I saw a post titled "perfect, but accented" at John Wells' Phonetic Blog. In it he wonders about the affect of accent on one's perception of what is 'perfect English'. He says:
The accented English in question (Mr. Lebedev's) can be heard in this video from The Guardian.
First to talk about the broader question: "Why is it that ‘perfection’ tolerates L1 interference in phonetics, but not in grammar or vocabulary?"
I'm not sure what constitutes the idea of 'perfect', but my thought is that it isn't something 'special' about phonetics that allows us to tolerate missteps like foreign accent in our view of perfection but not grammar/vocabulary missteps. I see it as a system of compensation.
Even a native speaker isn't completely perfect. The other day I was watching a documentary about dyslexia and Erin Brokovich used the word 'disregard' when I'm pretty sure she meant to say 'regard' - technically she said the exact opposite of what she was trying to say, and she's a native speaker. Just the other day I discovered the hiccough is pronounced like hiccup. I am 22 years old and I have always thought that hiccough was pronounced hik-off and that maybe that was how they said hiccup in Britain. I don't think anyone would say that we speak imperfect English, though.
Maybe it's because our accents are within the realm of 'acceptable native English accents' and because our grammar is pretty spot on. We can afford to misread or misspeak or misunderstand vocabulary once in a while. The overall strength of our phonetic and grammatical aspects or what have you overcome the slip-ups that we make in areas like vocabulary.
So my theory is that what is judged as 'perfect' or 'native' English is a system of balances between strengths in things like 'lack of L1 interference in L2 phonetics' or 'robust lexicon' or 'comprehensive grammatical knowledge'. You can have a few points taken off one if you can make them up with the other aspects. This extends to things like reading, too. I can read something in Japanese and answer questions well enough despite a less than robust lexicon and a very dire lack of kanji reading ability. This is because my grammar is fairly sound, my ability to recognize the meaning of kanji (don't ask me about 音読み or 訓読み though) and my ability to draw from context is strong. That was actually probably a bad example because I'm definitely nowhere near native reading fluency, but you get the idea.
There are some interesting comments by other readers, too, about the perception of certain accents and how that affects your perception of that person's fluency (a Russian-accented English 'sounds better/more fluent/more intelligent' than a Chinese-accented English, etc).
I've just watched that video, and to my uncultured barbarian ear the native English interviewer has more of an accent than Lebedev!
ReplyDeleteMaybe accent is singled out because of the general belief that you cannot acquire a native accent (whatever that is) if you learn a language after the age of let's say 12. The cut-off point might be younger.
PS: Oh, he's a rather sexy man, with a delightful sense of humour. Who cares about accent? :)
When I refer to the native English interviewer, I meant the woman who asks the first questions at the beginning of the video.
Delete>>I've just watched that video, and to my uncultured barbarian ear the native English interviewer has more of an accent than Lebedev!
DeleteI thought the same thing!
>>Maybe accent is singled out because of the general belief that you cannot acquire a native accent (whatever that is) if you learn a language after the age of let's say 12. The cut-off point might be younger.
Yes, that sounds very probable. I suppose it has more leeway because of that. As much as my heart rails against it, it is true that your ability to hear differences in sounds that don't exist in your own language grows worse all the time.