AIBU to ask if you should adopt the accent when speaking in another language?

[WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll]

Every time I hear a British person speaking a foreign language to a native speaker of that language, it makes me irrationally wince when they make no attempt to use a more native-sounding accent. I was always taught at school and college that you should use an authentic-sounding accent and hearing a Brit speaking fluent 'forrin' but in a very British accent sounds to me as though they aren't really trying.

However, this never seems to happen the other way around - and this doesn't seem weird to me at all. Regardless of how flawless and even idiomatic their English is, it's still always very clear from their accent that they ARE actually French, German, Spanish or whatever. And why wouldn't/shouldn't it be?

The only exception that I can think of is when I heard Morten Harket on the radio a little while ago, and I didn't know that it was him at first, as he sounded so very much like a native Brit - but then he might have lived here for a long time.

A Cockney wouldn't adjust their accent when speaking to a Scot or a Geordie. A woman wouldn't feel the need to lower the pitch of her voice in solidarity when talking to a man. And could it be seen as mockery or even cultural appropriation if they did? What about English people learning Welsh - should they try to emulate the accent too?

Any thoughts? Am I just being Anglocentric and/or patronising? Forriners with an alternative perspective on it particularly welcome!

I always like a foreign accent as long as it is not so strong I struggle to understand, or if the speaker has very poor grammar that can make it confusing. But otherwise it sounds very nice and hopefully the native speakers of other languages don't mind a bit of a British accent either.

I think it totally depends on the person and in particular how old they were when they learned the language.

I have known people who speak very fluent French but with very strong British or American accents which sound pretty horrific to my ears. But I have also heard a child of seven speaking less than fluent French with a perfect accent (which she picked up in the school playground) and a drama student reading native sounding French from a page when it turned out she had no idea what she was actually reading and could no more conjugate a verb in the present tense than she could fly.

It's nice to get the accent just right, but ultimately communication is the most important thing. Can you understand people when they speak to you, and can you express yourself so others understand you?

I read somewhere that all babies babble in exactly the same way. But then as they get older their vocal cords learn to produce the sounds which exist in their native language(s) or other languages they learn at a very young age, and they lose the ability to produce the sounds which don't exist in those languages. That's why if you learn a language after your vocal cords have lost that universal capacity to produce different sounds, you'll never speak that language with an absolutely perfect accent. But you can have fun trying!

I live in France and speak fluent French with what I am told is a very light English accent. I would love to get rid of it completely and pass for a French person, but everyone tells me my accent is an asset and that I should under no circumstances try to get rid of it!

And since I find French, Spanish, Italian accents etc very charming in English, I can kind of see their point.

Globish it is!

having the right words bothers me less than how the person says it

The opposite of that - I mean that the words are more important than the accent!

Unless you have an unusual talent for accents you will probably not be able to completely lose your native accent if you move to a country as an adult. Someone told me that one of the differences appears to be that your brain "learns" when you are young to process sounds by sorting them into categories based on the phonology of your native language. If two sounds correspond to the same vowel in your native language, but different vowels in the language you're trying to speak, it's very difficult because the two sounds are being "sorted" into the same basket at an unconscious level and your conscious mind doesn't hear the difference.

Hence the fact that native English speakers struggle to hear the difference between the "u" and "ou" sounds which are completely different sounds to a native French speakers, and vice versa, native French speakers genuinely do not hear tonic accent.

(But I might be wrong, I'm not a linguist).

However, if you can't be perfect, it's still polite to do the best you can, and almost anyone with enough practice can reduce their accent until it's charming rather than a barrier to understanding.

I'm Irish and a fluent Irish speaker although my first language is English. I used to teach Irish to adults. One thing that never occurred to me until I was trying to teach a few phrases to my South African husband was that Irish people sound 'right' when speaking Irish, even if they are far from fluent. Poor DH sounds as if he has stones in his mouth trying to enunciate simple phrases.

Thisname - I teach languages so yes kind of linked but I don’t phonetically transcribe recordings and write analyses about phonemes and think about whether a linguistic correction is self triggered or triggered by someone else and all the other stuff we did. It was interesting though!

For many years I studied Spanish. No matter what I tried, my pronunciation is not good. I even had a tutor helping me, holding my face to get my mouth to move a certain way, her facing me and slowly saying the words for me to copy etc. I tried and tried. Great with reading, writing and listening - even speaking (bar my very English accent trying to speak Spanish). So it’s not for want of trying.

I’m not native to UK (another English speaking country though). I have an accent. I would so love to lose it but after all these years, it is only toned down by my enduring a fully pronounce words - but an accent nevertheless,

Just know some people cannot adopt the correct accent in another language let alone fully change their accent in their native language

Isn’t there a theory that English speakers ought to be better at producing good accents in other languages because English uses more phonemes than French/German and several other European languages? Ie. We actually use most of the sounds that French uses already so ought to be able to develop a good accent - in principle. Find the OP a bit hard to understand tbh. hearing accents is very difficult in a foreign language and judging how good your own is is also very hard. I didnt speak much Czech when I lived there but apparently what I could say I did in a very thick Russian accent - couldn’t hear it at all.

I teach English and live in Germany. Sometimes I do meet people who have learned another language to truly native standard but they are rare indeed and normally started young. There are plenty of people who think they are native standard though. Eliminating your native accent is really difficult as an adult leaner and tbh, not necessary for most people. As long as your pronunciation doesn’t impede communication, you’re fine. I have picked up a bit of the local accent here but still have my own native English mixed in and that confuses the hell out of people.

However, this never seems to happen the other way around - and this doesn't seem weird to me at all. Regardless of how flawless and even idiomatic their English is, it's still always very clear from their accent that they ARE actually French, German, Spanish or whatever. And why wouldn't/shouldn't it be?

You have no way of knowing if they have attempted to adopt the accent though! They can't lose it entirely (or very few people can anyway) , so they may well be trying.

I think some people feel embarrassed when trying on the accent, but I've since realised that no one of the other language will be able to tell so you may as well give it a go anyway.

Cauliflower yup, sure it probably was.. but it's wrong

Ribbon Off you trot with your little digs. there was no need for that.
And if --even- you can do it, then that in itself proves a point.

As do the dozens of relocated families I personally know who have adapted or had their kids adapt to new languages and adopt accents post 10 years of age.

I’ve known a few people (German and Scandinavian) who spoke such RP English it gave away that they were foreign like proper cut glass 50s BBC newsreader. That’s great!

This had made me remember when I was lived in Spain - I was at my Spanish colleagues house for dinner, and one of her old friends from school was there.

They were chatting away in Catalan, which I was only half listening to, when out of nowhere the girl I'd only just met said

"What part of England are you from" sounding EXACTLY like Lisa Stansfield

It was so unexpectedly bizarre that I just burst out laughing.

Turns out this girls dad was Catalan and her mum from the north of England - hence the very strong accents.

I found it quite amazing as she spoke both languages like a true native, no trace of a foreign accent.

I've lived In Italy for more than half my life, I have a near-native grasp of vocabulary, work (in English and Italian) in a highly technical field, can translate in and out of both languages and can recognise other people’s regional Italian accents within seconds. I have good pronunciation, even down to double consonants but people still know I’m English within seconds.
Why?
Because I speak from the diaphragm!

It’s a completely different way of pushing out your breath and gives a strong base note into which English speakers “bite out” their words. It’s also the basis of the unstressed vowel or shwa sound of “er” in “mother”. It’s what you use to project your voice without shouting and what a lot of politicians (think Mrs Thatcher) learn to give themselves more authority in public speaking.
Most Latin based languages speak more from direct breathing (words are often longer and so they take more breaths) and that’s probably what you notice or cringe over, OP.

HOWEVER I’m British and (still) proud of it, so why should I fake a local accent? I’m accurate, articulate and not unpleasant to listen to. That’s good enough for me!

You should otherwise the words don't sound right and you look a right tit

My evening class Italian teacher was describing some of the accent differences in Italy and said her first immersive language learning in English was as an au pair in Newcastle. Later moved to London and baffled the new au pair host with her Neapolitan accented English overlaid with Geordie pronunciation.

Anyone remember Antoine de Caunes and Jean Paul Gaultier on the TV show Eurotrash ? Antoine spoke perfect English but with all the words pronounced as if they were French. Done with immense charm and a totally straight face ( he was doing it for effect)

You are more likely to be understood if you attempt the accent but, obviously, some people are better at it than others. Whatever, it is always better to make some kind of attempt at speaking the local language when abroad.

Last week, while on holiday in Spain, I had the opposite experience. I went on a guided tour and the guide spoke such heavily-accented English that I actually understood more of his Spanish than English.

I used to have to phone a colleague in Italy called Roberto. If I asked his colleagues for him with an English accent (I don't speak Italian) his Italian colleagues did not understand me. I had to say 'Roberto' with lovely rolled rrrr sounds and say the whole word in a kind of rolling Italian way. That would work.

I speak French pretty well, but not really even properly fluently, but my accent must be reasonably good because French native speakers normally don’t pick up i’m English - they know i’m not French, but usually assume Dutch or German. But the response of one such person when I told them I was English was - “but the English can’t speak French?!” . We really do have a bad reputation for ourselves

This is rather silly as it is confusing two unrelated things, First of course you should always try to pronounce the other language correctly. This is not an accent. In that country there will be regional accents as everywhere. You aim for correct pronunciation so that you can be understood. However, this is very difficult as your brain memory will try to hang on to the English ways of making the sounds. It affects all people trying to speak another language. Some more so than others. It's not a put-on thing like the mimic of a local accent. European people learning English don't try and copy Brummie for example, unless they are learning English while living there. Your logic is strange

I've studied French for years, lived there and continue to try and keep it up. Sometimes I"m doing well, sometimes not, in terms of fluency and confidence. But I will never sound French, and to be honest, I don't really want to (listen to some of the presenters on RFI to hear the sort of odd rhythms and intonations that can sound endearingly comic or irritatingly affected, depending on your mood, to hear why I might say this). I am happy if I can succeed in sounding like an educated, reasonably intelligent English person speaking accurate and intelligible French. I know people who are at native competence in English, but continue to sound Brazilian, Italian, French, etc. Is there anything wrong with this? Not in my view.

Hi, I have always had a very good year for languages. I speak and nine of them and have a pretty good accent, people think I am a native speaker a lot of the time. Even with Vietnamese, people usually think I’m overseas Vietnamese since my tones are not always correct. But I can speak it quite well. I just had to make two speeches in front of 60 people last week in Vietnamese and everyone understood me, so not bad. But I think when you are learning a language, you should try to pronounce as accurately as you can. Somethings are hard to do, a lot of people cannot roll their ours or make the Arabic sounds or get tones right with Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and I know some of the African languages seem very hard with their clicking in the middle of words. I have never tried to speak any of the African clicking languages. So I don’t know if I could do that or not.

We have so many accents, what one would you like non native speakers to use? Should my kids' French tennis coach speak in a Scottish accent? (I hope not as his French accent makes him him.)

And being picky about these things really puts people off trying.

And by the way, when I speak Vietnamese I have a central Vietnamese accent because I was living in central Vietnam for many years. A friend of mine recently told me that I sound more like Hanoi now that I have spent so much time in the UK. To keep up my Vietnamese I watch a lot of things on YouTube and you don’t have central Vietnamese accent, the news and TV is either Saigon or Hanoi.