Poll: "A foreign accent is a sign of bravery."

Gerard Barry wrote:



This is so true. When I studied German in school and university, our teachers didn't place near enough emphasis on proper pronunciation, despite the fact that some of them were native speakers of German themselves. Until I lived in Germany, I never really knew for instance that "a" and "ä", "o" and "ö" and "u" and "ü" are pronounced completely differently. This is pretty basic stuff but our teachers didn't bother telling us!

Lingua 5B wrote:


Most language programs don’t have this incorporated or only have some very basic, limited phonetic lessons. It’s time consuming with 100s of students and it’d be very expensive. They’d have to go around and check each one of you if your breathing, vowels, links, prosodies, tongue placement, consonants etc. are fine, then correcting everyone individually. It’s like singing class, that’s why there are only max. five people enrolled at singing class.

Tom in London wrote:



A foreign accent is a sign of not being able to speak the language properly.

Gerard Barry wrote:
Until I lived in Germany, I never really knew for instance that "a" and "ä", "o" and "ö" and "u" and "ü" are pronounced completely differently. This is pretty basic stuff but our teachers didn't bother telling us!

Blimey. I distinctly remember learning that at school aged about 13. Perfect introduction to German. Getting 30 kids to go "uu üü uu üü uu üü" like monkeys.