Masayuki Sato
English has many accents and each of these is strong.
Normally, we Japanese learn American English in school so we are accustomed to the accent of American English. But New Zealanders speak British English. In addition, they have a New Zealand accent. For example of this is the difference of “e” sound. They pronounce this sound /i/. “egg” is /ig/ and “friend” is /frind/, not /frend/. It may be misunderstanding of me but I heard so and my Japanese friend also said this difference. For these reasons, it was very hard for me to talk with New Zealanders and listen to what they said when I came here.
Also, Japanese have particular accent of English. To pronounce “th” sound is very hard for us and also we can’t distinguish “r” and “l” sound well. So Japanese English is hard to listen for native speaker.
Now I study English with a British accent because I will stay here more six months so if I want to live without the hardship for communication, I should study a British accent, especially New Zealand accent. And I want to improve my bad Japanese English.
When we go to the place where people use another accent, I think we should study that accent to communicate with native people well and smoothly.
An interesting post. To tell the truth, if you study a language in one particular place for a substantial period of time you will pick up the accent of that place. That applies whether you set out to learn the accent or not. It is no doubt more interesting though, developing a conscious awareness of the features of the accent of the place where you're learning a language.
ReplyDeleteas i wrote in my journal, accents are a crucial problem especially for us, japanese. to surprise friends of us after going to back Japan, we should learn and practice a lot.
ReplyDeleteWhat you says sounds very reasonable. I agree that we have to accommodate to the new english accents that we will face during our lives, but I also think that using a concrete accent (all mixed with the linguistic melting pot from our native language) will give us some characteristic features that will turn ourselves into unique English speakers!!
ReplyDeleteHi '
ReplyDeleteGood for your idea about Stereotype
best wishes
Abdulkareem