Trip Speaking Vulcan

[Kotik]

Sorry for bringing that thread back up, but I realized lately that I appear to be a freak of nature (longwinded intro alarm)

The general consensus seems to be that Trip would speak Vulcan with a southern accent and I dare to contradict that theory. I present exhibit A - Kotik:

I have a very pronounced Berlin dialect and I'm practically unable to suppress it. I think the longest I ever could was in the region of 3 to 5 minutes, before I inevitably fall back. Now comes the catch - I'm fluent in both Russian and English and I speak both languages completely free of accent. It was one of my favourite self-entertainments during my time in Russia to speak with people, who didn't know where I come from and wait how long it took them to realize that I'm German - or at least to realize that I wasn't born in the USSR. Most failed at it. There were some, who thought I was ukranian or from one of the baltic soviet republics and even that almost took up to 2 hours for them to notice. Sounds like self glorification and I'm loving every second of it
Anyways, it gets even weirder. Both English and Russian have a bootload of loan words from German, like the word Schlagbaum, which is pronounced exactly the same in both Russian and German and means barrier (as for instance in level-crossing) in both languages. When I'm speaking in German, I'm pronouncing it Berlin style, while in Russian I'm pronouncing it correctly.

So here is my theory. If one is learning a new language, especially if it is very different from your native one (which Vulcan is), one starts with a clean sheet and speaks without dialect. That's why I submit, given the right motivation (which a life with T'Pol is) and the right effort (which T'Pol will make sure he puts in), Trip would speak accent free.

[EntAllat]

So here is my theory. If one is learning a new language, especially if it is very different from your native one (which Vulcan is), one starts with a clean sheet and speaks without dialect. That's why I submit, given the right motivation (which a life with T'Pol is) and the right effort (which T'Pol will make sure he puts in), Trip would speak accent free.

It's possible Trip could learn to speak Vulcan without an accent but statistically unlikely given that he's learning it in adulthood. While this still an area of considerable debate, research and controversy in linguistics (and there have been a LOT of studies into this over the past century - just do a Google Research search) research does tend to favor the idea that children are much more likely to pick up native accents than adults and that the more languages you pick up while a child, the more likely you are to be able to reproduce a native accent in adulthood with a new language. Other things that matter: the similarity of the language to your native one, the length of exposure to it (both listening and speaking)

Unfortunately you don't have a clean sheet. The brain, though plastic, does tend limit the ability to sound native after puberty because of the way it develops and creates connections associated with language. That doesn't mean it's impossible, just very unlikely.

[WarpGirl]

Well it's unlikely that a human man will get pregnant too, but Trip did that. Sorry had too. Anyway I think Kotik is right that it's more possible than most people generally believe to learn a language and get rid of your accent. That said while you might not have a "clean slate" you can change what's on it.

Mostly though my issues with him learning was phrases and idioms that would not make any sense at all in Vulcan, I don't think he would use them.

[justTripn]

Kotik said:

So here is my theory. If one is learning a new language, especially if it is very different from your native one (which Vulcan is), one starts with a clean sheet and speaks without dialect. That's why I submit, given the right motivation (which a life with T'Pol is) and the right effort (which T'Pol will make sure he puts in), Trip would speak accent free.

I was thinking about this and I think that if you are learning a very different language: in my case, a Pittsburgher speaking Thai, the particular "Pittsburgh" accent (we have a hard time with vowels--they all sound the same) would be overwhelmed by the mistakes made because I am a native American English speaker--an inability to distinguish t, td, and d, for instance. So even if I HAD a Pittsburgh accent when speaking Thai, who the heck would know? An American wouldn't be able to pick it out my Pittsburgh Thai accent and neither would a Thai. Similarly, a mild Southern accent would not be salient to a Vulcan in the first place, let alone when that person is attempting to speak Vulcan. An Earthling would probably hear Trip speaking Vulcan with no Southern accent because the requirements of speaking Vulcan overpower the particular speaking habits that cause the Southern accent.

That's my theory. Trip speaks Vulcan with no southern accent, though possibly with a North American accent.

[Silverbullet]

Kotik, one thing. You probably heard Russian spoken in East Germany a fair amount of time so your ear was attuned to it. That would help you learn the language.

Europeans forget that they are exposed to many languages on a daily basis. Either on the Radio or from hearing other languages spoken often.

Here in the U.S. a person living in the middle of the country might not ever hear a foreign language at any time. So that persons ear would not be attuned to anything but English.

A small child is like a sponge. It can pick up more than one language at a time. My daughter could speak German, English, French and some Arabic when she was about 1 1/2 but forgot French and Arabic because after we left Tunisia she never heard it again. She is fluent in German and English though.

Learning a foreign language as an Adult is diffucult becuase of habits ingrained over the year by speaking one tongue. Wrapping your head around the fact that you can put the Verb damned near anywhere in a German sentence is hard. Sentence structure is different and articles. I always raged about feminine masculin and neuter in English. Far as I was concerned there wasn't any. In German, French, Spaish, etc there are all three. In German the noun depends on the artilce for its ending. Der, Das, Die. In English there is only The. Or somethihg like that. I am no great shakes on this subject.

SB

[WarpGirl]

You know, it's odd... I think that this is a subject that can't be definitively and emperically proven with a solid answer. I think 99% of how a person does with languages is up to the individual. How their own brain works! Me I can mimic just about any accent absolutely perfectly if I am around it for a short period. I used to have a bit of fun with my sister's in-laws talking in a perfect PEI accent. I'd mimic my sister's mother-in-law, and fool her own sons. Some people can't do that. That said given what we saw of how Trip's brain works, I'm still confused as to why he thinks he can't pick up a language easily... So to each his own. Me I still fool my mother into thinking I'm watching ST in another room just by mimicking a character's voice. It's just how I work.

[panyasan]

I have studied a couple of languages and three different way of writing, but it didn't came easy. It came with lots and lots of effort and frustration.
After you get a certain level, it because more easily.

A language is a bit more then getting an accent right: you have to understand the grammar, the structure of a language, the words. It becomes more difficult when you have nothing to "hang" your language on.
For example if you know some French (part of the Roman language group) it is much easier to learn other languages from that group like Spanish and Italian.
I had a hard time studying Japanese and made up stories to remember kanji's and words. (And I absolutly suck in Hebrew- another language I tried to learn - even when Hebrew and Dutch share the same g-sound). I think I have more talent in learning languages then Trip and for me it hasn't been easy. So if he says that he finds learning languages not easy I totally get it.

[Kotik]

Kotik, one thing. You probably heard Russian spoken in East Germany a fair amount of time so your ear was attuned to it. That would help you learn the language.

In fact, no I didn't. We had thousands of russian occup... erm friends in the country, but the soviet army rarely left their barracks, so my exposure to the language was close to nil.

A small child is like a sponge. It can pick up more than one language at a time. My daughter could speak German, English, French and some Arabic when she was about 1 1/2 but forgot French and Arabic because after we left Tunisia she never heard it again. She is fluent in German and English though.

Learning a foreign language as an Adult is diffucult becuase of habits ingrained over the year by speaking one tongue.

Well, I always had a knack for languages, but I never really got into speaking russian seriously before I was 29. I learned it in school and university, but that did not help me much in Russia, as I had to learn to understand different dialects and the everyday language is vastly different from the stuff you learn in school/uni. Basically I learned about 60% of my russian knowledge between 29 and 33 years of age.

Wrapping your head around the fact that you can put the Verb damned near anywhere in a German sentence is hard. Sentence structure is different and articles. I always raged about feminine masculin and neuter in English. Far as I was concerned there wasn't any. In German, French, Spaish, etc there are all three. In German the noun depends on the artilce for its ending. Der, Das, Die. In English there is only The. Or somethihg like that. I am no great shakes on this subject.
SB

German grammar is tricky. Btw. noun endings have nothing to do with the article in german. In Russian they don't have articles (not even an equivalent for 'the'), but the noun's ending determines it's gender. In German the ending of a word has absolutely no meaning. The article itself determines the gender. BTW. Kudo's to your daughter, I've not met too many british or american people, who learn german. Respect!

[Silverbullet]

Koti, her mother is German so Monika spoke German to her and I spoke Emg;ish. She gew up biligual. In tunis she was exposed to French and Arabic.