A lot of people will say its not important, and it isn't to an extent. If you just focus on learning the language, you can move to taiwan or china and adapt from there. But still, if your goal is to move to taiwan and most of your study material is mainland specific - accent and word use then when you get to taiwan best believe people are going to point it out. So, i am just happy glossika has a taiwan specific version, its saved my ass. Yea maybe its not important, but its one less thing i don't have to worry about.
As a pronunciation tutor, this is what I tell my students: Pronunciation = how clearly and accurately you pronounce the sounds Accent = pronunciation + rhthym/cadence + intonation + any little thing native speakers do that sound 'native' (eg reductions) Native English speakers are a bit unique in that many of us are used to hearing a wide variety of accents and (this is important) types of pronunciation. For many languages around the world, native speakers are used to hearing their language pronounced with either 100% accuracy, or 0% accuracy. (Myself and countless other Americans/Brits etc, we all have experience trying - and failing! - to be understood when visiting a country... 😭🙈😅) So I try to reassure my students: a perfect accent, or even perfect pronunciation, is not necessary to be understood in English. I'd say 90% accuracy for the three most important sounds will get you there easily (in my opinion: the r, short i, and short a). I mean, native speakers mispronounce words all the time. It just depends on how many words and sounds are mispronounced / different, then our ear might get a bit confused. And even then, speaking very slowly will usually do the trick. For my students, I tell them that recording themselves / being in a phone call is like the 'ultimate test' for how clear their pronunciation is, phone calls especially as just seeing someone's face helps so much in understanding them. There are many people from Ireland and Scotland that Americans (or other people from the British isles!) struggle to understand. I think every American I know who's been to Scotland has a story of eg getting on a bus and not being able to understand a word the driver's saying. And, many people from Scotland / Ireland and so on will have a "home" accent or a "non-home" accent to help the rest of us ;) I have students who love to practice their accent and that's fine. It's their hobby and passion to have a perfect American accent, and of course I will help them. That said, I have so many students who speak such excellent English, and I am getting a bit sad about the thought of accents disappearing!! I love accents of all kinds (...except probably mine!! I've always felt having a west coast American accent is the most boring in the world :P My mum's from Australia and as a kid I remember asking her why we didn't move there after I was born so I could have the accent!! 😅) Thanks to the internet and even AI, language learning is getting more and more efficient and effective, but a maybe selfish part of me hopes that it doesn't get toooo perfect. Though of course if someone starting a language wants to sound perfectly like a particular accent, that's of course fine! Like you said, everyone has their own thoughts and opinions when they hear an accent, and just because I find accents pleasant and intriguing - well, in my own language studies, I work (am working!) very hard on pronunciation myself. Variety is fun and interesting, and so are a variety of accents :D But yeah, I always tell my students: language is about communication. If everyone can understand you easily, you win!! :D My ideal student is someone that I (with years of experience dealing with a variety of English learners) can barely understand. Helping them become easily understood is just a great feeling 😊 oops I wrote too much!! Sorry for the babble, this is definitely a subject that I think too much about! 😅 I just saw your video recommended on my front page, didn't mean to write an essay! 😅 Good luck learning Mandarin!! It was fun to hear your thoughts, I loved the car analogy :)
Thanks for such an awesome response!! This is a great way to break down the difference between accent and pronunciation, I didnt quite think about it like that until you pointed it out, makes a lot of sense! I totally agree, I love hearing different accents, it brings out everyone's unique personality, hopefully they dont die out! Recently I've been really intrigued by the Singaporean English accent, its sounds so cool, makes me want to move there haha I love the phone test, really rings true for me, something I need to work on more with Mandarin!!
@@thedanyopang oh haha glad you enjoyed the babble! 😅 What I've come to realize is that teaching (and learning!) pronunciation is a very vulnerable thing, which definitely favors kids learning just because they're less self-conscious (on top of some neural advantages ofc). When I taught in a bilingual primary school (1st-8th grade), for the littles, we'd start each class singing the target sound to different nursery school songs (old mcdonald etc), it was just fun for them. But goooood luck getting the teenagers to do that, though they were the most eager to improve their pronunciation! And I'm the same learning pronunciation - it can be excruciating and embarrassing, and I learn far slower than I'd like! In fact me being so ahem slow to learn, helps me teach others because I need so much repetition. I make my lessons with me in mind, if *I* could learn from it, it must be easy / thorough enough 😅 But even on top of that, it's so important to emphasize to students how much most people only care if they can easily understand you (vs sounding like a native). Unfortunately yes, there are prejudiced people out there who might judge accents - but, 1) so long as you're easy to understand, that's their problem, so certainly don't waste a moment trying to cater to them, and 2) even if people do care about accents, well, that's like caring about someone's appearance I reckon. Like you said with the car analogy, I view 'accent judging' like 'appearance judging'. If someone is so superficial as to judge your clothing / hair / style preference, well, you wouldn't change your style (or even hair?!) just to suit them, would you? (And if you would, then maaaaaybe you should talk to someone about how to increase self-confidence...? :P) So yeah, I guess accepting one's accent is related to self-confidence and self-acceptance. (Even for the "phone test", I recommend that to students based on their goals, eg if they're using English professionally / going to live in an English-speaking country, or especially if they might have a phone interview, then they obviously need very clear English, compared to someone who's just using English for travel and can make reservations online and just want to be able to communicate to people they encounter face-to-face) And ohhhhh you mentioned Singapore - I love Singaporeans and Singaporean English, I have Singaporean friends from college, just the best people lah! 🥰 I remember once walking in a Target with two of my friends (I was on the LH side), and the friend in the middle was turning his head to the left and right to speak to each of us, and suddenly he paused, and said, "...I just realized, I speak differently to each of you!" And he demonstrated how he was speaking when he turned his head to the left (ie to me), vs the right, it was really cool to hear him slip into 'Singlish' (as they called it) vs sounding quite American for my benefit! I almost studied abroad to Singapore in college because of them, sad that I didn't though I still intend to visit one day 😊
Accent does not matter as long as people understand you. American, British, Australian, and all English speakers from different countries have different accents. Even those who live in the same country have different regional accent.
I totally agree, accents dont really matter, in fact they bring out your personality and I appreciate them, no matter what the accent. Recently I've been really intrigued by the Singaporean English accent, sounds so cool ahah
Are you a Cantonese native? I lived 14 years in hong kong. I am an Australian. I speak fluent Cantonese. High level and after 14 years... I still sound foreign but not strong. I tried to fix it and never could. But at least fluent. Nobody asks where I come from now. But in the past, it was your so smart and I couldn't even string a sentence together. I learned through listening a million times to compréhensible input. Now my Russian is like my Cantonese now. Lived 7 years in Ukraine. I'm onto Croatian after escaping Ukraine.
Wow, its crazy whats happening in Ukraine, I'm glad you are safe now. About Cantonese, it was my mother tongue but I dont speak it very well, I hope to improve it in the future. Thats a cool combination you have there with Russian, Cantonese and English. How did you end up in Hong Kong for 14 years? I love HK, I really want to go back in the future.
@@thedanyopang yeah man... I married a Hong Kong woman when I was 20 when I was in Australia studying at university. And she decided Hong Kong was better and simply moved. I like your channel
@@milanhrvat thanks man appreciate the support!! Wow you have a really cool story! Did you find learning Cantonese hard? Did you take classes or did you learn self study?
@@thedanyopang nah man. Self study. I used this Steven krashen method and followed advice from Steve Kaufmann. Used my wife as a walking dictionary and tone machine. She made tons of small dialogues and MP3 audio files. I just listened over and over. I put a video on TH-cam like 12 years ago... Let me find it....
A lot of people will say its not important, and it isn't to an extent. If you just focus on learning the language, you can move to taiwan or china and adapt from there.
But still, if your goal is to move to taiwan and most of your study material is mainland specific - accent and word use then when you get to taiwan best believe people are going to point it out. So, i am just happy glossika has a taiwan specific version, its saved my ass.
Yea maybe its not important, but its one less thing i don't have to worry about.
Damn, you're on a roll lately! Keep up the good work, your insight helps other chinese learners in their own journey
Wow thanks for this, really made my day to know that these videos can help other learners out there :)
As a pronunciation tutor, this is what I tell my students:
Pronunciation = how clearly and accurately you pronounce the sounds
Accent = pronunciation + rhthym/cadence + intonation + any little thing native speakers do that sound 'native' (eg reductions)
Native English speakers are a bit unique in that many of us are used to hearing a wide variety of accents and (this is important) types of pronunciation. For many languages around the world, native speakers are used to hearing their language pronounced with either 100% accuracy, or 0% accuracy. (Myself and countless other Americans/Brits etc, we all have experience trying - and failing! - to be understood when visiting a country... 😭🙈😅)
So I try to reassure my students: a perfect accent, or even perfect pronunciation, is not necessary to be understood in English. I'd say 90% accuracy for the three most important sounds will get you there easily (in my opinion: the r, short i, and short a). I mean, native speakers mispronounce words all the time. It just depends on how many words and sounds are mispronounced / different, then our ear might get a bit confused.
And even then, speaking very slowly will usually do the trick. For my students, I tell them that recording themselves / being in a phone call is like the 'ultimate test' for how clear their pronunciation is, phone calls especially as just seeing someone's face helps so much in understanding them.
There are many people from Ireland and Scotland that Americans (or other people from the British isles!) struggle to understand. I think every American I know who's been to Scotland has a story of eg getting on a bus and not being able to understand a word the driver's saying. And, many people from Scotland / Ireland and so on will have a "home" accent or a "non-home" accent to help the rest of us ;)
I have students who love to practice their accent and that's fine. It's their hobby and passion to have a perfect American accent, and of course I will help them. That said, I have so many students who speak such excellent English, and I am getting a bit sad about the thought of accents disappearing!! I love accents of all kinds (...except probably mine!! I've always felt having a west coast American accent is the most boring in the world :P My mum's from Australia and as a kid I remember asking her why we didn't move there after I was born so I could have the accent!! 😅) Thanks to the internet and even AI, language learning is getting more and more efficient and effective, but a maybe selfish part of me hopes that it doesn't get toooo perfect.
Though of course if someone starting a language wants to sound perfectly like a particular accent, that's of course fine! Like you said, everyone has their own thoughts and opinions when they hear an accent, and just because I find accents pleasant and intriguing - well, in my own language studies, I work (am working!) very hard on pronunciation myself. Variety is fun and interesting, and so are a variety of accents :D
But yeah, I always tell my students: language is about communication. If everyone can understand you easily, you win!! :D
My ideal student is someone that I (with years of experience dealing with a variety of English learners) can barely understand. Helping them become easily understood is just a great feeling 😊
oops I wrote too much!! Sorry for the babble, this is definitely a subject that I think too much about! 😅 I just saw your video recommended on my front page, didn't mean to write an essay! 😅
Good luck learning Mandarin!! It was fun to hear your thoughts, I loved the car analogy :)
Thanks for such an awesome response!! This is a great way to break down the difference between accent and pronunciation, I didnt quite think about it like that until you pointed it out, makes a lot of sense!
I totally agree, I love hearing different accents, it brings out everyone's unique personality, hopefully they dont die out! Recently I've been really intrigued by the Singaporean English accent, its sounds so cool, makes me want to move there haha
I love the phone test, really rings true for me, something I need to work on more with Mandarin!!
@@thedanyopang oh haha glad you enjoyed the babble! 😅
What I've come to realize is that teaching (and learning!) pronunciation is a very vulnerable thing, which definitely favors kids learning just because they're less self-conscious (on top of some neural advantages ofc). When I taught in a bilingual primary school (1st-8th grade), for the littles, we'd start each class singing the target sound to different nursery school songs (old mcdonald etc), it was just fun for them. But goooood luck getting the teenagers to do that, though they were the most eager to improve their pronunciation!
And I'm the same learning pronunciation - it can be excruciating and embarrassing, and I learn far slower than I'd like! In fact me being so ahem slow to learn, helps me teach others because I need so much repetition. I make my lessons with me in mind, if *I* could learn from it, it must be easy / thorough enough 😅
But even on top of that, it's so important to emphasize to students how much most people only care if they can easily understand you (vs sounding like a native). Unfortunately yes, there are prejudiced people out there who might judge accents - but, 1) so long as you're easy to understand, that's their problem, so certainly don't waste a moment trying to cater to them, and 2) even if people do care about accents, well, that's like caring about someone's appearance I reckon. Like you said with the car analogy, I view 'accent judging' like 'appearance judging'. If someone is so superficial as to judge your clothing / hair / style preference, well, you wouldn't change your style (or even hair?!) just to suit them, would you? (And if you would, then maaaaaybe you should talk to someone about how to increase self-confidence...? :P)
So yeah, I guess accepting one's accent is related to self-confidence and self-acceptance. (Even for the "phone test", I recommend that to students based on their goals, eg if they're using English professionally / going to live in an English-speaking country, or especially if they might have a phone interview, then they obviously need very clear English, compared to someone who's just using English for travel and can make reservations online and just want to be able to communicate to people they encounter face-to-face)
And ohhhhh you mentioned Singapore - I love Singaporeans and Singaporean English, I have Singaporean friends from college, just the best people lah! 🥰 I remember once walking in a Target with two of my friends (I was on the LH side), and the friend in the middle was turning his head to the left and right to speak to each of us, and suddenly he paused, and said, "...I just realized, I speak differently to each of you!" And he demonstrated how he was speaking when he turned his head to the left (ie to me), vs the right, it was really cool to hear him slip into 'Singlish' (as they called it) vs sounding quite American for my benefit! I almost studied abroad to Singapore in college because of them, sad that I didn't though I still intend to visit one day 😊
Do you focus on your accent when learning a language?
Accent does not matter as long as people understand you. American, British, Australian, and all English speakers from different countries have different accents. Even those who live in the same country have different regional accent.
I totally agree, accents dont really matter, in fact they bring out your personality and I appreciate them, no matter what the accent. Recently I've been really intrigued by the Singaporean English accent, sounds so cool ahah
Are you a Cantonese native? I lived 14 years in hong kong. I am an Australian. I speak fluent Cantonese. High level and after 14 years... I still sound foreign but not strong. I tried to fix it and never could. But at least fluent. Nobody asks where I come from now. But in the past, it was your so smart and I couldn't even string a sentence together. I learned through listening a million times to compréhensible input. Now my Russian is like my Cantonese now. Lived 7 years in Ukraine. I'm onto Croatian after escaping Ukraine.
Wow, its crazy whats happening in Ukraine, I'm glad you are safe now. About Cantonese, it was my mother tongue but I dont speak it very well, I hope to improve it in the future. Thats a cool combination you have there with Russian, Cantonese and English. How did you end up in Hong Kong for 14 years? I love HK, I really want to go back in the future.
@@thedanyopang yeah man... I married a Hong Kong woman when I was 20 when I was in Australia studying at university. And she decided Hong Kong was better and simply moved. I like your channel
@@milanhrvat thanks man appreciate the support!!
Wow you have a really cool story! Did you find learning Cantonese hard? Did you take classes or did you learn self study?
@@thedanyopang nah man. Self study. I used this Steven krashen method and followed advice from Steve Kaufmann. Used my wife as a walking dictionary and tone machine. She made tons of small dialogues and MP3 audio files. I just listened over and over. I put a video on TH-cam like 12 years ago... Let me find it....
This is me talking Cantonese many years ago.... th-cam.com/video/GfP9PgE9j3w/w-d-xo.html
Man you need more people here .;( .
But don't worry 没事
haha i think so too ;), but thank YOU for being here!!
@@thedanyopang 慢慢来👍
加油！
谢谢你的鼓励！！