Forget About Native Pronunciation & Focus on NATURAL Pronunciation
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- čas přidán 30. 06. 2024
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I hear people say they want to achieve native pronunciation. A more realistic goal may be natural pronunciation where the speaker and the listener both feel comfortable. To achieve natural pronunciation you may need at first to just let go and play act a little.
0:00 My discussion with Stephen Krashen.
1:11 Pretending to be a person in the culture of your target language.
3:16 Cultural weightlessness in language learning.
4:23 Jody Foster's amazing French.
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#pronunciation #languagelearning #languages
Are you working on gaining natural pronunciation? What is helping with this goal?
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The problem is the native speaker don't accept my pronunciation ,for example word like well ,if you don't pronounce L by the exact way, he look at me by bizarre way ...
I fail in many job interviews due my small pronunciation mistakes ,I don't pronounce the word well bythe exact way can change the meaning....
What helped me was a two-semester course, both theoretical and practical, on phonetics and how English pronunciation works. But yours is a very good point, too! It might help some people to overcome the psychological barrier. Thank you!
@@martavdz4972 people take a I lot of courses about phonetics and pronunciation without progress any progress due the mindset and brain psychology things ,people think language learning is like math ,you need to have all corrects answers and know all formulas come from where, language isn't like that ...
You learn 1000 words you remember 20 ,next time you read 1000 words in the same topic ,you find yourself remember 50 ،more and more in every additional practice ...
I suspect my background in singing in choirs has been very helpful. Even as a child I was expected to sing in various languages (had no idea what I was singing about), and the choir directors were very adamant about "correct" pronunciation (at least as far as singing is concerned). In any event, my travels to Iceland, France and Austria were all met with positive exchanges with native speakers who, perhaps out of politeness, commented on how well I spoke. (The Icelanders were blown away that anyone would bother to learn their language --- and of course they all spoke English better than most native English speakers I know.) Anyway, I rather enjoy inhabiting the role of "speaker" in whatever language I'm learning. Currently working on Italian in anticipation of a trip a year or two from now.
1:50 this micro impression of a french person speaking english was priceless. Let it never be forgotten
Changing your self-identity in fact does far more than improving your pronunciation, I've seen people saying it is one most important step toward the goal of becoming anyone you want to be. I don't really feel that way but when soaking in a different language environment, I do enjoy the time I can be free from my existing cultural identity and the way of thinking I've been taught by my native culture.
That's a good if unfinished written explanation for the case of speaking in an accent commensurate with the language.
@Javier139 Sorry, a native speaker is more appropriate. Actually I just started English self-study last year
@@Klinoklaz Yet you're able to speak in full sentences naturally. Stop trying to be humble, you're fluent in English. Probably because it's been around you since you were a kid. You definitely did not just start last year.
@@user-qh7rw5gy5i not to break your gaijin heart, but it's absolutely possible to get this good in a year, but it requires an amount of dedication and time most people don't/won't give.
Not saying they are definitely 1 year in, just that it's possible. As an aside, I'd say to anyone, a foreigner fluent in a language will almost always be better as a teacher than a native. A lot of people (in the US at least) stupidly refuse a JP teacher unless they're a native, but the native frequently can't understand issues we have learning.
For your information Jodie Foster went to a French school ie one where lessons were taught in French. For me role acting does not work, it feels like I am making fun of the French, or pretending to be someone else, so I feel uncomfortable, false. My pronunciation improved markedly by constantly listening to and repeating short phrases. Eventually I started to understand the music of the language, and to add my emotion, so I can speak as myself rather than as someone else. No my accent is not native, nor is it English, it’s international, but I feel relaxed. And when I listen to French speakers, I can now hear the person behind the accent or language. Something I discovered is that sometimes recordings for foreign learners of French are unsuitable because the language is too perfect, too devoid of emotion and personality. It is in too high a register. I find that ordinary people, not professional radio presenters for TF1 say, but podcast presenters say, are more useful. 30 years ago I listened to some tapes of English for foreign learners. The voice actors spoke in a very posh, precise, cold manner, perfect yes, but unpleasant. If anyone had spoken English like that to me, I would have told them where to go! Language is not about perfect grammar and pronunciation, it is an exchange between two people.
I do the imitation always at the beginning. I go over the top with unfamiliar sounds (for me, a Finnish person, these would especially be the French, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Arabic etc. sounds) and gradually lessen the ridiculousness, if you will. I've learned this practice from practicing musical instruments where you need to go very slowly and with dramatic movements of the fingers when learning new fingerings, for example. After 10 or so, as PERFECT as possible, repetitions (of the sound(in a language, or the fingering(playing an instrument)) you can start going faster and faster gradually. This has worked well for me.
This is actually the exact same approach as that employed by universities (at least mine). In phonetics classes we would listen to these ridiculous, over the top dialogues in British English, where every sound was exaggerated. The book with the dialogues was called "How now brown cow". :)
@@chrolka6255 Interesting, good to hear I'm not alone!:)
Interesting tip
I didn't think of speaking a foreign language as "acting" (projection); now I do after watching the video. You have to get in there and do the same things that an actor does. A different sound model, a different type of body language etc.
So helpful! I've even found that when I am unconsciously nervous to lean into a native sounding accent for fear of being perceived as racist or appropriating! Such a barrier to learning to speak correctly!
This is what I told my fiancée who is learning English and what I do when I practice my Vietnamese. I literally “pretend” I am a Vietnamese man working in Little Saigon. 😆
Ấy ơi
fantastic ..i'm 52 but i stared to study English when i was 22 ,but i abandoned , some day a go i found this CZcams Chanel and then i dicided to continúe learning English until be the Best..at English ..
That's great! ☺️
I think music can be a good way to ease into this. Someone gets into a good song in the target language and comfortably sings along and maybe that will help them move into speaking with more comfortable pronunciation.
Agree. I have a client whose pronunciation was accurate when he sings.
I think an example of this concept of “changing your identity” is when you are speaking one language and using words from another language while doing that. Example is when I’m speaking to my family in Chinese, if I use an English word it’ll be in a Chinese accent, even though I know perfectly well how to speak using a native English accent.
I agree with you. I am Palestinian so I am a native speaker of Arabic. When I say something in English and even in a situation of teaching my children, they tell me to repeat what I have said in
an English Arabic accent 😅. In fact ,it is very difficult to do this especially I am especialized in English language and try all the time to practice English.
Agree. When I'm in Hong Kong, I'd pronounce the words Cantonese-style; when I'm in Australia or New Zealand, I'd say the same word with an Aussie or Kiwi accent. When I'm in Taiwan, I'd use the American accent because most Taiwanese can't understand non-American pronunciations. I think it depends on how "local" you want to sound.😄
One thing I've done to sound more natural is related to trick of mental framing I do. I try to imagine how would one speak a language if their families have for generations spoken the same language. This usually means just shortening and softening vowels and consonants. Also articles and otherwise commonly used words become almost just one sound/word. Example: For five years -> F'Five years.
The goal of language fluency is not to acquire a "native" accent but to eliminate the elements on one's own native speech which highlight the speaker's first language . Admittedly this is easier to achieve in languages with a wide range of variants
Great point Steve! I’ve often tried to keep this mentality in the back of my head while practicing. Taking on the persona of the people. “Playing the role”!
PS. I love the distinction between Native and Natural
I think, start in the best way you can. But be aware that good pronunciation is part of mastering the language.
I just wanted to say that you have an amazing English accent! Great job!
Dorothy DeLay, the famous violin instructor at the Juilliard school, used to make her violin students role play other famous violinists as well. With fascinating results. So yes, this is a worth while idea or technique.
Thanks for the video. Your videos are always helpful! True, people are often suppressing themselves somehow, in class very often. ;P
One of your best presentation. Thank you.
Totally agree with that, native pronunciation is almost impossible to achieve
Amo tus videos. Gracias ♡
Hola! Yo soy de argentina, mi lengua materna es'el español. Viví unos meses'en Brasil, y al principio hablaba portugués con un acento casi nativo, pero mi novia'se quejaba porque no sonaba como yo mismo...
Es mejor hablar como un nativo....no importa lo que dice tu novia.
Great video! You hit on a lot of good points. I'd like to add that sometimes there's this element of an accent working or not and we have no idea why. In my own language learning, I see that for some languages, I sound native-like from the very beginning (e.g. Greek), and in others, no matter how fluent I get, you can always tell it's not my native language (e.g. English). Obviously, practice and all the tips you gave can help with that, but there is something to be said about natural inclination, in my opinion. That X factor, if you will. Anyways, I love your videos 🙂
It might depends on how much you like the culture, For example I don’t like American culture and pronunciation too much and although I live in US My pronunciation doesn’t sound native but I’m sure that it’s because I don’t wanna sound like them…
Excellent advice, thanks for sharing :)
Muito bom, obrigado
I learned a great deal about the intonation of American English by studying how Americans speak Mandarin Chinese.
Really interesting! I wonder if in the classroom using playacting would support this...
Completely agree!
Thanx a lot Sir.
To improve my pronunciation, I'm using now a voice recorder that can turn speech into text. If the application sends me back the same text as one I read, then the pronunciation is correct, or at leat understandable.
bc of bullying in my childhood + teenage years i'm very very shy when i have to speak in class, which obviously was necessary and mandatory for the french course i took last year bc there's no other way to learn. i felt very stupid trying to speak french for the first time, even though i knew that i was just starting to learn a language that i had had no approach to for 20+ years of my life. a classmate stopped me in the middle of a very miserable speech excercise and told me "FRENCH IT UP!!! MOCK FRENCH PEOPLE!!! YOU KNOW THEY DON'T SOUND THE WAY YOU'RE SPEAKING!!!" and it was like magic for me lol. my french Rs are still weird, but my vowels and liaisons and stuff definitely improved. you just have to lose the fear of sounding stupid. i know i would feel much more stupid if a french native didn't understand me bc i can't be bothered to try to pronounce eau differently.
I think there is a very good point being made here, even if I don't agree 100%. For some purposes complete native level is needed, but in a lot of cases you can get away with near native level while sounding plausibly native, people can mistake you for speaking a native dialect of their own language. You will almost never speak like a native of a specific region and socio-economic class, but you can sound vaguely enough that most people will buy you were from somewhere native speakers are. You can definitely imitate a native speaker to a very full extent but most people there is no need, as long as you sound like a plausible dialect speaker you have reached a level where further progress is likely pointless
This is really helpful. What about an interview with an actor who can explain how we project ourselves like Jodie Foster does?
I agree with the idea; that's how I learned my foreign languages. However, I think the source material is key to sounding natural. Here in Taiwan, I hear many people speaking English with an unnatural pronunciation because they have imitated DJs, ESL recordings, or others with inappropriate stress. The result can sometimes be quite funny if not confusing.
Hmm! That was very interesting and very useful. I've taken it fully on board and will endeavour to implement the technique.
It's one of those things that when somebody points it out to you, you wonder why you never thought of it yourself. 😄😄
Oops! PS Thank you.
My pronunciation 's skill grow up when I stopped to speak like a native and started to speak like a foreigner.
That's a great observation
GREAT! MANY THANKS INDEED
It does make sense to try speak, or impersonate rather, the accent of natives as closely as possible.
Actually i cannot forget native pronunciation because i love speaks like a native even i know that english native speakers said keep your accent but i won't I love american accent if i speak english with my native accent english can be broken in fact i use american accent when i speak english probably i won't never be like a native but at least i try.😊
Are the lessons in LingQ with Steven Krashen avaiable in Italian? I would like to hear it in my target language. Thx for all the great vids!
Sorry, no.
Natural pronunciation is good. But I like to keep working until I get close to native pronunciation
It's certainly interesting how many problems native English speakers have with pronunciation opf secondary languages. Sometimes it is as strong as an (acquired) disability, I think it's mostly down to a deep-seated cultural ignorance.
Perhaps with some, but it's also the fact that the sound of English is very specific. It has a very specific rhythm, it links words which isn't a very common feature among languages, it has a large set of vowels and consonants and all the variants of English have a strong melody to them.
But lots of languages share a similar set of consonants and vowels among themselves, and their general sound is a bit similar. Hence, if an Italian person speaks Latvian, a Spanish person speaks Finnish, or a Czech person speaks Mongol, they will have an accent but it will sound quite OK to a native speaker. I even know for a fact that if a Czech person speaks Lakota, a Native American language, they naturally have a better accent and pronunciation than in English.
English is very, very specific. It's hard for most people to achieve good pronunciation and accent in English, and it works both ways.
@@martavdz4972 No, I don't think so. English is very very simple, only made artificially hard with nonsense orthography. It's rather the centuries of imperialism and their countries run effectively by gangsters that have left these people culturally stranded on little islands where they claim being unable to pronounce anything "foreign".
Can't say I've noticed any difference with learners from other native languages. There's no shortage of thick accents out there.
Hey Steve. Today was very unique for me comparing to other days. I saw a dream. And it was in English😂WTFF . I was like... Wait what is happening dude😂🤷🏻♂️.
So my option is guys just change the language in the dreams. And the results with follow. Take care
I really didn't understand how and what we can do to improve our pronunciation.
What was the tip?
May someone help me please 🙏🏼
Pretend to be someone else
@@lxportugal9343 Thanks a million for your time. God bless you!!!
I can do a few English accents, but I feel like if you do a Cockney accent, for example, the impression from the natives can be smth like cringe. This is because dialect and ways of sentence structuring and even tonality is very hard to perfect for an outsider.
This is why I try to speak with as neutral(dictionary) pronunciation as I can.
@@paulhogan2930 not if you use your tone well. By pronunciation I meant sounds like 'th' instead of 'f', you know. Or pronouncing the last 't' in a word. For example 'that' instead of 'tha'; 'what' instead of 'wha' etc.
I definitely agree that there is something inhibiting about 'faking' an accent if you're using their language and you're not a proficient speaker, that said, I feel like it's a LOT easier, on a pracitcal level, to fake an accent using your native language. I don't think I'd have the brainpower for both speaking a language I can't really speak that well AND trying to use a fake accent at the same time. It'd be way too much for me. 😂
Me!🙌 I can’t chew gum and walk ! I’m a hazard …. I have had so man people laugh at me when I try to pronounce a foreign language that this time I am only going to try to read and understand… not speak 🤦♀️
I think is the same
Very true, however, I think most Germans expect you to sound exactly like a native speaker, whereas English native speakers don't. That means, it also depends on what language you're trying to master.
Jodi Foster when to a bilingual French school when growing up - Lycee Français.
Hi, I have a language learning problem. How do you remember the pronunciation of words in speaking a new language? I always forget the pronunciation of words. Do you have any good methods?
Hi, I personally like to read out loud, check the standard pronunciation and repeat the word orally couple of times. As a stumble across that same new word again, I check the pronunciation again if necessary and say it out loud. Generally after a couple of times I got it !
Reading aloud, like the previous comment says, plus imagination and role-playing. It's close to what Steve says in this video. As you're learning the word, imagine you're a native speaker of that language and you're using the word in everyday life. For example, if you're learning the word "thoroughly", imagine your boss is accusing you of not having read your instructions thoroughly. So, say aloud several times: "But sir, I DID read them thoroughly!" Like you want to emphasize the word, so that your boss really understands.
Also, listening to audiobooks and watching movies. When you hear a word there that you tried to learn a month ago, you're more likely to remember its pronunciation.
@@basilerasidy7116 Thanks a lot. Can I ask another question? There are so many words, so many pronunciation. How do you learn them? Some teachers suggest we need to learn like a kid. His mom shows the kid a picture of an apple. The kid can speak "apple". His mom shows banana. He can speak "banana". Some teachers suggest we only need to learn the words that we will frequently use. Some teachers suggest to make sentences with the word that we want to learn. For example we say "I like banana. I hate banana. I want to make banana cake." in order to get used to the pronunciation of "banana". What is your method?
@@martavdz4972 Thanks a lot. Can I ask another question? There are so many words, so many pronunciation. How do you learn them? Some teachers suggest we need to learn like a kid. His mom shows the kid a picture of an apple. The kid can speak "apple". His mom shows banana. He can speak "banana". Some teachers suggest we only need to learn the words that we will frequently use. Some teachers suggest to make sentences with the word that we want to learn. For example we say "I like banana. I hate banana. I want to make banana cake." in order to get used to the pronunciation of "banana". What is your method?
@@wonggarwick852 I think learning pronunciation should go hand in hand with learning new words. I'm learning Chinese and when I meet an unknown character I study its pronunciation at the same time. Just a matter of getting used to those new words. In English (which I learned some 10 years ago) it's easier since you have plenty of words that have a tricky pronunciation, you kinda isolate them and learn them one by one, which takes time, but hey who said language learning was easy. And for the rest you have patterns which repeat themselves (stress on the first syllable for example). No particular method, I just try to get used to the words and their pronunciation at the same time. Hope that helps, cheers!
👍
So many people say that accent when learning another language is no important. I disagree completely. I think that even though native pronunciation may be more difficult (And that may also depend on the particular language) that when learning another language that you should make every effort to sound as much like a native speaker as possible. In my case I believe that I have a good pronunciation of Spanish. Unfortunately, I do not have 100% command of the Spanish language. I have also heard that it matters when you start learning a language. They say that you are much less likely to ever get close to native pronunciation if you start learning a language as an adult but that if you begin as a child it is much more likely that you will sound like a native. I don't know if that is really true. Many years ago I began learning French in college. I thought I had good pronunciation but when I took a course in French pronunciation I only made a C in that class. Now, I remember very little French because I only had three years of classes and no practical experience and virtually no exposure to the language outside of my classes. That was decades ago.
An adult can attain a native level of pronunciation but it requires a considerable amount of hard work and attention to detail. I suspect most adults have neither the time nor the inclination. Good pronunciation is enough in my book.
I see some confusion: accent and pronunciation are two different (but linked) things. A good pronunciation is ESSENTIAL. But a "good accent" is much less.
@@Rudolphhhhhh What do you mean by good pronunciation?
@@StillAliveAndKicking_ I mean: putting the tongue in the right place inside the mouth, or giving the right shape to the lips and mouth. So that we cannot understand "I sink" instead of "I think" for example, nor "deaf" instead of "death". On the contrary, the "accent" is more subtle (even in the same country speaking the same language, there are very different accents to hear, but we cannot say for sure that some native speakers have a "bad pronunciation" because of their different accent).
@@Rudolphhhhhh I don’t see the distinction. In English some native speakers pronounce the two th sounds as an f sound. That in your book would be bad pronunciation. Accent is a combination of the pronunciation of each syllable along with stress patterns and intonation. To be honest it isn’t hard to get an okay pronunciation, but many foreign language speakers do not even get that far. Look at Sergei Lavrov for example.
In Lord and my Master Jesus, Name, Amen.
A beret is not enough to look like a French man, you need also a bottle of wine (a good one of course) an so many other things... if you need them, ask me !!!😅
Or a yellow jacket 😂 (Belgian humour, sorry 😁)
@@yudansha63 it depends on the year...
I think it is not so important.
pretend. mostly results in overly pretend. getting more far away from native pronunciation and sounds worse and stranger.