{"id":3116,"date":"2015-02-16T07:52:31","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T12:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=3116"},"modified":"2020-10-02T12:58:50","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T16:58:50","slug":"singing-the-tongue-song-accents-and-cadence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2015\/02\/16\/singing-the-tongue-song-accents-and-cadence\/","title":{"rendered":"Singing the Tongue-Song: Accents and Cadence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Itchy<\/a><\/p>\n

I wonder sometimes whether skill with accents can be learned or if it\u2019s just innate\u2014you have it or you don\u2019t, like the ability to keep a beat. If I were to guess, I\u2019d say it has to do with a totally different part of the brain than grammar or vocabulary. Maybe the same part of the brain that regulates how good you are at doing impressions. I imagine you have to have an ear for it, meaning you\u2019d have to be able to notice and pay attention not just to what<\/em> people are saying, but also how <\/em>they\u2019re saying it, and then reproduce it yourself.<\/p>\n

After all, an accent is much more than just the pronunciation of words. Accent has a lot to do with the cadence or song<\/em> of how a language is spoken. In every language (also every regional accent, for those that vary widely within a language), the sentences go up or down in a very specific, unique way. For a long time I\u2019ve wanted to do a comic about this phenomenon, but I just can\u2019t figure out how to represent it visually. Maybe something like this graphical depiction of how my Italian wife would say:<\/p>\n

\"cadence-graph\"<\/a><\/span>Or that might be even more confusing. Point is, the ability to reproduce this tongue-song is a special skill, and completely independent from having a wide vocabulary or knowing grammar rules.<\/p>\n

I know an American fellow who\u2019s lived here in Berlin for 25 years, has a German wife and five bilingual kids, and teaches in German\u2014he\u2019s totally fluent, and yet his accent is so<\/em> harsh, it sounds like he just picked up the language yesterday. I have another friend who doesn\u2019t speak any languages fluently, but is killer at accents. He can do all the various English regional accents to perfection, and when he tries to speak Italian or French, he can even fool a native speaker, if just for a moment.<\/p>\n

As the comic above tries to point out, no one group of people is \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbad\u201d with accents. If you think Americans are bad with accents, you\u2019re probably just remember that one American with a terrible one (maybe we know the same guy\u2026!).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not an accent whiz, but I\u2019d say I\u2019m better than average. To me, it\u2019s important to get that cadence down, as well as proper pronunciation<\/span><\/a>, so I listen very carefully to native speakers and try to reproduce their song when I speak. It\u2019s helped a lot. Native speakers can tell I\u2019m not native, but they don\u2019t know where<\/em> exactly I\u2019m from, and that helps me build a unique first impression that isn\u2019t founded on some cultural stereotype.<\/p>\n

I can also get away with not being fluent. A lot of native speakers give me high marks, even if I know they\u2019re undeserved, just for pronouncing \u201cVolkshochschule<\/em>\u201d correctly, or\u00a0for using their patented cadence:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

What do you think? How\u2019s your foreign accent? Do you know people who can’t pronounce to save their lives, or others who are accent geniuses? Is it possible to learn it, or are we just born with this skill?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

I wonder sometimes whether skill with accents can be learned or if it\u2019s just innate\u2014you have it or you don\u2019t, like the ability to keep a beat. If I were to guess, I\u2019d say it has to do with a totally different part of the brain than grammar or vocabulary. Maybe the same part of…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":3130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[542801],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3116","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archived-posts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3116"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8227,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions\/8227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}