Probably true, but not because of the vowels, but because of rhythms and consonants for languages other than english. Particularly vowels are divisive, and to take spanish as an example, consider this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5nGUb6DarQ
Watch it with your mouse cursor off, and read the spanish bits, then sound them out, then check whether you got it right. (If you know spanish, find someone who doesn't.)
As an english person, you'll get a lot of them wrong. However most people from the european mainland will get most of them right, especially germans like me. Barring the ll sound, and the rhythms, spanish sounds very close to how a german would read it.
Yes, there will be accents, but nothing as strong as you get with a european mainlander speaking english.
And that is entirely because english vowels are a mess that can only be conquered by memorization.
How did he do it? He spent several years there and really worked at it (he can also do a convincing range of British accents). His one regret is that he nailed it in a somewhat bucolic part of France, so the cool Parisiennes just assume he's a paysan.
Is it harder? Yes. Impossible? Far from it. Although I'll bet you elocution lessons would help (my brother hasn't done any).
English has this weird flow to it, this kind of liquidlike smeared sound. And the intonation and stress is also very alien.
It's also usually easier for a beginner to understand another beginner from a different country, than a native speaker pronouncing the same (simple) sentences.
> Nobody learns to speak any language as an adult without an accent.
Most people don't get rid of their foreign sounding accent because they don't work on improving their accent.
Taking on enough of a local accent to be understood is good. Losing your accent is a terrible cost that requires hard work to achieve. Why would you work hard to hurt yourself?
After all, chicks dig an accent.
I'd love to hear some tips on how to work on improving my accent. I moved to Sweden 10 years ago and Swedish is my 4th language.
1) Focus on the vowels. They will help you get the resonance right (the resonance is how you hold the muscles in your mouth, so the sound seems to come from the back of your throat like in Russian or the front of your mouth like in Korean)
2) Focus on the rhythm of the language. I'm sure you know what I mean here.
3) Focus on the intonation: what pitches do they have? Scottish has kind of a lilt, for example.
4) Try to notice "phonemes", and I put it in quotes to expand the idea to mean "what native speakers consider important". For example, Mandarin speakers can't hear a vowel change to save their life, but if you get the intonation slightly wrong they glare at you.
5) Focus on details, listen to how letters change when they are between other letters, etc. (Watching to how people respond to your speech can be helpful, especially if they don't understand. Small words especially. For example, a listener might get confused and not understand the world "Lip", even though they would understand "Literally", if your "L" is slightly off)
6) Don't underestimate the value of correct grammar in improving your accent.
Incidentally, I learned of the existence of this as formal theory from David Stern (although his focus is on stage accents which is a little different)
Also, if you have any tips I'd love to hear them too :)
For example, here are the things that make up most of the German accent of English:
- pronouncing "th" as "s" (Germans apparently don't know how to put one's tongue tip on the upper teeth)
- pronouncing "w" as "v" (like the German "w") instead of as "u"
- sharper pronounciation of initial vowels (i.e. when a word starts with a vowel) and "h"
I'll try to integrate some of the things you point out into my daily life, we'll see how it goes :D
Focusing hard on the vowels is the easiest way I know to get the resonance
The best way to work on your accent is to record yourself and listen to it. Ideally you would have a native say it in a native manner. Movies, TV shows, and particularly audiobooks (with the printed copy) can be a great sources to work on it.
I have encouraged my co-workers to correct my English lately (12 years in Australia). They've been teaching me some of the local sayings, and correcting my pronunciation etc... Things that in Spain would have been picked up and addressed much sooner.
I also told all my coworkers to correct me but of the 10 people I cpeak to often only one does, for which I am super thankfull.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_languages_of_the_Unit...
Even speakers of "RP", a supposedly region-neutral "educated" accent which is as close to "official" British English as we've ever had permits variations in pronunciation so marked that speakers of one variant can find speakers of other variants' pronunciation of a particular word comical.
Have you seen Hot Fuzz? In it, the police visit a farmer with a strong West Country accent, and take an interpreter with them. All parties are speaking English in the scene, but the farmer's words are so strongly accented, the interpreter has to translate. That scene was based on a direct observation that the writers made while researching the film...
Standard English on television probably certainly helps speakers of less-prestigious lects understand Standard English, but not necessarily inspires them to produce it.
The UN has no real authority on anything.
As such the author may be unknowingly over-emphasizing the role of distinct vowel pronunciations, assigning their importance to intelligibility or understanding rather than merely to accent.
Ship, sheep buy, by sheet, shit
see also http://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/homophones-sam...
Also english doesn't (compared to italian) is filled with exceptions.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bye
IPA: /baɪ/
There is no difference at all in the pronunciation of 'buy' and 'by'.
Some things are really hard in Italian like the GL in aglio (garlic), but for example most Romans tend to turn it into a semiconsonant (like the first i in ieri). So basically you'll be understood.
Contrast that with French, that is also mostly phonetic but has a lot more vowels (around 17), that is also a language that is usually much harder to learn to speak as an adult (but it's not so bad if you just want to read. And maybe that is why everybody has this stereotype of the rude Parisian that never tries to understand a foreigner speaking French (though there might be more to the rudeness of Parisians).
Edit: By "no accent" I of course mean "indistinguishable from a native French speaker". Everyone has an accent so technically "no accent" is meaningless.
And languages don't succeed because of linguistics, they succeed because of politics. As someone whose native language is being replaced by it, I know that English is a perfect example of this.