Language of the United States
Each of the quizzes focused on the different accents in the United States. One was on the different regions and how accents differ from where you are from and seeing how well you are able to place the accent with the region. The other was on how we can perceive different meanings from the way someone pronounces certain words and how different people pronounce vowels in such a diverse way.
I will admit that on both of the quizzes I did not do so well. The first quiz on the different accents was actually quite difficult for me. I thought when reading the directions that it would be easy for me to tell the different accents apart. However after hearing all of them and trying to pick out the ones that I thought I was confident about, I was left with ones that I thought all sounded similar. I was able to get both the south United States accents correct as well as one in both the west and the north Unites States sections. I have not done much traveling and have pretty much just been to the states surrounding Wisconsin so that may have something to do with my lack of recognition of the different regions accents. I thought that be watching TV and going to a school where there are people from all over would have made this exercise easier but as my score shows it didn’t.
The second quiz was a little easier, it was interesting to hear how someone says a word and we can think that we hear something so different. An example of this would be how the first phrase that was said on the quiz was the word block however without using the hint I thought that the word being said was black. I can see how these could have gotten mixed up, but on the second one the word was socks and I guessed the word was fax. Even after I listen to the hints, some of the words were still hard to differentiate with the accent. It is interesting how the United States can have so many different accents and the way that we communicate when faced with accent differentiation can have such a significant impact.
These different accents can make it difficult for people to communicate. When two people are having a conversation and they each have a different accent the conversation may be a little difficult hard to comprehend. I live in a town where there is a lot of Somalia immigrants and when having a conversation with them I sometimes have to have them repeat themselves and sometimes I have to also. The different accents make what should be a simple conversation much more difficult. Have you ever been in a situation where you were having a conversation with someone who had a strong accent and you were having a hard time understanding what they were trying to say? What did you do and how were you able to continue the conversation?
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I have communicated with people who had strong accents (German, Russian, Japanese, English, and Spanish). If I have issues communicating with them and they with me, I will break down my sentences. I found going from a sentence down to only a few key words was a more effective way for me to identify what I was trying to communciate, likewise I think it works for them as well. So sometimes I'll focus in a few key words they may be saying and try to get a better understanding of those. Then I'll assume the rest and then I'll reiterate what I think they are saying to me and ask them if that is right. Sometimes its all the extra words being used that distort the message being relayed.
ReplyDeleteI will also just ask them to repeat what they were saying and then I'll really concentrate on their words. If possible, I may also ask them to show me as well as tell me.
When I was living in Italy, I often had trouble communicating with my colleagues and friends there. I would speak slower and use simpler words to help them understand me. If they couldn't figure out a word I was saying, I would try to use a synonym. They used the same strategies when speaking to me. Sometimes they also had trouble understanding my American accent because they had learned English from British people. So if all else failed, I would repeat a word in a horribly fake British accent. Sometimes it helped!
ReplyDeleteThis spring I went to Belize for 11 days and spent half of the trip living at a family-run resort. All of our tour guides and the family members interacted with us every day, and we even became friends with a few of them. It was really hard to understand what they were saying at first because they have such strong Mexican/Creole accents. I found myself paying such close attention that I would lean into them more or point my ear in their direction (haha). When that really didn't work, I would ask them to repeat themselves. I could tell they would get annoyed of this, but they also had to ask us to repeat ourselves as well. And sometimes I just pretended I understood and nodded or agreed; but, most times I just looked silly doing this! It was fun though.
ReplyDeleteDid I had a hard time to communicate with others who had a strong accent? That is my field! Yes. It happened a lot because when I studied English, I listened CD and which speaker was trained to do not speak with accent. Also, teachers and Friends tried to speak clear pronunciation. When people speak with a strong accent, I just want say good bye to them. when I could not say good bye, I speaked broken English on purpose, and then usually people think I cannot speak English, and they become speak more slowly and use more gestures. This is my "how to survive in foreign country"!
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