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by geebee
1988 days ago
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I know someone who was in that situation. She had a remarkable knack for accents (and recreating sounds generally) and did pick up French more quickly than I could. I wonder if this counts as a kind of "uncanny valley", because my experience was exactly what you reported. I spoke understandable but accented French, tilted more toward written formal French than conversational French (where I was much more limited). My friend, on the other hand, just seemed like a French person but with a faint speech anomaly and an oddly limited vocabulary at times. It's not surprising that people initially took my version of French as an effort to learn a language properly, and hers as a sign of cognitive issues or trouble with language. Even once someone's aware of it, it won't necessary change the fundamental reaction (kind of what taller children go through - even when people learn they're much younger, they still apparently have trouble applying the standards they normally would for younger children). Not sure what else to say about this, other than that I've seen it exactly was you describe (though not quite with the "heavy" accent, more of a moderate but immediately noticeable one). |
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Damn, now I wonder if that's how I come off when speaking English.
I'm from South America and have been living in the US for the last 8 years. But even before that, I always really liked English and as a kid worked really hard to emulate the way I heard it spoken in American TV shows.
The way I speak has been described as, "pretty much no accent, but you don't sound like you're from anywhere in particular." Other immigrants sometimes think I'm American, but most people say I sound like someone who speaks English as their first language, but they aren't be able to tell which country I could be from.
Maybe I should just have a bit more of a foreign accent, after all :D