Accents, when defined in
their most general sense as manners of pronunciation, (or, as the text book
defines them, as “systematic phonological variations”), are inextricably linked
with speech. There is no spoken language entirely devoid of an accent. Even a
so-called “standard” or “neutral” pronunciation is an accent. You cannot speak
without an accent; nor can an accent be an utterance on its own. Speech and
accents are mutually implicatory – each requires the existence of the other.
Because accents are so integral to speech, in this
post I’d like to discuss several concepts related to the ways that accents can
and cannot change over time. (These ideas are somewhat related to Marco’s post
from a few weeks ago.) Most of the observations in this post are based on my
own personal experience – on my observation of my own accent and those of my
friends and family. My observations aren’t meant as broad generalizations, but
rather as starting points for discussion as to whether or not these trends might
be generalizable.
- - - - -
I think it is possible
(though not easy or inevitable) to learn native-sounding pronunciation of a
second language later in life – to learn to pronounce a language naturally
enough that native speakers will mistake you for a native speaker. And, in my
own experience, I’ve noticed that my accent tends to be fairly mutable
depending on which accents and languages I’m surrounded by on a daily basis. Overall,
I would argue that accents can and do change continually.
Yet at the same time, to a certain degree, our
accents are fixed in the sense that there are certain ways we naturally
pronounce certain sounds and there are certain sounds that we can’t produce
without some influence of our native tongue. It is very difficult to entirely
erase someone’s native accent. An individual’s pronunciation tropes are deeply
engrained, and often a person isn’t even fully aware of his/her own method of
pronunciation – one naturally pronounces things in some way, without
consciously deciding to pronounce each word a certain way each and every time
it is pronounced. So, in this way, certain aspects of pronunciation are
difficult to alter.
- - - - -
I started learning
Spanish when I was about 13, and while my pronunciation was strange at first,
it gradually improved. I would by no means say that my pronunciation of Spanish
is perfect – to me, my Spanish still sounds like that of a foreigner attempting
to speak Spanish. Yet, when I lived in Colombia, I repeatedly had native
Spanish speakers ask me how I had learned English, assuming that Spanish was my
first language and English my second. (And I wonder how much of this had to do
with perception; if someone inferred based on the context in which he/she met
me that I was a native Spanish speaker, would he/she then, as a result,
perceive my accent as more native sounding, just because of having met me in a
certain context? Or is my accent truly natural enough for someone to mistake me
for a native speaker? [And I really don’t think it is.])
Later, when I began to study French, I noticed a sort
of retroactive interference – for the first few weeks that I studied French, my
Spanish pronunciation changed and started to sound less native. But my accent
didn’t revert to its former “gringo” state; rather it turned into some new
combination of Colombian Spanish pronunciation rules mixed with occasional
French inflections and oddly-nasalized vowels. And it wasn’t a systematic
change; I didn’t start pronouncing every Spanish
word with a French accent, just occasional ones.
Even later, when I began to study Portuguese
pronunciation, I found it strange that I noticed it interfering with my
pronunciation of English (my first language). The interference was only
sporadic and didn’t last very long; but, after an hour or two of immersing
myself in Portuguese pronunciation, I would find myself mispronouncing vowel
sounds in English, which had not happened when I was learning Spanish and
French.
I’ve also noticed
similar changes in my accent even when I’m not learning a new language. I’ve
noticed that when, over a long period of time, I spend a lot of time talking to
someone who has a certain accent, that accent begins to influence my own. When
the differences between my own accent and that of the person I’m speaking to
are minimal, I don’t notice a change. (i.e.: When I spend time speaking to a
Canadian from Toronto, whose pronunciation varies from mine on certain words,
but is overall fairly similar, I don’t really notice any change in my accent.)
Yet, when the difference between my own accent and the other person’s (or
peoples’) is larger, my accent seems to be more strongly affected.
For example, for about six months I lived in an
apartment with several Australians, and theirs was the only English I heard
during those six months (as I was not living in an English-speaking country at
the time). Even after just a few weeks, I found myself pronouncing certain
words with an Australian accent; but I couldn’t necessarily reproduce those
pronunciations now – it was something that happened subconsciously and
seemingly sporadically, and any conscious attempt I might make at an Australian
accent would likely sound very unnatural.
For another example, when I spent a significant
amount of time speaking Spanish with an Italian friend of mine, who speaks
Spanish with a very heavy Italian accent, I noticed that I temporarily started
to add some Italian-sounding inflections to my Spanish. Without actually
knowing Italian myself, I accidentally began to incorporate some of its
pronunciation rules into Spanish.
- - - - -
So, in general, my
observations (based solely on my personal experience) are:
1. There can be
retroactive interference not only in the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar,
but also in pronunciation and accents.
2. Accents are in some
ways fixed but, overall, are mutable.
And, as I’ve said,
these observations are based solely on my personal experiences with language
learning and language speaking, and on my observations of others learning
second (or 3rd, 4th, etc.) languages, and not on any
formal studies or experiments. But I think it’s interesting to wonder about to
what degree these observations are universally observable, and what factors
influence them, and to consider why it is that it’s possible for accents to
change, but is often so difficult (if not impossible) to adopt a
native-sounding accent when learning a foreign language.
Several related
questions/ideas arise, among them the following two:
1. How
does accent mutability relate to multilingualism? Is a multilingual person’s
accent inherently more mutable, since that person has already learned to speak
in more than one language and with more than one accent? Or does having learnt
more than one language enable you to better separate accents rather than mixing
them together?
2. Is
there a relationship between the degree of mutability of someone’s accent and
that individual’s personality? (I’m not referring so much to someone’s ability
to deliberately learn a new accent, but more to the spontaneous accent
alterations that, at least in my personal experience, occur when someone is
surrounded by different accents.) For example, did I begin to incorporate
Italian inflections into my Spanish because I tend to defer to the habits of
those around me? Or would similar trends be observed in someone who is more
self-assertive than I am?
Well said, Alden. My experiences in part confirm your analysis. Spanish was my first language, and English my second. My first few years of speaking were mostly in Spanish, until one day my sister said, "no más Español, Inglés!" At that point, my family began to speak English per my sister's pleas.
ReplyDeleteYears later, I would learn Hebrew as a third language. I found that my ability to manipulate my mouth/tongue to achieve "un-American" sounds was enhanced in comparison to my native-English speaking peers (active interference). But unfortunately, my acquisition of Hebrew led to almost a complete loss of my intentional Spanish vocabulary (retroactive interference).
When I sought to rekindle my knowledge of Spanish. I found that although I had lost much of my implicit Spanish knowledge, it was quite easy to relearn the language. Yet unlike the Peruvian-style Spanish I grew up with, the Spanish (Spain-born) teachers I had in school led me to a more European accent and pronunciation. When I began speaking with my father again, however, who learned Spanish in Argentina, my accent began to change toward a more Argentinian accent ("yave" --> "jave," slurring of words and more Italian influence). This occurred around the age of 12, suggesting that mutability continues on through adolescence and into the teenage years.
Interesting! I’ve definitely noticed accent mutability in other people. When my dad (native language: Cebuano, a Philippine dialect) used to work with mostly Spanish-speaking co-workers, his accent started to sound more Spanish. Now that he works with mostly Filipino co-workers, his English sounds more like a standard Filipino accent. Another thing I’ve noticed is bilinguals’ ability to code-switch between accents. For example, I know someone who speaks with a stronger Hindi accent when speaking English with her mother than when speaking English to an American friend.
ReplyDeleteAs for me, I’ve only experienced proactive interference in vocabulary rather than accent. When I was learning German in college, I found myself wanting to say things in French, which I’d learned in high school.
Other factors, such as linguistic distance, age of acquisition, and the modality in which the language is studied or produced on a daily basis, likely moderate the degree of interference between any two languages. When I was learning French, I didn’t experience much interference from Cebuano (one of my first languages, alongside English). Even though there are some overlapping cognates between French and Cebuano (probably mediated by Spanish, since the Philippines was colonized by Spain for 333 years), this didn’t hinder my ability to learn French; in fact, I think it only helped. The lack of interference I experienced between these two languages is likely due to the linguistic distance between them, since French is a Romance language and Cebuano an Austronesian language. Moreover, I think the fact that I only produce Cebuano in one modality (I only speak Cebuano; I rarely write or read Cebuano) meant my experience with Cebuano had fewer opportunities to interfere with my acquisition of French.
I think your observation is truly interesting. Especially you talked about the influence of foreign language learning to one's first language, as usually phonlogloical theories would only predict the other way around. I have experienced similar things. When I was learning English many years ago, I discovered that English and Mandarin vowels, despite their superficial similarities in their writing (or transliteration) systems, are quite different in essence, so for a long period of time, I started to speak Mandarin with an English accent. Although the experience was fleeting, it does reveal something deeply important that linguists should take into consideration.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very intriguing post. There are many kinds of accents, and there are some that are not as well known as others or as easily detectable. For example, people from the mainland (what people from Hawai‘i call the continental United States) say that there is a Hawaiian accent, not describing native Hawaiian speakers whose native language is the Hawaiian language, but the non-native Hawaiian speakers whose first language is English (like me). I thought this discovery was interesting when someone brought it up with me here at Stanford. This person described my speaking as having slight variations in vowel placement, inflection, and syntactic structure. I didn’t even know that there was a detectable “Hawaiian” accent since I’ve lived there all my life. It makes me wonder what specific phonological and morphological components make up a certain accent.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that puzzles me is figuring out if there is a certain time in childhood development or even in adolescent or adulthood development when an accent develops. I had always thought that one develops an accent from their parents or other caregivers starting from very young. Interestingly, my roommate was born in Australia and moved to Minnesota when he was 7 but has no trace of an Australian accent. His parents also spoke Cantonese with him at home, and he learned English both outside and inside of the home. Although he claims that any prior accent he might have had must have been erased by speaking English in America, what surprises me is that he has no trace of an Australian or a Chinese accent when he speaks American English. I wonder, too, if accent erasure or permanent mutability is possible as you touched upon in this post.
You've raised compelling points, Alden. As far as your second question goes, it would be interesting to see if the people with different accents that you talked to felt their accents changed after talking with you, and how their perceived personalities coincide with their willingness to listen. I once heard that a sign that people are listening to you is that they change some subtle way of their speech (for example, their pitch) to match yours, and I can imagine that after a substantial amount of time more noticeable "accent markers" will start to show up because of one's effort to listen to them and comprehend them. If it's personality that we're considering here, I feel it would take someone who truly lacks listening skills to be unaffected by the accents of those surrounding him or her.
ReplyDeleteSo far, we've talked a lot about changes in accents from foreign languages, but many of the same things apply when talking about two different accents of the same language. For instance, I traveled to South Africa and Namibia this summer, where a lot of my dad's family still lives. My dad was born in South Africa but moved to the States when he was ten and now has a standard American accent. However, my grandparents still have a South African accent and so does the rest of my family there, obviously.
ReplyDeleteDuring the first part of our trip, we stayed mostly with the South African accented family. Only my dad, brother, and I had American accents. I noticed we started changing our accents slightly and also using different vocabulary and even incorporating Afrikaans words (i.e. "aswell," "lekker," "goeie more").
Then, when we went to Namibia, where my Aunt, Uncle, and four year old cousin live, most of us had American accents. What was interesting here was the change in my cousin's accent. He has a strange mixture of accents since his parents both have American accents, but his nanny, grandparents, teachers, and school friends have different accents (South African-Zulu, South African-English, South African-Afrikaans, and other foreign accents from the children at his international school). So his accent isn't very characterizable, but after a few days being surrounded mostly by Americans, his accent subtly changed to the rest of ours.
You've certainly had a non-trivial amount of experience learning and speaking different languages. I think you've proposed some interesting hypotheses about accent mutability. Reading your perspective I thought of a couple of other factors that could have been influencing the way you were speaking:
ReplyDelete1) Mimicking. Its clear that humans tend to mirror the accents, sayings and tones of those around them. I think Professor Sumner mentioned that its possible to identify signs of mimicry within the first minute of conversation. So to your example about you and your italian friend, it could have been something that transcended the fact that you were speaking different languages/accents -- it could have simply been a case of mimicry.
2. Languages with the same roots. So you mentioned noticing a difference in your Spanish when you were learning French. I know exactly what you mean, I speak French and Portuguese so I had an interesting experience learning spanish (which is widely considered to share a lot of the former languages' qualities. The point I want to make is that there are a lot of overlapping morphemes and sounds in these languages so its possible that instead of pronouncing two separate sounds for morphemes you continuously use one or you find some middle ground between both. That is to say that you dont actually say you may be subconsciously confusing the enunciation of similar words. So if you were learning Chinese you probably wouldnt feel like it was impairing or confusing your spanish.
What do you think?
This is an interesting concept. Very similar to the posts questioning whether we could truly learn a second language and master the sounds that that new language brings. I want to also agree with the claim that it is possible to one day master a language to the point where native speakers mistake you for being native. I also believe that the two languages that you want to master have to be somewhat similar if you want this process to happen quicker. For example, I think it is probably easier for me to pick up French or Italian since I learned Spanish as my first language. Both are Romance languages, which means that they have a common tie. If I wanted to learn Mandarin, for example, it will probably be much harder and dare I say impossible to get to a point where I am almost native.
ReplyDeleteLike several other of the above commenters, I also agree that a non-native speaker can learn a language well enough that a listener would mistake the speaker for a native speaker. One question I had is to what extent the ease of doing so (i.e. learning the accents of a non-native language) depends on how similar the accent of the second language is to one’s native language. I could see this influence working in two different ways. On the one hand, if the new language accent is similar to the native language accent, it might be easier to simulate. On the other hand, the similarities in accent could also make it harder for the speaker to hear the subtle differences between the two and make him or her more likely to revert back to the native language accent.
ReplyDeleteMy experiences living abroad do not necessarily agree with many of the assertions made here - that it is possible to adopt a native speaker accent when learning a second language, especially when older. My first language is French but I was put into an English schooling system early on in life. I speak French at home and English at school. Having lived outside France for long years, I now have a slight accent in French, despite living a French-speaking household. When I return to France during the summer months, my accent in French slowly makes itself less obvious, but it still pops up in certain words. Despite being plunged into an all-French speaking environment, my accent remains.
ReplyDeleteThis suggests that, for me, my mother tongue (in my case, I would have to argue that English is now my mother tongue) inextricably taints the way I speak in other languages. My personal experience, however, is not necessarily representative of how other people learn language. Is there such a thing as flexibility in the way we utter sounds? Can certain people categorize language in their mind (not only grammar, but also sound creation) better?
There definitely seem to be a lot of interesting things going on in your pronunciation. I believe that you’re experiencing a specific kind of code-switching, wherein, in response to different interlocutors, you switch your manner of pronunciation rather the language by which you speak.
ReplyDeleteThink about your experiences this way. When you speak to a child, you’ll use more “child-like” expressions. When you speak with a professor, you’ll match their academic dialect with your own. It seems to easily follow, then, that when speaking with anyone with a different accent more generally, provided the conditions are right and you’re interested in communicating with them “on the same plane”, you would match their manner of pronunciation, regardless of what languages might influence it.
I definitely experience this in my own life. When Chinese tourists at Stanford ask me in heavily accented English for directions on campus, I get the sense they ask me because they believe I can speak Chinese from my appearance, or that I share with them the Chinese ethnic community. I tend to respond in Mandarin Influenced English myself to build an in-group connection in my direction-giving, even though I haven’t taken more than a year of Mandarin.
Like Quentin, I find my experience of living abroad and interacting with many different language environments do not lead me to the same conclusions. I take example of my parents: they both are native Spanish speakers and both lived in the U.S. and Brazil for over 10 years in each. They have both mastered English and Portuguese, however, an accent is still noticeable in both. On the other hand, I, also grew up in these different places and do not. The big factor differentiating us, I find, is age. I was much younger when I was acquiring these languages and, as such, was able to acquire them with a native accent.
ReplyDeleteHowever, one strong counterpoint to my argument that serves as evidence for Aiden's is studying actors. Actors can frequently learn and acquire different sorts of accents (Australian, South African, British, American...) and deliver them to perfection on screen.
I think you raise some interesting questions about the mutability of accents. I wish to focus on the first question you asked which considers how the mutability of accents relates to multilingualism. I do not think that the accent of a multi-lingual person is "inherently more mutable" than the accent of any other person. I think this because everyone has a certain level of control over their accenting. For example, when I consciously think about my accent when speaking a foreign language it tends to be quite better. Additionally, people often adopt different accepts in a lifetime within the same language. Someone who was born in south Boston but moves to the west coast may eventually lose the Boston accent. Further, sometime people use certain accents only in certain contexts (with family vs in business). Therefore I don't think theres inherently anything about being bilingual that makes one's accent more mutable. However, it does seem like you lose a level of control over which accents you use when you are exposed to more languages (like the examples you gave). Thus, being multilingual may influence the degree of control a person has over their own accent.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting post! I have had a similar experience: I learned Portuguese first and then French after, and now notice influences of a French accent when I try to speak Portuguese. I naturally begin speaking with the accent of the foreign language I have most recently spoken, and often have difficulty finding the clear distinction between the two accents when I switch “language modes.” I believe that being multilingual does increase the mutability of a person's accent. This is for two reasons: a multilingual person has regular access to more phonemes than a monolingual person, and part of learning a new language is learning to shift between accents. Each language in the world has a different spectrum of phonemes at its disposal, so a multilingual person has the ability to make more speech sounds than and therefore these new sounds are more likely to accidentally slip into their speech in any language. New pronunciation rules and speech sounds are typically learned by auditory observation, so a multilingual person would have been essentially trained to incorporate the sounds they hear into their speech. This priming could easily enter their everyday speech, causing them to be more susceptible to picking up parts of surrounding accents in their native language.
ReplyDeleteThis is fascinating! Thanks for such an awesome post!
ReplyDeleteI'm really intrigued by your point that accents seem to be somewhat fixed. You point out that native accents are difficult to completely erase, and I agree. However, from my personal experience, I noticed that people's native accents linger more with an increase in age. I believe it's quite easy for children to completely erase their native accents. (Maybe this is because children have spoken for a shorter period of time than adults?) For example, I moved to the United States when I was 9 years old, and now, I don't have a Korean accent when speaking English. In fact, I might have an English accent when speaking Korean...
Nonetheless, I know a Japanese friend who moved to the U.S. at the same age as me, but still has a heavy Japanese accent when speaking English.
So does the "erasing native accent" become more difficult with age, or does it differ by each native language? Are some ethnicities born biologically different so that some accents can never be "erased"? (As in, is my friend's Japanese accent still lingering because my friend is physically unable to pronounce things differently?) How does this affect they way people's accents change as they are introduced to new environments?
The saying goes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." How many times have we heard someone say (with utmost sincerity) "I don't think I'm all that attractive" when most people in observation are probably thinking, "yowza, that person's hot!!!" Accents probably work the same way. You mention several times, Alden, that you don't believe you sound like a native when speaking Spanish. Yet the true arbiters of the truth in this regard, i.e. native Spanish speakers, have time and again confirmed the contrary! I think your take on your own accent is akin to the attractive person not believing in their own "hotness." When they look in the mirror, they recognize the imperfections, be they ever so nuanced to the average observer. Similarly, you understand your subtle imperfections in speaking Spanish and assume they are glaring to the world at large. But reality says otherwise. Taking this further, I believe it possible to learn speak a foreign language like a native complete with an authentic accent. If one immerses oneself and attempts valiantly to lose their native accent while speaking another language, it is possible. Arnold Schwarzenegger admits he works very hard to MAINTAIN his accent in order to be different. I've met several students at Stanford who also lament the gradual loss of their native accents the longer they remain in America and become more immersed in the culture. I believe one can attain native sounding status if they truly try. The proof will be in the "ear of the listener."
ReplyDelete