If you work for the New York Times and claim to be a "news reporter," please, shut the fuck up.
Quote:
If you have a heavy accent, stop speaking your fucking native language for a few years until it clears up if you ever expect to get any respect... or shut the fuck up!
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If you have no knowledge of developmental psychology, developmental linguistics, or of pre-adolescent sensory-motor development, please, don't talk about people's accents. in the spirit of the thread, please, SHUT THE FUCK UP.
[addendum]Something you have to understand when it comes to linguistics involves the development of not only the speech mechanics, but also the speech recognition patterns in hearing. As any baby/child is raised around a certain language, certain patterns develop not only in how the words are spoken, but also in the way the words are processed, analyzed and recognized as such. Take for example the spanish language. The letter 's' is a sterling example. In the spanish language, very few, if any, words begin solely with the letter 's.' In fact, almost all words that would normally begin with the letter 's' in another language begin with 'es' in spanish. Now, when speaking another language, especially english, you will find that those whose first language is spanish will start words with 'es' when speaking english that begin with 's' when written. Yes, I am fluent in both English and Spanish, so I have an idea concerning the subject. The recognition of the letter 's' to the person whose first language is spanish considers it when spoken to always be a
following letter, not a
beginning letter in a word, which leads to what is commonly referred to as a mispronunciation or an accent. The only way to eliminate spoken accents in multilingual people, as proven by clinical case studies, is to raise from birth or young child, a human that hears both/all languages simultaneously and exclusively while growing up. IE, one parent speaks solely french to the child, and the other parent speaks only german. This is supported by large bodies of research.[/addendum]