--
You can turn away from me
but there's nothing that'll keep me here you know
And you'll never be the city guy
Any more than I'll be hosting The Scooby Show

Scooby Show - Belle and Sebastian