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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

The thing is, most of the language courses I've ever been on do not focus on pronounciation. They'll get you to close enough, but not correct your errors beyond that. Same seems to be the case for my kid's language courses.

I don't think it would be that hard to get the pronounciation right in most languages, but it's just not emphasised in favour of grammar and vocab.

As for English accents, I find that one of the more charming things about this country. People aren't going to say you don't aren't native if you sound Liverpudlian, Australian, or American. By contrast in more localized languages people sniff a foreigner immediately on a missed vowel or wrong article.

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And yet, I'm sure there's some way to learn pronunciation well.

I worked with a woman that was born in India, learned English with a British accent, and then learned American English and lives in the US.

The first time she switched to British accent I was gobsmacked. Then she switched to her native language (I don't remember which) and she clearly had a native accent fro that.

And then she switched back to US accent and I couldn't tell it wasn't native, too.

How did she learn? I wish I had asked her. It just seemed rude to ask at the time. She was very nice and obviously trusted us enough to show her accents, so it probably would have been fine to ask. Oh well.

If you have some incentive, you can get the practice. For instance, the Danish princesses have pretty good accents, having come from IIRC Hong Kong, France, and Australia.

It's not that the information is secret, it's just not a focus. I had a Mandarin teacher who was very good at explaining exactly what shape to make with your mouth/tongue for each sound. There's gotta be a summary for most languages somewhere, I just haven't found them.

I recall a documentary from years ago about training in Indian call centers, and they'd have experts come in to train people in accents on a regular basis. Presumably due to the amount of call center outsourcing that's done in the western world there are more resources available in India than other places when it comes to accent coaching.

Many people are not really interested in having perfectly native-like pronunciation. You really need to have a strong motivation to practice a particular accent, something that e.g. actors or sometimes even singers might have, but the regular person just "wants to be understood".

I say this as someone who regularly tries to speak as native-like as possible in any language he learns, but that's certainly not the norm.

I think that depends where you are. I'm a Londoner, and I can generally pick out who is or isn't a native speaker, but I don't remark on it. Lots of people here aren't native English speakers, and all I'd accomplish by pointing that out would be alienating them. I imagine you get a similar feeling in New York or San Francisco, not that I've been to those places.

Conversely, if you go to some parts of the North, people absolutely _will_ remark on it.

That seems like a pretty sweeping generalisation of the North and South. I'm aware that I'm responding to anecdotal evidence with an anecdote myself here, but I come from a fairly small Southern town myself, and I've been harassed here before for "sounding foreign" (my family are Irish, so my accent is a little strange, despite living in England for my entire life). Conversely, having moved to the North for university, no-one's ever remarked on my accent. I don't think this is necessarily a regional thing.

It's a question of whether you're used to encountering foreigners in your daily life. People in big cities and university towns are; people in rural areas less so.

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