Was? Mein deutsch ist nicht ganz PERFEKT?!

I recently stumbled upon a site called Forvo, whose sub-headline claims "All the words in the world. Pronounced."

I can't even begin to describe how excited I was to find it, and I don't even remember how that happened. I was so excited that I made an account right away and started exploring the site and recording pronunciations for as many words as I could in French, German, Esperanto and English.

What I failed to realize in my haste is that the site is intended for native pronunciations only... Or maybe I just ignored the request, believing that anyone can pass as a native if they pronounce things properly.

Well, I was wrong. Not long after I signed up, I received a message from one of the site's editors asking me to refrain from making recordings in German, as it is not my native language, no matter how confident I might feel about my pronunciation. The editor also mentioned that s/he could detect a "slight" accent in my recordings, and for that reason needed to delete all the words I'd pronounced in German.

I don't have much of an ego, but that was certainly a blow! I speak German with a slight accent? I had no idea! At first I was all offended and outraged; but then I realized how ridiculous it was for me to be upset. The site explicitly requests that only native speakers pronounce words in their language for a reason, and it makes sense. Besides, who am I to say that I have no accent in German? I have to accept the word of the editor, a native speaker.

My one consolation in this case is that all the words I pronounced in French are still there for now. Either they were pronounced "perfectly", or a French-speaking editor has not yet had reason to review them and deem them unworthy. Also, because there are almost no native speakers of Esperanto, anyone can post pronunciations in that language, pending peer review (i.e. users across the site can vote on any given word pronunciation as "Good" or "Bad"). Obviously, the English words I recorded can stay. Yippee!

I guess it's a good thing the German-speaking editor got to me before I started recording words in even more languages! I mean, my pronunciation is pretty good IMOSHO, but on this site at least, I'll have to defer to the natives.

You can hear my horrible pronunciations at http://www.forvo.com/user/lingvamanto

Thoughts about accents

This video, "21 Accents" by Amy Walker, is one of my favorite things to watch on YouTube. I have seen it several times, and am always amazed (and impressed) by the ease with which she glides from one accent into another, not only changing her pronunciation and enunciation but also her facial expressions and mannerisms.

I have always found it enjoyable, and relatively easy, to learn other languages. Regional accents on the other hand have never been my forte, and I'm really bad at doing almost all of them.

When it comes to speaking a "standard" variety of a language, I've been pretty good so far. Most people with whom I have a chance to speak French assume that I'm from France until I do/say something to gives me away as American. I think I have a pretty generic sounding German, but I doubt anyone will think I come from Germany...nevertheless, I might just pass for a few minutes as a native speaker. But ask me to speak French with a Canadian accent or German with a Swiss accent, for example, and I will fail miserably - so I'm always impressed by people who can pull off different accents. I guess we are always impressed by that which we cannot do ourselves, otherwise it would just be ordinary.

Even so, after living among a people for awhile, I do start subconsciously incorporating the local speech patterns and pronunciations whether I want to or not - even to the point of not remembering how a word is "supposed" to be pronounced, i.e. how I pronounced it before my speech changed. This is neither good nor bad in itself, but usually any deviation from "standard" speech brings with it any prejudices that might go along with the given dialect. After living in Baltimore for all these years, there are definitely some words that stand out when I return home to Northern New Jersey! Ah well, such is life.