ศาลาชุมนุม

[AgentJ]

Would you like an accent with that?

Over the years, I have done some thinking about accents. It seems that when you learn your primary language you learn a set of sounds - I think the technical terms is "phones" but I'm not a linguist. This set of sounds is usually different from language to language and most definately the cause of accents. So, when you embark upon learning a new language, your pronunciation will naturally be the closest that you can achieve by using the set of sounds that you already know, and which you seldom think about making because they are so automatic.

For example, the French "r" vs. the English "r". In my day to day activities I never contract the muscles to make the French "r" sound. It's not in my muscle-memory repetoire. So, when I go to pronounce it, it may sound close, but would be easily identified by a native speaker, someone who is inherently familiar with all of the French sounds, as an imitation. Likewise, when a French speaker goes to pronounce the English "th", they simply don't have that sound in their language. So, the get the closest that they can using "z". However, with accents the vowels are most of the problem.

I think being musically inclined certainly helps with accents, because one is more likely to notice the sometimes subtle differences in the sounds made by a native speaker, and more ably reproduce them. This would also play a part in being able to "hear" in the sounds of the new language as Gwindor described above. It is a cycle of a little listening, a little reproduction repeat. You gradually add the new sound set to your "sound vocabulary" as well as the needed muscle patterns to reproduce them. This is true even when it is not a new language, but the same language spoken with a different set of sounds i.e. American vs. English accent.

Aside from any "talent" for doing such things, being exposed to a variety of accents in your native language is helpful because it makes you aware of them. Never having had this exposure would probably be a contributing factor to why some people have trouble eliminating their accent in another language.