linguaphiles: Learning to hear accents in a language you are learning

Tani (T.S. "Marble" Harriet) (

mewtopia) wrote in

linguaphiles,
@ 2009-07-10 16:04:00

Current mood:	hungry
Entry tags:	accents, learning languages

Learning to hear accents in a language you are learning
How well do you think one has to know a language before being able to hear and place the accents within it? (The social, economic implications which one learns to attach to certain accents aside).

I would say my English accent placement for UK accents is fairly well developed - within London and for general swathes of the country (Welsh, Geordie, Black Country etc).

In Italian I can recognize that they are different, but cannot place it.
Same for Japanese.

Mandarin... well China is a different case of dialects ...

Haven't had a chance to hear French or German regional accents yet.

I could recognise a really obvious Russian accent in German... but probably not one that is intra-country.

What are your experiences?

(35 comments) - (Post a new comment)

alirose
2009-07-10 02:15 pm UTC (link)

I can pick up in subtle regional US accents in English, and I'm fairly good with most of the UK, although a New Zealand accent escaped me recently. :(

In Chinese I can pick up on basic regional accents based on places I've studied or visited. I can usually get Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Taiwan, and Hong Kong accents without trouble, beyond that it's more "sounds like more southern/northern" is as far as I venture.

In Japanese I can only notice the obvious ones like Osaka and Okinawa vs Tokyo standard accent.

I used to be able to tell a few regions of Germany, but now I really only can reliably pick out German vs Swiss, which is sad because that's so obvious most of the time.

In English I can usually pick out Korean, Japanese, and Chinese accents, or at lest differentiate between the three.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	mewtopia 2009-07-10 02:18 pm UTC (link)
	Ah forgot to cover other international accents in English too! Yes, Korean, Japanese and Chinese as well. As well as Filipino, SE Asian (Vietnamese/Thai)... and the standard French, German, Italian... Albanian! Guess it all depends on who you meet. I don't think I would be able to pick out subtle US accents... New English? Montana-ian? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	alirose 2009-07-10 02:27 pm UTC (link)
	I don't think I could pick out Montanian, but I could tell a Bostonian from a New Hampshire-ite, or a Minnesotan from a Cheese Head (aka Wisconsinite), and I can pick a North Carolinian from most other southern accents. :) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	mewtopia 2009-07-10 02:46 pm UTC (link)
	I know there's a lot of differences in language use (grammar, certain words)... how much do you think is signalled to you by the accent and how much by these quirks? I'm not a linguist, but actually differing usage doesn't count as accent does it? Or does it? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

alirose
2009-07-10 02:54 pm UTC (link)

I'm talking about accent. For example, the key difference between the Minnesota and Wisconsin accent that I hear is the balance between the nasalized "a" sound in words like "bag", and the elongated "o" sound in words like "boat". Both have stronger tendencies toward this than a "standard" American accent, however the "o" is usually a tad stronger in Minnesotans, and the "a" is a bit stronger in Wisconsinites.

Then there are those other quirks, like by saying "Cheese Head" I pretty clearly identified myself as a Minnesotan. ;) But that's not what we're talking about here, right?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	mewtopia 2009-07-10 03:07 pm UTC (link)
	Nope! Didn't know about Cheese Heads though :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	pthalogreen 2009-07-10 02:22 pm UTC (link)
	after a year or so of learning Serbian, I'm starting to hear the difference between Bosnian and Croatian. I can recognise what part of the country someone is from in Hungarian, and I can recognise different American and a few different British accents. (Reply to this)

tsuyogari
2009-07-10 02:30 pm UTC (link)

Now that I've been learning Japanese for about 2 years and living here for 4 months, I can definitely pick out and place accents much easier. I've also noticed that I can usually now tell, if a foreign person whose language I'm somewhat familiar with is speaking Japanese, their place of accent as well.

Korean is somewhat more difficult since I don't know too many speakers who aren't from Seoul, but I can usually correctly pick out Busan accents.

(Reply to this)

thesparque
2009-07-10 02:58 pm UTC (link)

I think it takes a specialized type of study to do that. I could learn Spanish for the rest of my life, and without paying specific attention to dialectal differences, it's not just something I'll pick up.

That said, I have learned some subtle differences between Mexican, Honduran, and Guatemalan Spanish since those countries are the ones I've met more people from. I know a lot of Mexicans, and my ex-girlfriend and her family are Honduran. But still, I don't consider myself to have any particular expertise on the subject.

(Reply to this)

claudee
2009-07-10 03:09 pm UTC (link)

In English, I can hear if someone's from the US (not sure about Canada, haven't heard enough people from there), UK, New Zealand, South Africa (sometimes) or Australia.

And maybe feel that there are different UK accents without being able to tell them apart for real or even say where they belong. Maybe Scottish and Welsh, those are quite easy to hear. But others? Well ... Same for Dutch, btw, I hear different accents (only a bit) but not a clue about which is which.

I am quite fluent in English and do very often hear people speak it (TV and such), Dutch is ... okay. Not really brilliant but am hearing it from time to time.

No chance for hearing any accents in Turkish or French which might be because of my very basic knowledge.

(Reply to this)

	mamculuna 2009-07-10 03:14 pm UTC (link)
	Although it's true that China has many dialects, it also has accents. The Beijing version of standard Mandarin is clearly recognizable, with lots of "r" sounds dropped in. I barely can get around in Mandarin, but I know Beijinghua when I hear it! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	alirose 2009-07-10 04:17 pm UTC (link)
	yeah. although if you think Beijinghua has a lot of Rs you should hear Tianjinhua! ar ar ar ar ar. ;) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	mamculuna 2009-07-10 04:51 pm UTC (link)
	In fact, I have, and it does out-ar-ar Beijinghua! (Reply to this) (Parent)

wicked_seraph
2009-07-10 03:16 pm UTC (link)

In Spanish I can really only pick up the obvious ones - Argentina, Spain, etc.

For English (my native tongue), it's much the same: Boston vs. Wisconsin vs. The South - I live in Florida, so we have so many different varieties around here that it's kinda hard to know exactly where they're from - etc. I feel rather embarrassed by this, but I've never been very good at distinguishing UK vs. Australia vs New Zealand. Still learning ^^'

I don't know much German, truthfully, but I could probably guess if someone's from the area where my mother grew up or not. :)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	squishibananas 2009-07-12 01:13 am UTC (link)
	As an Australia English speaker, I'm usually mistaken as being from the UK. Don't worry, I kinda like it XD. (Reply to this) (Parent)

oh_meow
2009-07-10 03:20 pm UTC (link)

I only know basic Hungarian, but I found myself noticing regional accents very quickly whilst in Budapest, I think mainly because you need to pronounce every sound clearly in Hungarian, and the regional differences were mainly a consistent different pronunciation of certain vowels (like people from the west's is were more like es, and people from the south had a different a sound) so they jumped out at you quite clearly, but didn't make words any more difficult to understand.

I can't tell any difference with French speakers, even if they're from Belgium or Switzerland, but I find German and Italian accents easy to place, I don't know why, maybe because those languages go in for stronger regional accents and dialects than French for historical reasons. I only have passive knowledge of Spanish throught Italian and Latin, so I understand pretty much everything but can't really say much, but I can identify which country or region of Spain people are from pretty easily.

(Reply to this)

bblue23
2009-07-10 03:21 pm UTC (link)

I think being able to place an accent - link it to a geographical area - is a separate skill from learning the language itself, and requires a lot of exposure to people from various areas AND knowledge of where they are from. Of course some people are a lot better at hearing it than others, but the exposure to people who speak that way is necessary. I'm not super sensitive in this regard, but after 6 years living in Japan I'd like to think I can hear basic differences (I studied Japanese for many years in the U.S. first but for the purposes of distinguishing accents within Japan I think that barely counts - not enough exposure to spoken Japanese at all, never mind exposure to different accents).

In Japanese, I can tell the difference between Osaka and Kyoto varieties of Kansai-ben, can distinguish both from Tokyo dialect of course, can recognize a Nagoya accent, and can tell if someone has an accent that is different from any of those - could probably recognize Kagoshima-ben because my husband is from there, though he rarely speaks that dialect and I only hear it from my in-laws.

Within Mandarin Chinese, it's pretty easy to tell if someone is from Taiwan or Beijing by the way they pronounce certain sounds, but I don't know the distinguishing sounds of other areas. I might be able to identify Shanghai dialect correctly, but I wouldn't be able to understand it very well. Might be able to identify Cantonese, but couldn't understand it.

If I've spent significant time around people who speak with those accents, then I know...otherwise I don't. Probably people who are more sociable and have a lot of friends in the country of their target language will be able to recognize more accents. It's kind of a social skill that improves the more time you spend socializing with lots of different people, isn't it?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

mewtopia
2009-07-10 03:24 pm UTC (link)

Yes I suppose you're right - I guess you could study a language and be fluent in it without ever coming into contact with regional accents.

And yes, now that you all point it out, I speak with a Taiwanese accent so I can tell who is from the mainland. Always wanted to learn more about the Japanese ones though! I remember there was an awesome video of that once... the weather in all the different regions.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

10littlebullets
2009-07-10 04:29 pm UTC (link)

I think being able to place an accent - link it to a geographical area - is a separate skill from learning the language itself, and requires a lot of exposure to people from various areas AND knowledge of where they are from.

I agree. I spent a month in an international French immersion program and now my ability to pick out different foreign accents in French is spot-on, but distinguishing between regional accents is not something I can do. I'm sure if I'd sat in a classroom for a few hours a day talking to people from Paris and Provence and Canada, etc. instead of people from Spain and Latvia and Germany, the ability would be flipped.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	moa1918 2009-07-10 04:52 pm UTC (link)
	I'm not very good at placing regional accent even in my native language (Swedish). In other languages it's even more difficult, of course. :p Moa (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mewtopia 2009-07-11 12:14 am UTC (link)
	Why is that then, is it because there are so many, or so few... or the country is too big...? (Reply to this) (Parent)

	freecloud13 2009-07-10 05:37 pm UTC (link)
	Sort of 'on topic', for UK accents I LOVE this BBC site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/ (Reply to this)

(Anonymous)
2009-07-10 07:33 pm UTC (link)

It depends...

I like to tell myself that I have a good ear for languages, from studying French, Spanish and German I was able to fairly accurately place a language speaker in their home country, if not the region in that country, after 1-1.5 years of university study. The turning point is when you stop getting hung up on every word and you're able to pay more attention to the flow of speech and the accents.

In German for example you say 20 as "zvansisch" in Cologne/southwestern Germany and "zvanzig" in the rest of Germany. The actual spelling is zwanzig. The other differences in the regional accents in German tend to vary from softer in western Germany to more guttural/harder in eastern Germany.

(Reply to this)

kali_kali
2009-07-10 07:35 pm UTC (link)

I'm dreadful at telling accents. However, after being overseas for the past nine months, seven of them here in the UK, I've gotten better at differentiating accents in English. I've finally begun to be able to distinguish between general American and general Canadian accents (despite being Canadian myself). I can tell Manchester and Glasgow accents. I can also differentiate whether someone is English or Scottish. I can also vaguely distinguish Australian and New Zealander accents from British ones, which I never used to be able to do.

I'm getting better :)

(Reply to this)

tisoi
2009-07-10 08:04 pm UTC (link)

I'm fairly good at placing various US accents. I was talking with a parent of this girl I know and she says "exhAAAAAsted" (with [æ]) and I said "are you from Michigan." And she looked shock "how did you know?" And I told her it was because of her accent. "What? But I don't h[eyu]ve an [eyu]ccent," she countered. lol

With Canadians, Brits, Australians, etc. it's more general.

As for Tagalog, I can tell if they are from Manila or from a rural area.. or if they are from a non-Tagalog speaking region. But sometimes it's hard.

For Spanish, it took being exposed to different accents constantly before I could tell the differences. That wasn't until perhaps my 2nd year into learning Spanish when the school I moved to had a lot of Latinos from different countries.

French would be next and usually it's either Canadian or European French. With Canadians, I can tell if it's someone from Quebec or New Brunswick because of the Acadian dialect/accent.

For European French it's a bit harder because they all sound alike, I was just watching a Swiss comedian in French yesterday, and she sounded like she was from Paris. The only thing that set her apart was her use of the word "NONANTE" instead of "QUATRE VINGTS DIX" for the word "90."

I can tell the difference between Catalan/Valencian.

With Portuguese, the difference between Portuguese/Brazilian. Within Brazil, I can tell if it's a "generic" Brazilian accent, Rio accent, and that Caipira accent (hence my icon).

I wish I were familiar enough with Korean to truly appreciate this clip:

(Reply to this) (Thread)

squishibananas
2009-07-12 01:20 am UTC (link)

I fail; at first when I start watching the clip, I thought they were speaking Japanese. It wasn't until I saw the guy's nametag that I started listening properly and realising it was Korean. The worst part is... I live in 경상도 *finds a dark corner to sulk in*. But it's not the accent really that he's using, it's more the regional words/words found in that area that makes it hard to understand him.

Later on when the two women are "fighting", that's when you hear the real accents.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

innervoice_chan
2009-07-16 04:34 pm UTC (link)

As for Tagalog, I can tell if they are from Manila or from a rural area.. or if they are from a non-Tagalog speaking region. But sometimes it's hard.

I'm an Inglisera who speaks Taglish as a second language (heh). I'm so bad at picking out non-Tagalog accents in Tagalog, it took me quite a while to notice that Manny Pacquiao has a thick accent. Now that's sad.

Once, I had to try to fake a "humorous Cebuano accent in Tagalog" for a play. That was pure hell; my classmates kept trying to teach me what a Cebuano accent sounded like and I couldn't tell any difference at all!

(on the other hand, I'm good at noticing "Filipino English" in English texts. I've read stuff online without knowing anything about the author, guessed from certain turns of phrase that the author was Filipino, and then checked their profile and I was right.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	deird1 2009-07-10 08:25 pm UTC (link)
	When I was in Germany, I could tell the difference between Bavarian, Austrian, and north-German. Largely because I was living in Bavaria, so they sounded like what I was used to, Austrians pronounced words sort of like Scots would if they spoke German, and people in Berlin sounded exactly like the tapes I'd listened to in my German lessons at school... (Reply to this)

catalinaormand
2009-07-11 01:45 am UTC (link)

I can tell some German accents apart, but i could probably only place Sächsich or Hessisch, and MAYBE Schwäbish.

I can tell American English accents apart and place most, and i can place the country of most non-American accents, but i can't distiguish a New Zealand accent from an Australian accent, nor can i really do much more than the country.

And English is my native language (i live in the US) and German is my second (been learning for 5 years).

(Reply to this) (Thread)

catalinaormand
2009-07-11 02:04 am UTC (link)

I'd also like to add that i could possibly distinguish Schwäbisch because i lived with a family for a few weeks that spoke nothing but, Hessisch because that's the accent i learned for the first two years of German, and Sächsisch because i've heard a lot of it. So it's really just due to exposure/over-exposure, and not much else.

And i could of course place a Scottish or Irish accent.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

maryaminx
2009-07-11 07:30 am UTC (link)

American English speaker here. I can detect regional differences in American English, and even break Southern accents down by state and my own state of Georgia down by region. I can generally tell Canadian and UK accents but Australian and New Zealander are beyond me.

In Spanish I can break it down almost by country, but there are several countries in SA that I'm simply not familiar with so I'd probably misplace them with a nearby country.

(Reply to this)

	squishibananas 2009-07-12 01:23 am UTC (link)
	Korean second-language speaker. The Seoul standard is easy to pick because it's always on tv. I live in the South-East part of Korea so I know the accent from there. I know someone's from a different area (excluding Seoul) because it's suddenly harder to understand them. I know it's from Jeju Island when I can't understand even a single word, haha. (Reply to this)

	yrrehc_teews 2009-07-14 04:00 am UTC (link)
	I'm not very good at this generally, even in English . In French, I can tell you whether they're from Europe or Quebec haha and that's about it. (Reply to this)

lady_titiana
2009-07-14 05:36 am UTC (link)

As a native English speaker I'm pretty good at general areas in the USA as well as broad regions in Britain. I can tell New Zealand from Australian, but any sub-categories there are beyond me.

I was okay at Spanish (a couple of years of highschool study) when I began to recognize accent or dialect differences between the DF and peninsular Spanish of Mexico, and Argentine Spanish was pretty distinctive even to a Spanish student.

I took a phonetics class and a dialectology class a couple of semesters ago in college where we discussed more in-depth dialectal and accent variation, and now I can place that Spanish of many countries, or at least narrow down the region it is from. However, this is more learned than I think you mean, like Carribean Spanish aspirates the final s of a syllable, Dominican and Bolivian Spanish velarize the final n of a word, therefore Spanish with both traits is probably Dominican. More like a process of elimination than really recognizing the actual accent.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	mewtopia 2009-07-14 06:33 am UTC (link)
	I guess it's a reverse way of doing it, looking at the mechanics (and you're right, I wish I knew what velarize meant) and then figuring it out, or at least identifying that it's different. Phonetics is probably quite tedious to learn but seems so useful! (Reply to this) (Parent)

(35 comments) - (Post a new comment)

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