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stoneunhinged Inner circle 3067 Posts |
Swiss German sounds sufficiently different from High German that one time a Swiss guy mistook me for being Dutch. I was sooooooo proud!
Did I ever tell y'all my theory about those people who have a gift for perfect accents (rarer than you might think, by the way; all those spy movies where the spies run around speaking foreign languages without accents--and grammatically, one would presume are horse hockey)? My theory is that it has to do with the physical make-up of their heads. You know, bone density and stuff like that. And the basis of my theory is that they hear their own voices more accurately than others. I developed this theory after recently hearing a recording of myself speaking German. I have a thick American accent. (SURPRISE!) Actually, this indeed surprised me very much, since the accent on the recording is NOT what I hear in my head. So that's my theory. It doesn't make me Noam Chomsky or anything. |
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abc Inner circle South African in Taiwan 1081 Posts |
If you haven't done it already you should learn a new language because the truth is, it is a lot of fun. The surprise on Chinese people's faces when you suddenly start speaking Chinese is priceless.
My wife went for a massage tonight and I decided to have a beer at a pub nearby while waiting for her. The girl behind the bar said to one of the other customers that she can't really speak English and doesn't know what to say to me. I said nevermind, My wife is relaxing while having a massage and I get the same effect from a beer or two. When they didn't respond for a few seconds I proceeded with "Are you surprised because I can speak Chinese, I am married or I am drinking beer while my wife is having a massage?" The next 20 minutes was absolute fun conversation wise and I am sure Stone's German is better than my Chinese. At least German is easy to write. |
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Magnus Eisengrim Inner circle Sulla placed heads on 1053 Posts |
If you're right Jeff (and there is some plausibility to it) then one would expect good singers to be better at picking up accents than do poor singers. The evidence for your hypothesis is mounting...
John
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.--Yeats |
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stoneunhinged Inner circle 3067 Posts |
Abc, I met a guy from Taiwan at a bar a couple of weeks ago. I asked him his name in Chinese (I can do that, and say my own name, and say "Thank You" and "Bye" and "How are you?", so Mandarin counts for one of my 37 languages). So the guy just stares at me, and repeated it, and then I said, "Is my Chinese that bad?" And he said, "Oh...sorry...ah...you have a northern accent." And I said that I learned my Chinese in Taiwan. He asked where and I told him Taipei. Then he said, "That's what I meant: a northern accent." Turns out he's from Kaohsiung.
John, I'm not really sure about my theory. It's just an attempt to explain the difference between my actual accent and the accent I hear in my head. How could I ever eliminate my accent if I can't hear the difference? But evidence against it is this: without exception, all the German students I have had who spent a year abroad in an exchange program spoke nearly accent free English. Well, they have accents from the countries they lived in. When I meet a German who sounds like an New Zealander, I know they did an exchange year. It's very strange and very intimidating. Maybe my skull is just abnormally thick. |
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Sam Weiss Loyal user Stratford, CT should have more than 278 Posts |
Quote:
On 2009-08-19 09:49, stoneunhinged wrote: Lol ... I wonder if I'm "One of those guys good at accents"... maybe I should record myself and see if I have a Russian accent in French... Although I'd have to say... if you didn't know I could speak Russian while I'm speaking English... you would never know. It's like I have two separate accents... North East American for English and a Russian one for Russian... For some reason I can't transfer one accent from one language to another... it's just the way I learned them I guess.
"There's something that gets in your soul when you study magic,it's in your heart, and when you perform it comes across the footlights and into everybody else's heart..."
-Denny Haney |
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redeagle Regular user South Florida 147 Posts |
I speak English, American, Irish with a bad accent and some Australian. I can get by in New Zealand, some parts of Canada and am semi-fluent in Jamaican after a few beers.
Oh, I also speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese and can get by in French. |
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LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
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On 2009-08-19 10:21, stoneunhinged wrote: Thank God.
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
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Mikael Eriksson Inner circle None of your business 1064 Posts |
Quote:
On 2009-08-17 19:34, LobowolfXXX wrote: I guess this thread is so old that it's too late, but still... I really advice you not to get Rosetta Stone. I used it, and it's too limited. You learn "The horse is jumping", "The girl is sitting under the table" etc, and then they go over it again and again and again. They also use the same grammatical approach for all languages which is not that great. For example, I used it for Spanish. It gave the impression that a certain tense was the most important, basic tense (since they kept using it again and again and again). In English it would have been the -ing tense, like running, climbing, reading etc. That tense is not used that much in Spanish at all, and it really screwed up things for me when I started using a better course. If I'll say something good about it, is that it's funny to use, especially for children. |
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Magnus Eisengrim Inner circle Sulla placed heads on 1053 Posts |
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On 2009-08-21 20:36, LobowolfXXX wrote: Noam is one of my heroes.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.--Yeats |
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Carrie Sue Veteran user Auburn, MI 332 Posts |
I speak Klingon.
Carrie Qapla! |
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Magnus Eisengrim Inner circle Sulla placed heads on 1053 Posts |
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On 2010-02-19 13:30, Carrie Sue wrote: I greatly admire anyone who bothers to do anything inconsequential simply because it's cool and fun. Well done, Carrie. John
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.--Yeats |
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