1d ago

Second languages

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I learned most of my English as a Portuguese teen from TV (the main source of exposure to English language I had, as in Portugal everything but kids shows is subtitled, unlike next door Spain were they dub everything) so my accent was mostly this Americanised thing but with some hard consonants because that's the main thing in the Portuguese from Portugal accent (Brasilian-Portuguese has a different accent).
Then I moved to The Netherlands as a young adult and somehow added a bit of a Dutch accent in my English (in The Netherlands I also learned and mostly spoke Dutch, plus mainly spoke with Dutch people even when speaking English, which is probably why I got a bit of it as accent). Also I apparently have an Amsterdam accent in Dutch.
Then almost a decade later I moved to England, and my English-language accent started drifting again, this time towards English RP (same kind of accent as most TV presenters) though with some funny elements such as a bit of a Cockney accent for some forms of swearing, possibly because I was living in London (swearing is fun, and I still naturally mostly in Dutch, for some reason).
I also activelly made an effort so nowadays I can easilly push my English-language accent to almost perfect English-RP, or just be lazy and leave it at my weird natural mess (which still has things like a distorted "ja" instead of "yes" because of Dutch).
Oh, and in all this I've learned how to purposefully speak in various accents in English for fun (though I have trouble with Australian and South African, for some reason), which is apparently pretty hard to do in a second language, though for some things I kinda fake it (for example, if I start thing in French and then just start speaking in English, the English tends to come with a generic French accent)
I think it's to do with how you learn a language: if you just kinda absorb it (for example from TV or living in a place were people speak it) rather than formally learn it, you just absorb the accent along with the words and the grammer (also you pick up all sorts of quirky stuff like words with no actual meaning that are just used to add emphasis, slang, swearing and so on).
- To be fair, as a native English speaker from Canada, I don't know what the heck is going on with the South African accent.
  Half the time I can't even recognize it (likely just due to lack of exposure), so when I hear someone speaking with an accent that's kinda like Australia and New Zealand, but isn't quite right for either of those, I think "must be South African"... 😅
  
  Well, thanks to amongst others the film District 9, I can recognize the accent.
  Also, curiously, Afrikaners are basically a group that branched away from the Dutch centuries ago and their language is this old-sounding Dutch-like thing (so I can even understand some of it), so due to my own time living in The Netherlands I kinda pay attention to South African stuff when I come across it and thus can spot not just Afrikaans but also the South-African accent in English.
  That accent tends to appear a lot in films involving white mercenaries in Africa because there was a time when such mercenaries were mostly South-African, so for example Leonardo DiCaprio uses it for his character in Blood Diamond.
  However if I try and imitate it even immediatelly after hearing it, I have trouble doing it right. I have a similar problem with the accent from Australia and New Zeeland.
  Also, unlike with the English language accent for most European countries, with native English language accents in English I can't just use the shortcut of starting in their language and then just shifting to English (which for me keeps the accent, an effect I found purelly by chance at some point during a trip in Spain - without even noticing it until it was pointed out to me by my friend who started laughing when I did it - when I switched to English trying to get directions on the phone from some Spanish guy).
  I suspect an Accent Coach (like actors often use to get the right character accent) would be able to tell me what I'm doing wrong, but since I'm a total amateur and it's just for fun, this is just a mildly interesting tought nut for me to crack.
- with some hard consonants because that’s the main thing in the Portuguese from Portugal accent (Brasilian-Portuguese has a different accent).
  so do you say "cachorro" with a rolled R instead of "cachohho"?
  
  It's said with a hard R, similar to, Revolution in English or French.
  In Portuguese words with "rr" get a hard R, whilst those with a single "r" get a rolled R.
  
  ok. I'm trying to understand if you (people from portugal) pronounce (some?) Rs as H sounds, as I've heard that in Brazillian portuguese.
  
  I cannot think of any instance of a word with an R in it getting an "H" sound (I assume an aspired H or similar) in Portuguese.
  Then again outside special diphthongs ("ch", "nh", "lh") which are whole sounds rather than the letters having individual sounds (for example that "ch" is basically the sound of "sh" in English and if you know Spanish, the "nh" is the "ñ" and the "lh" is the "ll"), the "H" in Portuguese always comes as the first letter of a word and is silent (which is kinda useless) so for example in Hotel in Portuguese that "H" makes no difference (unlike in English) and the word sounds exactly the same as if it was spelled "Otel".
- I find languages easier if I try to do the accent. Like, speaking French you pull out your stereotypes about how French sounds and you put that on top of what you are saying. Not Joey Tribbiani!
  Btw are you gay?

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