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From: Richard Wojcik <rickw@eskimo.com>
Subject: Re: Theory: getting rid of foreign accent
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Ochlocrat wrote:
> 
[Commenting on the difficulty of losing a foreign accent for adults]

> It's the ear, not the tongue, that causes the problem.

I know what you mean, but, to be more precise (or pedantic), it is neither.
The brain is the problem.  We process speech differently from other types of
sound.  So you can train yourself to pronounce and hear differences in foreign
speech sounds.  What you can't do very easily is get your brain to treat those
differences as significant in running speech.  The ability to accustom yourself
to new pronunciations begins to decay rapidly after puberty.  You retain the
ability to perceive and make new phonetic distinctions for life.  You just can't
use them when it counts.  :-(  FYI, the technical jargon for this kind of 
problem during speech perception is "phonemic hearing".  We are biologically
programmed to categorize speech into discrete phonetic units called "phonemes".
This type of categorization does not apply to sound that we treat mentally as
non-speech.  Phonemic hearing (and pronunciation) is the bane of all language 
learners.

-- 
Rick Wojcik                                       Bellevue, WA
rickw@eskimo.com                                  http://www.eskimo.com/~rickw
