Are foreign accents considered attractive

[Frank Merton]

Many Vietnamese practicing their English on me want me to correct their pronunciation. I generally do if the error is such as to prevent understanding, but I assure them that Americans (and I think the English too) tend to think foreign accents are either cute or romantic or (in the case of a Russian or German accent) a sign of intelligence, and the important thing is to be accurate enough to be able to be readily understood but, unless they are preparing for a test where pronunciation will be graded, not to worry otherwise.

Does anyone disagree with this or want to offer any refinement?

 

[Tdol]

It is far more important to work on being readily understood than removing all traces of a foreign accent, which can, as you say, be seen as appealing to many listeners. Seeing some accents as a sign of intelligence is new to me, though.

 

[5jj]

I assure them that Americans (and I think the English too) tend to think foreign accents are either cute or romantic or (in the case of a Russian or German accent) a sign of intelligence,

I doubt whether this is true of a xenophobic minority of native speakers of English in any English-speaking country.

 

[Frank Merton]

Well of course not liking anything foreign is the definition of xenophobic. Even among the prejudiced, though, the dislike is more often aimed at native regional accents than at foreign accents.

Of course having a German or Russian accent doesn't make one intelligent, any more than having a Romance language accent makes one sexy, but this tends to be at least my initial impression, all else being equal.

It's interesting but a language like Vietnamese, where if there is any stress at all it is on the last syllable of a phrase, the greatest difficulty in understanding comes from failure to put stress in the right place. They also tend to drop final consonant sounds -- the norm for spoken Vietnamese -- which tends to make them unintelligible. I wonder if any linguistics specialists can explain these two problems. It seems more understandable to put in the wrong sound than to omit the stress or to omit a sound.

 

[Tdol]

I used to live next door in Cambodia and they dropped a lot of sounds too, which could make words very hard to understand. They use a number of glottals and this carried over.

 

[Frank Merton]

I know very little Cambodian, but think it would be a great international lingua franca, as its writing is phonetic (although the alphabet takes getting use to) and it has, I am told, almost no "grammar." Being the language of fairly small country there would be less politics and envy involved. Oh well, we have English, and for at least a century English it will be.

 

[5jj]

I am sure tha tthere isn't a language in the world that has no grammar.

In fact, I doubt if there is a natural language that has a 'simple' grammar - except to speakers of related languages.

 

[Raymott]

I also doubt there would be less politics and envy if somebody tried to impose Khmer as the world-wide lingua franca.

 

[Frank Merton]

I am sure thatthere ism't a language in the world that has no grammar.

In fact, I doubt if there is a natural language that has a 'simple' grammar - except to speakers of related languages.

It seems that would be the case, but Vietnamese and English could not be more different, and yet Vietnamese seems to have very little of what we call grammar (no cases, agreements, hardly any distinction even between parts of speech, and, of course, no morphology). Since Vietnamese and English also share the same basic word order (subject, verb, object) not even this is a problem. That doesn't mean Vietnamese is easy -- the tones and vowel qualities are horrific -- but it just doesn't seem to have "grammar."

 

[Raymott]

Wikipedia seems to have a lot to say about this non-existent grammar:
"The Vietnamese often say Phong ba bão táp không bằng ngữ pháp Việt Nam ("storm andhurricane are not as terrible as Vietnamese grammar") to describe the complexity of Vietnamese grammar."
Vietnamese grammar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[5jj]

Vietnamese seems to have very little of what we call grammar (no cases, agreements, hardly any distinction even between parts of speech, and, of course, no morphology). Since Vietnamese and English also share the same basic word order (subject, verb, object) not even this is a problem. That doesn't mean Vietnamese is easy -- the tones and vowel qualities are horrific -- but it just doesn't seem to have "grammar."

You seem to have a rather restricted idea of what constitutes grammar.

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that governs the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics.

Grammar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



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[Frank Merton]

You seem to have a rather restricted idea of what constitutes grammar.

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that governs the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics.

Grammar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



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Oh, no doubt I do have a restricted view of what constitutes "grammar" from a linguistic perspective. I am dealing with it on the practical level. I get, "Why does English have singular and plural forms and verb forms and pronoun cases and all that we have to memorize? If you want plural in Vietnamese you put an adjective such as "some" or "many" or "two" or whatever and that does the trick. Of course they don't actually ask the question -- by the time they get to me they are already resigned to it. The language is usually two words that go together to give a concept, and then whether it is subject or action or object is based on position in the sentence. Almost no "grammar."

I see the same sort of thing in Chinese (only distantly related) and wonder if all these cases and tenses and so on are typical of Indo-European languages, since I got my fill of it in Latin. Vietnamese presents its difficulties in pronunciation, but not with its "grammar."

I'm just curious here and no doubt naive, so don't pursue it unless you want to.

 

[Tdol]

I know very little Cambodian, but think it would be a great international lingua franca, as its writing is phonetic (although the alphabet takes getting use to) and it has, I am told, almost no "grammar."

Some things that are complex in some languages are simple - the ways of expressing time and aspect in verbs - but it has plenty of grammar.

 

[Barb_D]

We have strayed completely off course from the question. If you all wish to discuss what would be an appropriate world language and/or the suitability of Vietnamese for that role, a new thread is in order.

Sorry to go all "moderator" on you all, but future posts about that topic will be deleted from this thread, which is supposed to be about how people perceive accents.

 

[PeterValk]

Many Europeans think the French accent ( at least when speaking English ) is "sexy".
I personally do not have the slightest idea why that is, even though I'm a European myself.
As someone said before me, I don't believe a Russian accent conveys intelligence at all, at least not anymore.
I've heard some pretty harsh comments about the behaviour of some Russian tourists in various countries and I believe there is more of a negative attitude towards them than "attraction". This apart from the fact that they are travelling more and more and spending more and more and therefore contribute a great deal to the economies of those countries that depend mostly on tourism. Maybe that's where the attraction comes from...