A student wrote on the evaluations that it was hard to understand what I was saying in class because I have a very strong accent.
This hard-core intellectual didn’t manage to figure out that, in a course called ‘Spanish’, I was not speaking English with an accent. I was speaking Spanish.
That was another ‘victim’, I guess.
I have noticed that the ‘victims’ have a very special intellect level. I am trying to find a word that would characterize it, but I can’t: all the words I think of are rather trivial.
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I have gotten this here in Ghana a couple of times. One time I was accused of having a “German” accent although Germans assure me I speak German with a very heavy American accent. Just about every non-African who teaches here gets the “accent” complaint. But, strangely enough these same students have no trouble understanding the accents of American actors in Hollywood movies.
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” But, strangely enough these same students have no trouble understanding the accents of American actors in Hollywood movies.”
– Funny. 🙂 🙂
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He’s talking about your accent in Spanish, I will bet. You do not sound exactly like the last person he talked to, so it is your accent which is “strong.”
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That’s what I was thinking. Argentine Spanish is not much heard in the US and it so it could sound weird (not as weird as Chilean but weird).
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The problem is that these students don’t have a place where they could have heard Spanish. This was Spanish 101 and we live an area with no significant Hispanic presence. Sadly.
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Yeah, I was thinking the same. I had an instructor who had a strong Chilean accent and it was so hard to understand him! It was a good challenge, but it was still a struggle!
You never know, they may have heard mexican spanish in another part of Illinois.
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// The problem is that these students don’t have a place where they could have heard Spanish.
I bet they thought the “strange” accent was Russian, based on your name and looks. 🙂
Btw, how can one learn to speak w/o accent, f.e. English? Special exercises, etc.? I read and listen a lot, but the Russian accent is horrible.
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“I bet they thought the “strange” accent was Russian, based on your name and looks. ”
– I think you are right.
“Btw, how can one learn to speak w/o accent, f.e. English? Special exercises, etc.?”
– With English, I’m afraid there is nothing we can do. I haven’t met a single person who emigrated to an English-speaking country after the age of 16 and has gotten rid of the accent. Teachers, courses, exercises, speech therapy – nothing works. It’s something about the language that makes it hopeless for immigrants in terms of the accent.
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You don’t have a noticeable Russian accent in Spanish. You speak clearly and in a fairly accent-neutral way, very standard, the way people do on newscasts.
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How have you gotten Spanish accent? Special exercises or listening a lot to it was the main component?
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For Russian-speakers, Spanish pronunciation is very easy so I didn’t have to make any effort at all. The intonation was a little bit more difficult but the effort was minor.
The English-speakers find Spanish pronunciation much harder.
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Also, poor students tell me *I* have a “west coast” accent in Spanish … ? … people who can’t say or understand a thing, are not qualified to judge anything.
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A West Coast accent in Spanish is the joke of the week. 🙂 🙂
My best friend is from the West Coast and she has no accent. In English or in Spanish.
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It’s an undergrad thing. Here any non-British academic (and not just non-native speakers, e.g. German, Italian, etc., but also American and Australian academics) always gets complaints in student evaluations from 1st and 2nd year students that their accent are too difficult to understand. Then something miraculous happens to the students in the transition between years 2 and 3, because in year 3, suddenly, accents are not a problem anymore. Why, I don’t know, it’s a mystery, but it is a consistent mystery.
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The miracle that happens to them is that they become citizens of the world. 🙂
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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