How To 'acquire' A Native Like Accent?

[Shi Tong]

Calibre.. interesting you say that. I've always thought that a Taiwanese accent would be easier for a British person to learn because of the lack of a curled "R" in the tongue, including erhua and the "zh/ch/sh" sounds which require a tongue to be curled into the mouth. All things which I think Americans do better than us Brits, and vice versa.

Hoffman.. I do know what you mean, but I still think that some people are given an inate ability to do certain things. For example, I think most people agree that the Chinese have a great "talent" for mathematics. This also comes massively from the environment and the teaching in schools, which I personally feel teaches children maths at a much earlier stange and to a more pressurised and higher standard.

However, there will only be a few who are truly and madly talented to the point where they outshine the rest, also to the point where they clearly outdo their classmates by miles and for "no apparent reason".. which is what I call "natural talent".

Granted, as I think I've mentioned several times before, I think most people will go a good way to learning Chinese and given a lot of work and effort can learn "everything about it".. however, I still think there is an ability there which is quite inexplicable.

Also, having a talent is a cop out for the person who has it.. I seriously dont think I'm "smarter" or "better" than anyone else learning Chinese, I just think it was dumb luck which gave me the ear. Maybe it was messing with my brother and cousins making silly voices and mimicing, or the fact that I could "always sing", but there wasn't any rhyme or reason for that either, and while my brother and my cousins were amazing at art (because their parents were all amazing at art-- environment or talent or hard work, who knows, they were just "good at it"), I was "good" at art, but strangely, and much later on, I was even better at mimicing a Chinese accent and remembering tones?

[dumdumdum]

Discussions on talent always remind me of this Michael Jordan commercial (

, youku). The raw materials help, but hard work is king. At least I hope that's true, because my Chinese talent is seriously lacking.

heh, get a 300 bucks pair of shoes wont get you into the olympic games....

[calibre2001]

Agree, I think the more laid back vibe of a Taiwan accent allows learners to mimic it to an easier degree, hence that's why I feel the success rate for laowais in sounding more Taiwan is higher than laowais sounding more Mainland . Even mainland chinese pick it up pretty fast. Of course that's just a thought with no statistics to back up.

When one says talent in Math, how wouly you measure in this case? Passing Math exams with flying marks or making real contribution to the development of Mathematics? The chinese education system is known to be very exam oriented and hence the standard of Mathematics questions are very high. But doing well in exams is just doing well in exams, it could mean nothing in the end and not necessarily indicate good ability to apply Maths in real life situations.

[renzhe]

I really don't think that there is a study showing that foreigners pick up Chinese easier in Taiwan than elsewhere.

I'd even say that the Beijing standard, with the neutral tones, is more similar to the stress and pitch-accent based languages I'm familiar with, making it easier to sound natural than if I were pronouncing each tone fully.

But I am pretty sure that it's just a subjective impression, and that I feel like this since most materials I've been exposed to were either standard Mainland putonghua or something closer to the Beijing dialect. The stuff you hear all the time is going to sound easier and more familiar.

[Shi Tong]

Hello.

Yeah, renzhe probably has a point there- it is what you're exposed to I think more than what you're better at naturally, though I would still say that the mainland accent is closer to an American English accent than a British one... it may make a difference.

When comparing with Maths, I would say the same thing counts for Chinese too- passing exams about it doesn't necessarily mean you can chat on the street very clearly and just because you can write it doesn't mean you can talk too (and vice versa).

My point was that there are those who are taught hard and take lots of exams and are very good at maths.. then there are those who hold a particularly large amount of talent and who can go further. A good illustration of my point- teaching and learning play a massive role, but talent still exists to push those who have it to a higher level, or faster.

[anonymoose]

I think the argument about which accent is easier to learn is rather moot, since practically every Chinese-speaking foreigner I know still sounds more like a foreigner than someone from an identifiable region of China. I guess Da Shan could pass off as a Beijinger, but he's the exception.

[carlo]

I get the impression that southern mandarin is easier to pick up and easier to pick up the accent.

This is probably because "southern mandarin" is a second language of sorts. People speak a native dialect at home, and then learn Mandarin in school. While Beijingers just speak their dialect all the time, more or less. Foreign learners are more like the first type (they also are speakers of one or more languages).

[jbradfor]

I think the argument about which accent is easier to learn is rather moot, since practically every Chinese-speaking foreigner I know still sounds more like a foreigner than someone from an identifiable region of China. I guess Da Shan could pass off as a Beijinger, but he's the exception.

I agree. That's why I think most all discussions about "Place YYY is better for learning Mandarin than is place ZZZ because of the accent" are pretty useless.

[Shi Tong]

This is probably because "southern mandarin" is a second language of sorts

Depends where it is.

I still think that a Taiwanese accent is closer in sound to a British accent than a US one and vice versa. Though, I agree that it's probably much more to do with enviroment and learning than just something as arbitary as your own tongue.

[AlexanderH]

No no no -- it definitely is NOT acquired with time.

You have to deliberately practice shaping your mouth differently. I can definitely tell you this because with almost all languages I learn within the first day (even though I can only say one sentence) people constantly tell me I sound like a native speaker. Obviously this isn't with every word or every phrase, but people (teachers, students, natives) feel the need to tell me that for whatever reason.

That happened with French, when I learned some German, when I learned some Spanish, and when I'm learning Chinese.. people always say the same, and I can assure you I am NOT SPECIAL.

You must constantly force your mouth into different shapes to sound like a native speaker, with some words being harder than others obviously. Americans (for whatever reason) are notoriously bad at it.

[The guy from Beijing]

Ok, as a Chinese who lives in Beijing, I DO NOT recommend 普通话测试 to be the standard pronunciation method. Not unless you never want to grasp native Chinese. That test and the ways they read those words are sometimes unacceptable and weird to even the average Chinese. For one thing it was invented to make things harder and more interesting on the high school students who want to take the college entrance exam and make sure teachers don't go too far with their local dialects(some dialects sound like another language entirely, thus troublesome). Some words may be dubbed by the dictionary in one way, but spoken in another by the native Chinese, like "锲而不舍" and "曲里拐弯", we memorise the correct sounds for the tests, but nobody really talks like that, so we're universally incorrect. You want to sound like a native? You got to listen to the people around you. Being able to understand traditional Chinese entertainment, like cross-talk would be the ultimate state of enlightenment. If you're living in Beijing, it would be important to catch a little bit of 北京话, if not than notice how the locals talk, there's at least one or two accents for every province in China, so it depends on where you are. Basically, just choose your poison