to find it hilarious that my daughter is ranked lowest in class for her accent by her language tutor?

[WestieMamma]

She is outraged. I can't stop laughing. She's just started training to be an English teacher here in Sweden. Her tutor says she has the worst, least authentic accent in the class, despite being one of the only native English speakers .

The top ranked is the other native speaker. He's a geordie. Apparently the fact that none of the Swedes can understand a word he says doesn't matter, it's the fact that he's consistent .

[ToysRLuv]

I'm not sure what the exact terminology is, but dh can't roll his r's, which is essential to my native language. I told him that in my country any children with that problem (including my brother, when he was 7 or 8) undergo speech therapy and they all learn to do it. Dh then brought this up at a dinner with UK trained speech therapists, and they said that apparently not all people are able to learn to roll their r's (even without special problems). I don't know what their explanation for the differences would be, though..

[JustBecauseICan]

...which reminds me of my phonetics exam, when the examiner, a lovely lady from Ireland, asked me to discuss "arrrrrr". I asked did she mean the letter "r" or the sound "ahhhhhh" and she looked very confused and said she didn't know what I meant.

1-0 for the pupil there I think.

[JustBecauseICan]

(to Scones last post)

[Absy]

I think the issue isn't really having an accent, but one that non English speakers can't understand (if you're a language teacher).

I spend most of my time (including at home) speaking to non-native English speakers, and it takes a while to adjust the way you speak, using less slang, annunciating more clearly, slowing down. DH speaks fluent English, but can't tell the difference between "english" accents (e.g. he's convinced all Irish people are American, even on a flight leaving Dublin he thought one particular child was American), and cannot understand people with strong accents; this is someone who uses English at a very high level, every single day of his life.

I'm learning French, and I find it very easy to understand Parisians, but for some regional accents I have NO idea what people are saying to me.

[MmeLindor]

Toys
Yes, I think you are absolutely correct when you say that Brits like to use accents as a shortcut to knowing which class the person they are talking to belongs to. That is why I quite like my kids' neutral accents.

I had to google rhotic (the rrr rolling) and found this fab much easier to understand than the blogs and wiki article.

We lived in Franconia, where they really roll their rrrrrrs, and I think it helped that I was from Scotland - quite similar accents really.

[Zoe909]

to the op, Did your daughter ask the teacher how they were defining 'authentic'.

I had a Spanish woman tell me (in spain, years ago) that I was pronouncing some words with 'ah' in them wrong. bag for example. I said bag. she said bahhhhwwwg. she told me I was pronouncing it bag because I was irish and that English people would say bahhhhhwwwwg. she knew because she had been to England.

[Jellybeanz1]

Love it LMAO

[chateauferret]

They probably want her to sound like the Two Ronnies in Swedish for Beginners or whatever that sketch was called. Remember? "L.O.". "L.O.". "F.U.N.E.M.?" "S.V.F.M.". "M.N.X.N.T.4.1.". "9.V.F.N.10.E.M.", etc.

[lljkk]

I think only Europeans could get so twisted in knots about this. I learnt Spanish listening to a huge diversity of accents and no way would this consistency thing have mattered in how I was taught. Yes I still struggle with some Spanish-language accents, but then I struggle to understand some people from the south of Ireland, and that's when they are supposed to be talking my native tongue.

[Zoe909]

supposed to be?
What nationality are your lijkk? what is your first language? From what I gather the northern irish accent is harder for foreigners to understand.

[Zoe909]

The vast majority of Irish people speak perfectly clearly. The percentage of Irish people that have an accent so strong that it would render them incomprehensible to foreigners would be no higher than the percentage of British people who have an accent that would render them incomprehensible to foreigners, so if you can't understand Irish people I suggest that the issue is not Irish people.

[KenDoddsDadsDog]

I studied Spanish for ten years , went to Andalucia of my year out and could not understand a word for weeks.
I now apparently have an accent like a granadino that has my Madrid / Barcelona mates pissing themselves .

[Dontwanttobeyourmonkeywrench]

When I lived and attended high school in Japan our conversational English teacher was from County Cork That was fun since as a native English speaker I could understand him but nobody else could. I grew up speaking what we referred to as BBC English but now have a strong Norn Irish accent that can pass as Scottish because the area that DH is from has a string Ulster Scots influence. However, if I speak to my African friends then my accent and cadence change and if I spend more than a week in Dublin I can develop a Dublin accent. DD is also a lingual chameleon and excellent mimic

[KenDoddsDadsDog]

chateauferret love that sketch. S.V.F.X

[OnTheBottomWithAWomensWeekly]

I cant believe the peiple complaining about learning english from a native english speaker because they dont like rhe accent. Fuck knows how youd cope with the hundreds of thousands of people around the world taught english by Irish teachers!
I love to hear Koreans , for example, with a lovely Cork accent......

[Alohomora]

MmeLindor I'm Franconian, so yes, that's exactly the accent I was referring to. I always compare it to the Scottish rrrrrrr sound.

I live in the Ards are in NI now and haven't had a lot of problems with the accent here, as long as there's not too much background noise. I only have problems when people spell out their name, I only know the abc when it's pronounced as in the ABC-song

[Zoe909]

I doubt you would hear it through the Korean accent. And what is the difference between a cork accent and a Geordie accent.

I taught English in Spain and regardless of my nationality the relevant point was that I spoke well without a strong regional accent, as do most people from Cork I imagine.

[WestieMamma]

My mum's family are from West Cork. I don't understand a word they say. It's not the accent though, it's the speed. They all speak in fast-forward.

[Zoe909]

I give up!

Why don't we Irish just all pile in and underline the British misconception that Irish accents are more difficult for foreigners to understand than British ones. This is not the case. There are plenty of regional accents throughout the UK that are no more or less difficult to understand than a random Irish accent.

The English do not have a monopoly on speaking well.

[ToysRLuv]

Zoe: I think people are better at understanding what they are used to hearing. That's why Irish accents might be initially harder for some foreigners to understand. From when I was learning English, I had never really heard and Irish accent. I had only heard a Scottish one in Trainspotting. My teacher spoke in an American accent, but I made an effort to learn an English one from a couple of tv-shows I liked and Giles Peterson on radio. Most people where I come from are taught in an American accent and most TV-shows there are from the US, so most people have a harder time understanding the English or the Irish than they have understanding the Americans (this includes my parents who struggled to initially understand my DH, but have now adapted).

[OnTheBottomWithAWomensWeekly]

You do actually. I was a tefl teacher in Australia, and Ive met Korean, Japanese, Chinese and. Russian students with Irish lilts.
There is no one correct english accent, and this notion that some are unacceptable is as bizarre as it is offensive.

[TakeItAsRed]

Its just revenge for

[QuintessentialOldDear]

I personally love both Scottish and Irish accents. My youngest son, who is bilingual, and very impressionable, has an Irish teacher with a fairly heavy accent. He is picking up the way his teacher pronounces some words. It sounds quite funny when he speaks. But he does not really speak English with a Norwegian accent like I do, so it does not jar so much.

[dementedma]

Slightly off topic but dd au paired last year in Spain and taught English to the young children in the family. Unfortunately not only did they pick up her accent but also her teen speak. So when the wee girl was being naughty she got an almighty ticking off from her mum, ending with the words " do you understand why I am so cross with you?"
To which the wee Spanish girl replied in perfectly accented teen English " yeah, man!"

[ouryve]

You seem a bit touchy Zoe.

People's ears are attuned to different accents depending on their influences. After 15 years on Tyneside, I'd reached the point where I barely heard Geordie accents because I was so used to them and to the way that people's speech moved. Within a year of moving away, I'd lost that.

When I first knew DH, I often had to ask him to repeat himself, simply because of the way he said or phrased certain things.

In my childhood, I lived in Hull, where the accent is fast and quite harsh sounding, for several years, then moved to a part of the Midlands where the accent is very slow and deliberate. It took a long time to adjust - people sounded stoned, to be honest. Then, after 5 years, I moved back to Hull and the speed at which all the other kids at school spoke blew me away. I did struggle to understand for the few days it took me to get my brain processing words at speed again.

The fact that people might struggle with some accents more than others, depending on what they're already accustomed to hearing is not a matter to take so personally.