Saturday, November 1, 2014
Why You Cannot Be Taught a Foreign Language. Part 11
Rice or Lice?
Typical national accents are formed in this very manner. The atrophied muscles within a native language do not cross over completely into a work mode, which is necessary for an ideal accent in the foreign language. And since various groups of muscles within different languages are prone to atrophy, accordingly, various accents form that are typical for these languages.
For example, in Japanese, there is no ‘r’ or ‘l’ sound (there is a certain sound that occupies an intermediate position between r, l, and d). So the words ‘rice’ and ‘lice’ sound exactly the same to a Japanese person. A Japanese person’s articulation apparatus is simply unable to pronounce the letter ‘r’ without special training. The average Japanese person is simply unaware of the existence of the letter ‘r’.
This is just like the average uninitiated Russian, who is not aware of the existence of interdental consonants in English that have no equivalents in Russian (and in many other languages, of course)! A very unpleasant surprise awaits Americans who are beginning to study Russian in the pair of so-called ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ consonants in Russian. I remember one of my students from the Green Berets yelling in the hallway during a break. Apparently on the verge of a nervous breakdown, my student was highly frustrated with a letter in Russian that simply ‘softens’ consonants.
Of course, I could parry these hysterical outbursts by quietly pointing out that, for Russians, Americans have a most unpleasant similarity in pronouncing two major city names, New York and Newark. A quite astonishing discovery for non-Americans takes place, often at the last second in an unfamiliar airport when purchasing airline tickets to one of the aforementioned places. However, glancing at the bloodshot eyes of my frustrated Green Beret as he convulsively clenched and unclenched his huge fists, I refrained from engaging in an overly intellectual debate on the topic…
Sometimes you may hear people say, ‘Why do I need to have good pronunciation in the foreign language? There is no way I’ll waste my precious time on such nonsense.’ Right…
In the late eighties, I saw a television program in which the hosts were talking with Americans who occasionally listened to Soviet propaganda over the radio in English, particularly aimed at North Americans. One American said with a smile that it was impossible to take the speaker’s words seriously, as he broadcasted Soviet politics and global issues with the accent of a southerner from Alabama, all the while openly and absurdly proud of his pronunciation…
Some brilliant hiring politics of Soviet propaganda radio…
One of my American acquaintances who knows Russian very well tells the story with laughter of how proud he was on his first trip to Moscow when his new Moscow friends told him that he had a strong Armenian accent. Much, much later, he discovered that, in Russia, this is by no means a compliment. Oh well…
For now, you can forget about Soviet broadcasters, proud of their Alabama accents. Forget about Americans speaking Russian with an Armenian accent. Think about all the crazy, strange accents you have heard in your own language. Imagine a Thai man being asked at US immigration control, ‘How old are you, sir?’ ‘Dirty’. ‘And how old is your wife?’ ‘She is dirty-two’.
Do you want to be like the people mentioned in this section when you speak in the foreign language you are studying? Do you want that? Wonder of wonders! Then pronunciation really won’t play a significant role for you and you can boldly neglect it!
Believe me; you may not be pleased with the results.
[Via Language Tai-chi, or You Cannot Be Taught a Foreign Language, by Nikolay Zamyatkin]
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