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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Wednesday, September 10, 2003 :::
Accents have advantages: A foreign tongue can be easier to understand in the mouth of a non-native.
People speaking English as a second language find each other just as intelligible as they do native English speakers, US linguists have found. The effect works regardless of the speaker's mother tongue.
It isn't hard to see why a Korean, say, might find another Korean's English easier to follow than an English person's. The two share a phonetic vocabulary lacking some of the vocal effects that render the language alien in a native's mouth. A foreign accent hinders a native but helps a fellow non-native.
But what about speakers with different first languages? One might suspect that only some languages, like Korean and Chinese, or Spanish and Italian, share sounds that help their mutual intelligibility. But that doesn't seem to be so.
Instead, there may be features of the target language that all non-natives omit, suggest Tessa Bent and Ann Bradlow from Northwestern University... I'd like to point out that the picture that accompanies this story adds nothing.
::: posted by Steven at 11:07 AM
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