Talk:Non-native pronunciations of English/Archive 1

message: Note: quite a bit of this text was moved in 2003 from Talk:Regional accents of English. Graham87 18:14, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Note

message: The anonymous speaks again:
:I understand and appreciate our policy on original research. Nevertheless I deleted the bit on incorrect stress by German-speakers now because it is absolutely not the case. I know that, and whoever put it in in the first place will hardly ever be able to cite his/her sources as it is, I repeat, false (and it does not follow from what is written here). German is not Finnish ;).
:: I'm confused.  As far as I can tell, what I put about German stress follows the German phonology section exactly, although worded slightly differently.  Here's what the German Phonology section says:
The first syllable of German words receives stress, with the following exceptions:
* Words beginning with be-, ge-, er-, ver-, zer-, ent- or a few others receive stress on their second syllable.
* Compound adverbs, with her, hin, da, or wo as their first part, receive stress on their second part.
* Many loanwords, especially proper names, keep their original stress.
:: and here's what I put:
Incorrect stressing of syllables; in most German words, the first syllable is stressed. Exceptions include words beginning with be-, ge-, er-, ver-, zer-, ent-, (and a few other prefixes); compound adverbs with her, hin, da, or wo; and loanwords to German from other languages. The stress normally falls on the second syllable in the former two examples. Even experienced speakers have difficulty placing stress on the final syllable.
:: If somehow I've changed the meaning by rewording, then it seems more appropriate to change the wording rather than delete the whole paragraph.  I'll admit that, as the one who put the details in, that my only source is the German phonology page, but if it's invalid in this page then it's also invalid in the German phonology page.  Yet you link to the latter as an implied acceptance of its accuracy.  So there are two basic options here, we either keep the bit about German stress in both pages (albeit reworded to your liking in this page) or delete it in both. AEuSoes1 18:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  All right, well we can simply put "Difficulty stressing the correct syllable" instead of "incorrect stressing of syllables." The point of the information on German stressing was not to say that they always stress words according to German rules but that any time that they do stress incorrectly, it may have to do with negative transfer of stressing rules or, as you say, because of perceived irregularity.  If you feel that the implication is otherwise, you don't need to delete the paragraph.  Just add something about transfer to the existing oneAEuSoes1 19:16, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't worry too much about sounding harsh.  I agree that speakers of other languages may have trouble stressing English words, but information about that difficulty is not readily available.  AEuSoes1 01:22, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: German Stress

message: This is a rather English-language-centric article. More accurate would be the title "How to tell the origin of an accent in the English language."
:Well, yes it is Anglohpone-centric, and that's a good thing since the page is designed to help identify and remedy problems non-native speakers have when learning or speaking English. As English is the target language in these cases, it makes perfect sense for the article to take English as its center. This article is both descriptivist and prescriptivist, as is appropriate for something written with the express purpose of helping non-native speakers more closely approximate native-speaker pronunciation. A parallel focus would be appropriate for articles on how to help non-native speakers improve their pronunciation in another language (Spanish, Chinese, Guarani, kiSwahili).
:While an article on how to identify the origin of an accent might be interesting, it would distinct from this one, both in purpose and organization. Such an article would be structured around various accents or departures from native-speaker English, for example replacing /θ/ with /t/ and then listing native languages whose speakers exhibit this pronunciation: German, Japanese, Nahuatl, etc. (but NOT Greek, Icelandic, Continental Spanish, Gulf Arabic, etc)Interlingua 13:37, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: English-centric