Thoughts on accents
Aug. 7th, 2019 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
druewildingWhere i work in Copenhagen i'm mostly working with Danish people, but there are also a few Swedish people, one French person and one Italian person. There are no other British people.
I've done a lot of thinking about whether or not its an advantage for me to come to Denmark where people are generally pretty good at my native language. Certainly in the beginning it was helpful; it would have been exhausting and frustrating for me to go straight to 100% Danish if there was no one around who could speak my mother tongue. But in the long run it might have been better for me, perhaps. People do enjoy speaking English, and it's up to me to keep on speaking Danish, if i want to practise.
What only recently occurred to me is something else: my accent when speaking English. Whenever I hear English spoken, it's almost always by a Danish person, so i am gradually adopting a Danish accent when speaking English - because that's what i hear! I've always been easily influenced by accents and speech patterns.
If i was a native French speaker, I imagine my French speaking accent would probably not be affected so much, because i wouldn't be listening to many Danish people speaking French, nor would i be speaking French with Danes.
I don't notice my accent changing very much ... until I meet another British person. Which i did today! And in the first few minutes of speaking, I was really aware of, "Wow, i sound so Danish!" .. it wore off quickly, as i remembered, Oh yeah, this is how i speak English to a British person. It's not quite the same as when I speak English to Danish people.
It's interesting because it was one of the things i thought about before i moved to Denmark: Will my English accent change? ... and i didn't imagine it would. But now i'm pretty sure it is!
The other person whose accent might be changing is my Swedish colleague who started working in Denmark without knowing any Danish. We had a nice chat today about how our ears get attuned more and more to hearing Danish, and my colleague is getting better at speaking to us, basically using Swedish, but with a few important words changed and a more Danish sounding accent! It works! I wonder if that has caused any confusion when going home to Sweden though!
I've done a lot of thinking about whether or not its an advantage for me to come to Denmark where people are generally pretty good at my native language. Certainly in the beginning it was helpful; it would have been exhausting and frustrating for me to go straight to 100% Danish if there was no one around who could speak my mother tongue. But in the long run it might have been better for me, perhaps. People do enjoy speaking English, and it's up to me to keep on speaking Danish, if i want to practise.
What only recently occurred to me is something else: my accent when speaking English. Whenever I hear English spoken, it's almost always by a Danish person, so i am gradually adopting a Danish accent when speaking English - because that's what i hear! I've always been easily influenced by accents and speech patterns.
If i was a native French speaker, I imagine my French speaking accent would probably not be affected so much, because i wouldn't be listening to many Danish people speaking French, nor would i be speaking French with Danes.
I don't notice my accent changing very much ... until I meet another British person. Which i did today! And in the first few minutes of speaking, I was really aware of, "Wow, i sound so Danish!" .. it wore off quickly, as i remembered, Oh yeah, this is how i speak English to a British person. It's not quite the same as when I speak English to Danish people.
It's interesting because it was one of the things i thought about before i moved to Denmark: Will my English accent change? ... and i didn't imagine it would. But now i'm pretty sure it is!
The other person whose accent might be changing is my Swedish colleague who started working in Denmark without knowing any Danish. We had a nice chat today about how our ears get attuned more and more to hearing Danish, and my colleague is getting better at speaking to us, basically using Swedish, but with a few important words changed and a more Danish sounding accent! It works! I wonder if that has caused any confusion when going home to Sweden though!