How important is accent for being understood in a given language?

Question

When I learned English at school (in France), my teachers asked me to make effort to have an "England-like" pronunciation (which was difficult for me). Today, I use the English language for my work (technical English, mostly) and I noticed that I was often better understood when I did not put effort into my pronunciation. When speaking English, will you be better understood by most people (English native or not) if you force yourself to pronounce your words in a particular native accent, or if you speak more smoothly in your foreign accent? Put another way, how much effort should you devote to improving your accent, as opposed to your vocabulary, grammar, or other aspects of the language?

Answer 1

Flawed pronunciation can be a problem if the speaker can’t make accurate distinctions between a few critical vowel sounds (for example, the difference between want and won’t).

English speakers are generally aware that some consonants, like th, are difficult, so we understand when someone uses substitute sounds. A French speaker who says, “Zis is zee best ting I have heard!” would be easily understood. But a Brazilian speaker who says “I want do that” (when they are trying to say “I won’t do that.”) will have more problems. Vowels are the crucial sounds to master.

If you learned a British pronunciation, there may be a problem with how some of your vowels sound to American ears. For example, the deep “a” sound in the British pronunciation of words like “awful” might sound like a “o” to an American, and get confusing.

But if you’re fine on the important vowel sounds, then you probably don’t need to worry about your accent. Some of the other things you mentioned, like vocabulary and grammar, are important too. And speaking rhythm (emphasizing the key syllables in a sentence) is critical to comprehension.

There are lots of books about the American pronunciation, and one I particularly like (Mojsin, Mastering the American Accent) has a whole chapter devoted to helping native French speakers with their particular pronunciation issues. I just checked Amazon and there are equivalent guides to British English pronunciation as well, if you wanted to stay close to your schooling.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Hello!

I am Cherelle and I am a linguist and my background is in languages myself. I speak 3 total and a partial 4th.

I completely understand where you're coming from as I'm speaking different languages with different people almost consistently. I know that my accent is not completely native in both of my other languages, but the point is, is that, I speak the language, and the native speaker of what I'm speaking is actually understanding me. This means, communication is still happening. For English, it really doesn't matter what accent you "pick" or "choose" (which that can't happen really unless you "choose" to go to the US and stay there and practice there to get a "standard US" accent). If you're talking with a person or a group of people that do not like your accent for some reason (I know with English, those do indeed exist unfortunately), forget their criticisms because there are multiple ways to speak this language. There's different accents from native speakers of it! It's the same with every language.

I'm from the Midwest region of the US but my family comes from the rural south of this country, we speak differently, but we understand and can still communicate with each other. I have a friend that has a multi-dialect accent, meaning her family who is Irish and English on one end and then Scottish and US on the other end was raised around multiple (as you see) accents and she has a mixture of different English-speaking ethnicities. That influenced her accent, but you know? I still can communicate with her and she lives life fine talking to other people.

To conclude, it doesn't matter if you can communicate. You are French yes? Sure, there's an accent when you speak English or if you speak another language but it does disappear depending on where you go and if you stay there long enough; your French accent within speaking English will lessen. That's happened to me in different countries I've lived in over time and I sounded less like an English speaker speaking these other languages.

This is a great question.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions. I can help and work with you if you have any queries.

Best,

-Cherelle D.