{"id":752,"date":"2022-10-01T07:48:49","date_gmt":"2022-10-01T05:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/?p=752"},"modified":"2022-10-05T11:36:16","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T09:36:16","slug":"pronunciation-matters-and-not-accents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/?p=752","title":{"rendered":"Pronunciation matters and not accents"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tongues wagged\nwhen Cuban-born and Spanish-raised actress, Ana de Armas, was cast to play\nMarilyn Monroe in the Netflix movie \u201cBlonde\u201d. According to the media, director\nAndrew Dominik (a New Zealand-born Australian) admitted hesitating to give her\nthe role because of her accent and had only recently learnt English as a second\nlanguage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is accent\nimportant in an individual\u2019s career? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A US-based startup\nSanas has developed software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to mimic a\nperson\u2019s accent on the phone and modify this when responding through a phone or\ncomputer microphone. Apparently, this new technology reduces abuse from native\nEnglish speakers of call centre staff who do not have their accents. Its\nproponents believe it leads to better clarity and understanding and improves customer\nsatisfaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accents are a vital part of our history and identity; they give clues about who we are and the cultural community or national group we belong to. Everyone has an accent; these different accents showcase the richness of our world and its cultures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

English is an\ninternational language, and there are more non-native than native speakers who\nuse it regularly. The issue is to communicate\nwith others<\/strong>, i.e. understand and be understood, not accents<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An accent is not\nthe same as pronunciation. You can get a pronunciation \u2018right\u2019 or \u2018wrong\u2019, but\nthere\u2019s no right or wrong accent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My former student used to pronounce analysis \u201canalaiz\u201d (the correct pronunciation is \u201c\u0259-na-l\u0259-s\u0259s\u201d). One of her sentences was: \u201cThis analaiz domontrit the importance of flexibility at work\u201d<\/em>. French native speakers do not pronounce the ending letter \u201cs\u201d of words in their language. The letter \u201ce\u201d sounds \u201co\u201d (e.g. peu, which means little in English, is pronounced as \u201cpo\u201d). They pronounce the English letter \u201ce\u201d as \u201ce\u201d only when it has a grave accent (\u00e8), as in m\u00e8re (mother) and p\u00e8re (father).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\nmispronounce, you can be misunderstood. However, a person can speak English\nflawlessly with whatever accent. Even among native speakers, there are many\naccents. Last year, our supervisor asked me if I wanted to take over a class; this\nwas our conversation —<\/p>\n\n\n\n

S: We have a client\nwho is not easy to please. She wants to improve her English and have a British\naccent. Do you have a British accent?\u201d (As if he had not heard me speak before).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

R: Which one?\nScottish, Irish, Welsh, London English, Liverpool English, BBC English?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

S: I don\u2019t know.\nShe didn\u2019t specify. Any of these will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

R: Ninguno de estos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

S: Perhaps you can\nstill take her. You\u2019ve said that you like teaching challenging students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

R: Thanks, but I\u2019m\nafraid it\u2019s NO. I go for learners with a half-full glass mentality and a good\nsense of humour, in addition to being motivated and proud of their cultural and\nlinguistic heritage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When your\npronunciation is correct, you can communicate effectively with others, whatever\nyour accent. In business and financial environments, airports, touristic places\nand universities, people speak English as a second or third language, a lingua\nfranca. Thus, the goal of having a native speaker\u2019s accent is irrelevant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand our\nfellow humans and communicate with them successfully, we have to come into\ncontact with different accents so that we can cope with the real people in the\nreal world.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tongues wagged when Cuban-born and Spanish-raised actress, Ana de Armas, was cast to play Marilyn Monroe in the Netflix movie \u201cBlonde\u201d. According to the media, director Andrew Dominik (a New Zealand-born Australian) admitted hesitating to give her the role because of her accent and had only recently learnt English as a second language. Is accent … Continue reading Pronunciation matters and not accents<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25,1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-language","category-social-political-cultural-economic-issues","category-society"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":756,"href":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions\/756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roladesocietalblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}