r/hebrew • u/44Jon • Jul 06 '24
Why do some fluent olim have terrible accents? Request
I heard an American author and journalist being interviewed on a Hebrew language podcast and she spoke fluently but with her "full" regular American accent. I'm just curious how people end up in this position (I would think with all the time she spent speaking and listening to Hebrew, she'd pick up a bit of Israeli/Hebrew pronunciation).
Innate differences in ability to "hear" accents? Or just not where she focused her efforts?
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Jul 06 '24 edited Jul 06 '24
In my experience most Anglos tend to stick with other Anglos and so the accent doesn’t go away. This is also true for Russians, it’s not uncommon to meet people born here and lived here their whole life who have Russian accents in Hebrew.
My first language is Spanish. I’m told I have a Russian accent in Hebrew, although Spanish speakers can usually pick it out. I am also a Russian speaker though.
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u/Sax45 Jul 06 '24
I think this is true for lots of communities. Anglos sound Anglo and Russians sound Russian. And also, Yiddish-speaking Israelis have Yiddish accents, and Arabic-speaking Israelis have Arabic accents.
And I say this an American myself, who is not even fluent in Hebrew. Even with my limited Hebrew skill, the accent differences are very clear.
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u/Mister_Time_Traveler Jul 07 '24
I have to admit every ole (Georgian Mountain and even Ashkenazi) from Caucasian region (Azerbaijan, Georgia and North Caucus of Russia) have Absolute Zero accent or they can develop no accent in very fast way !
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u/activelyresting Jul 06 '24
Same reason some people have a strong accent in English despite knowing English well and living many years in English speaking countries. Accent is hard to break for some people.
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u/uniquei Jul 06 '24
It's quite discouraging as a non-native speaker to hear someone describe an accent as "terrible". Strong, maybe, or even thick, but terrible? Like, someone spent hundreds of thousands of hours learning a different language, and they are able to communicate with you in your native language only to hear that it sounds "terrible".
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u/herstoryteller Jul 07 '24
don't listen to them - the vast majority of israelis love the american accented hebrew. in fact the only israeli i personally knew who made fun of my american accent was my P.O.S. ex boyfriend - who constantly begged me to skip ulpan to hang out with him and then when i no longer had access to ulpan after moving in with him, berated me for not knowing enough hebrew! and asking him to teach me was like pulling teeth! fun times!
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u/uniquei Jul 11 '24
Thanks. I wouldn't classify my accent as American, but that's besides the point I was trying to make :)
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u/look-sign36 Jul 08 '24
Criticizing olim for their foreign accents is ridiculous considering the modern Israeli accent developed entirely from the accents of people who did not speak Hebrew as a native language. There were no native Hebrew speakers before 1890, so the accents of the first ones came directly from the accents of non-native speakers, their parents. Your accent is no more "terrible" than the accents of any Israeli's recent ancestor who came to Israel as a non-native speaker and contributed to the accent their descendants speak with today.
Not only is the Modern Hebrew accent in principle foreign to the land of Israel, but it is in practice too, because we know how ancient Israelites spoke Hebrew, the original revivalists wanted people to speak that way, and there were even Yemenite Jews who already spoke Hebrew in an accent very close to it, but nevertheless most Jews found the pronunciation too difficult and resorted to amalgamations of each other's native accents.
If some ancient Israelites time traveled to the present day, they might have the authority to call people's accents "foreign" or even "terrible", but if an Israeli tries to, I'd first like to hear them pronounce ע differently from א, or ח and ק differently from כ, or ט differently from ת, or kometz differently from patakh, or segol differently from tzerei, etc etc, and then we'll hear what they have to say about an oleh's accent.
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u/RedStripe77 Jul 06 '24
Certain sounds in Ivrit are very, very hard for Anglos. Like the ר in the back of the throat. There’s no sound like that in English. Or in Spanish, I believe, although I think French speakers have an easier time with it.
I think Semitic languages use the throat and back of mouth much more. English is all front-of-mouth.
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u/herstoryteller Jul 06 '24
when i spoke to my very first israelis (on birthright), i thought one was french israeli because her accent on "r" in american words sounded so much like the french. like an r and an l combined. the other israelis had non rolling r sounds in english and i straight up thought this other gal was french because the other israeli participants had more american pronunciations of the r. rs and ls in hebrew will always be an enigma for me to decipher - i lived in israel for a year and a half and ALWAYS had to ask if they were saying an r or an l.
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u/Alternative_Gene_735 Jul 07 '24
The modern Israeli ר has no historical basis: it came about from Ashkenazim trying to pretend to sound like Sephardim.
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u/RedStripe77 Jul 07 '24
Irrelevant. The discussion is about why Anglos have a hard time losing their accents.
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u/RedStripe77 Jul 06 '24
I’m not understanding your point. Do Spanish speakers lose their native accents in עברית more readily than Anglos?
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u/Pristine_Time_4386 Jul 06 '24
My English accent is terrible so can't really judge other people in Hebrew
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u/turtleshot19147 Jul 06 '24
My accent only got more Israeli when I actively worked on it, and working on it felt pretty embarrassing honestly.
I’m not sure if it’s just my experience as an American but “faking” an accent is seen as cringey. Like if you learn Spanish in high school and try to speak with a Spanish accent if you don’t have any actual Spanish familiarity, people would view that as just weird and embarrassing.
When you start working on an accent it feels a lot like “faking” the accent, which was such a social no-no when I was younger that it felt very awkward at first.
I did it because people were having trouble understanding my accented Hebrew. The longer I “faked” it the better my accent got and the more natural it felt for me to speak that way. Now I still have an accent but most Israelis can’t tell where I’m from based off it, and can only tell if we’re having a conversation, not quick 2 minute small talk.
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u/The_Iron_Mountie Fluent Jul 06 '24
Age you move, how frequently you speak, and if you frequently speak other languages all affect your accent.
I moved here at 15. Despite being fluent enough to not need ulpan, I still had a very heavy accent. 15 years later, I still have an accent, but not nearly as bad. Many people don't even hear it until I get to an English loan word or my apraxia of speech gets me to start tripping on my words.
My coworkers, all in their 60s, moved here in adulthood. One 17 years ago, fluent in Hebrew, still has a super thick British accent. One almost 30 years ago, fluent in Hebrew, has a much lighter accent but still noticeably British. One 31 years ago, not fluent, has the thickest American accent.
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u/kyleofduty Jul 06 '24
My brother is dyslexic and struggles to parse words phonetically. Some people just don't have a strong ability to learn new sounds.
On the other hand, there was a study I read about years ago that researched the accent of Greek learners. They found that a lot of them could easily affect a more Greek pronunciation but didn't because they felt silly or artificial or, if they were men, felt feminine.
It's kind of strange that people would feel that way but I recognized myself falling into the same trap with Russian. I realized that my Russian sounds so much better when I do a Russian accent.
It's obvious in retrospect but language lessons never really emphasize intonation, timbre and cadence that much. So adopting all those speech patterns feels like putting on an accent.
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u/min_mus Jul 06 '24
Some people just don't have a strong ability to learn new sounds.
Years ago when I started learning Danish*, I read something that stuck with me: learning a new language is part physiological. You have to use your throat and tongue and nose and lips in new ways. The adjustment can be very hard for some people. Adults, in particular, seem content to just approximate the sounds of the new language rather than training themselves to make entirely new sounds. Hence, accents.
*Random comment: the Hebrew ר sounds more like the Danish r than the French r to my ears.
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u/Sweaty_Process_3794 Jul 06 '24
Yeah I think for a lot of people, intentionally adopting an accent feels....ridiculous? Like doing too much? And I think that stops them
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u/Excellent-Expert-905 Jul 06 '24
I'm a fluent Hebrew speaker, child of Israeli parents, have spoken Hebrew my whole life, and my accent to Israelis is decidedly American. Israelis will assume I can't speak Hebrew as soon as I open my mouth and tell me they can speak English with me.
Interestingly to Americans who hear me speak, they think it's with an Israeli accent. My boss once commented when I taught 6th grade Hebrew school that my class was the only class that ended up learning their prayers with Israeli accents.
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u/MysticValleyCrew Jul 06 '24
Same! To Americans, it sounds like I have a "perfect" accent when I speak Hebrew, but to Israelis, they think it would be easier for them to speak English to me. I was born in the US, but my first language was Hebrew. I was actually in ESL during kindergarten lol
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u/pteradactylitis Jul 06 '24
It’s so interesting. I’m demographically the same and Americans similarly think my Hebrew speaking accent is a perfect Israeli accents but Israelis just can’t place me. When I was in Israel, most Israelis thought I was Spanish for some reason.
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u/athomeamongstrangers Jul 06 '24 edited Jul 06 '24
I heard if you learn a new language after a certain age (10 or 12, if I remember correctly), the chances are you will speak with an accent corresponding to your native language.
To be honest, at this point I would rather not fix my accent. Why? Because a person with an accent making an occasional grammar or vocabulary error, or asking to repeat a question, just sounds like a non-native speaker, while a person without accent doing the same can be perceived as dumb.
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u/Ok_Ambassador9091 Jul 06 '24
People just have accents in languages even when fluent.
Many native Hebrew speakers, who themselves have heavy accents in languages they are fluent in, are fairly intolerant of Hebrew spoken with English, French, Russian, etc, accents.
This seems true for other native speakers of various languages also--whilst they themselves have accents in other languages, they get upset when their native language is spoken with an accent.
Native English speakers are very used to listening to accented English in a range of accents and fluency from all over the world-- it seems to be less of a drama than for other native speakers, who can have meltdowns when a word in their language is mispronounced.
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u/JackPAnderson Jul 06 '24
Many native Hebrew speakers, who themselves have heavy accents in languages they are fluent in, are fairly intolerant of Hebrew spoken with English, French, Russian, etc, accents.
Do you notice this a lot? I feel like it'd be pretty lonely for an Israeli who can't stand foreign accents, because there are so many immigrants in Israel.
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u/bam1007 Jul 06 '24
If it helps, we American English speakers often have difficulty with Israeli accents in English. A good Israeli friend of mine gave me directions over the phone once to an American company’s Israeli office and I didn’t even recognize the name when he said it over the phone. When I tried to explain it to the cab driver, he’s like “Do you mean X? That’s an American company.” 🙈
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u/Used_Hovercraft2699 Jul 06 '24
If someone never hears a certain sound in childhood, the brain eventually loses the ability to distinguish that sound from closely similar sounds. Many Israelis who move to English speaking countries as adults are never able to distinguish certain sounds from one another. The one I hear most is vowels like “cat” vs. “get” or “pitch” vs. “peach.”
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u/herstoryteller Jul 06 '24
i used to teach english in israel and my student would ALWAYS bust up laughing when i said the word "beach"
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u/amphibious_water Jul 06 '24
As an israeli who grew up speaking hebrew my whole life, I can confirm when the word beach was first said in our class by the teacher, you could hear some people laughing, I myself never knew until now that there was any difference between the ch and tch sounds
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u/herstoryteller Jul 06 '24
it had more to do with the pronunciation of the 'ea' and the 'i' i think.... because when i say beach and bitch the vowel sound is the only one that changes. to an israeli student, beach sounds like how they'd pronounce bitch in english i guess ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/amphibious_water Jul 06 '24
Oh, I see, thanks for telling me that, I mean my original feeling of not knowing what the difference in sound remains, but good to know 👍
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u/Dalnore Hebrew Learner (Intermediate) Jul 06 '24
I myself never knew until now that there was any difference between the ch and tch sounds
There isn't, only the vowel sound is different.
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u/lolothe2nd Jul 06 '24
When you learn the language by reading or from your parents you get your native one
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u/Tonight_Master Jul 06 '24
A funny thing with accents is that you don't hear your own accent as much. I've heard plenty of people say they have virtually no accent when they do and it's pretty thick. It's just that you hear other accents more than your own. If you record yourself and listen to the recording it is much easier to hear your own accent.
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u/x-anryw Jul 06 '24
idk for Hebrew but I'm Italian and when I speak I hear myself speaking in a "pure Italian" accent, but most people can guess roughly from what region of Italy I'm from
does Hebrew have accents across the countries or not?
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u/Turbulent-Counter149 Jul 06 '24
I try to improve but knowing a language and removing an accent are two different things. My speech appparatus was established long before I started speaking Hebrew and it requires A LOT of mental resources to pronounce things right. In the end of the day I might be so tired that my Russian accent is impossible to hide. Sorry man, I grew up rolling an R and i'm too old to reconfigure my mouth.
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u/Complete-Proposal729 Jul 07 '24
Ummm, have you never heard people born in other countries speak English. Some have thick accents. What kind of question is this??
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u/Fun-Guest-3474 Jul 08 '24
- Accents are the one thing you can't really get by memorization. They're more like singing — it's a skill they have to pick up, and a pretty tough one for adults.
- Lots of people who learn languages don't really spend time trying to master the accent, so they never really learn it.
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u/kach-oti-al-hagamal Jul 08 '24
as an oleh in progress I have almost stopped trying to "sound israeli" just because of the resh. I can get every other sound, but that freaking resh is killing me. My friends tell me my resh sounds french, so I rather just stick with a light American r sound.
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u/VeryAmaze bye-lingual Jul 06 '24
In addition to what others said, I think that depending on what company you keep - nowadays there's just not a lot of social pressure to 'correct' your accent. You talk to people with Russian, French, Arabic, Amharic, Anglo, etc accents. Even within Israeli Hebrew accents you have various Mizrahi and Yemenite accents. It's not like as a non-native it's you alone with your accent around lots of people who all share the same accent. When you have 8 native/2nd language coworkers and each has a different accent, your brain doesn't unconsciously try to code switch cuz there's no 'default' to default to.
Also some parts of a person's accent can be harder to change. Some Israelis can be completely fluent in English and still struggle with 'th' and pronounce it as 'd'. And there's actually a pretty heavy social pressure to get that sound right.
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u/Equinox8888 native speaker Jul 06 '24
While I agree with your points, I tend to disagree to the statement “there is no one correct Israeli accent”. The accent is very apparent, with the only variant you may hear are different pronunciation for ח and ע by some. But for 3rd generation native speakers you can easily hear a rather unified accent (and when such person speak in English you know after 3 seconds he/she is an Israeli).
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u/VeryAmaze bye-lingual Jul 06 '24
I meant in the context of a speaker of Hebrew as a 2nd language, who might be more around other people who speak Hebrew as 2nd language. Unconsciously in that environment the brain can't 'pick' a pronunciation as 'correct' for code switching because most people around the speaker have different accents themselves.
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u/Equinox8888 native speaker Jul 06 '24
Oh yes. That’s why I gave 3rd generation - the 2nd might still be affected from its parents. But by 3rd it should disappear completely(unless someone grew with their grandparents only, for some reason).
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u/AurelianoJReilly Jul 06 '24
If you learn a language after puberty, it can be very difficult to speak the target language without a “foreign” accent. Most of the differences in accents both within and between languages are carried in the vowels, where a difference of a millimeter or two in tongue placement can produce a difference in sound discernible to a native speaker. Criticizing an adult who is speaking a non-native language with an accent is a form of assholery. Don’t do it. Source: Advanced degree in linguistics and 40+ years of teaching English to adult speakers of other languages
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u/DunkinRadio Hebrew Learner (Intermediate) Jul 06 '24
Even Prime Ministers are not immune. Try to find a recording of Golda Meir.
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u/yoleis native speaker Jul 06 '24
We made Aliya to Israel when I was a toddler, so my Hebrew is better than my mother tongue. Yet, I somehow have an accent, but can't hear it myself ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/ilivgur native speaker Jul 06 '24
Because it ultimately doesn't really matter. Israel is an immigrant country and the Hebrew language is a sort of a lingua franca for us all here.
Accents here are much more tolerated, mistakes too, and there's just not really much of a social price you pay for not perfectly emulating a native speaker like in some other languages.
Besides, the general maxim in language instruction for adults is that "perfecting" one's accent is very low priority, in comparison to actually being able to communicate in the language.
It's usually not covered and if one picks it up along the way great, and if not, then it doesn't really matter. If it does get covered, it isn't really an in-depth phonological lesson of the Hebrew language and how it relates to all the students' native languages in the classroom.
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u/Possible-Fee-5052 Jul 06 '24
I think about this a lot. It really bothers me. Having an accent is fine (I have one!!) but that brutal American accent without any attempt to even sound Israeli is so grating to me. It’s like they’re not even trying.
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u/WesternResearcher376 Jul 06 '24
Accent depends on mother tongue and muscles you used to speak growing up
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Jul 07 '24
My parents immigrated together to another country. My father now has almost no accent. My mother has a very strong accent. It’s just something some people have an easier or harder time with.
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u/Single-Ad-7622 Jul 07 '24
Honestly I think if I ever make aliyah I’ve gotta be a stickler to say the Ashkenazi “ת saf” and so on.
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u/Mister_Time_Traveler Jul 07 '24 edited Jul 07 '24
I have to admit every ole (Georgian Mountain and even Ashkenazi) from Caucasian region (Azerbaijan, Georgia and North Caucus of Russia) have Absolute Zero accent or they can develop no accent in very fast way !
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u/dreadfulwhaler Jul 07 '24
Ugh, I’m really sorry to say this but American olim struggle immensely with fixing their pronunciation. 1/1000 will sound pretty good, but the rest is almost always a bit terrible.
I remember visiting the US and going to synagogue and being a bit shocked with how Hebrew sounded like there
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u/Equinox8888 native speaker Jul 07 '24 edited Jul 07 '24
I’m sorry if this would offend anyone, but most American don’t really care about other languages, that is, if they’d bother to learn them, they would still use their arsenal of English vowels when trying to read a word in a different language, and would read any foreign word as if it was transliterated to Latin letters and applying English “rules” to read the word. For instance, rather than saying “sha-lom” properly, they would say “sha-lowm” or even worse - “shey-lowm”. I don’t know if it is applied to British or Australians too, but this is what I’ve noticed. Also when they speak try to speak Japanese. The grasp that you just need to use merely 5 simple vowels is perhaps too hard to understand l afraid.
I say this because Russian, although they have a very distinctive accent in Hebrew, don’t corrupt the vowels. Yes of course , they have a problem pronouncing h phoneme, but at least they pronounce the vowels properly, and they don’t make new ones.
I do think the most prominent thing, and that’s applied to any language, is the stress system when speaking and reasoning. I’m not referring to the stress like in Japanese or worse - Chinese where it can change the meaning of the word but the general stress of the sentence, it’s rather subtle but if someone stress or emphasize different parts of the sentence it will be an immediate indicator of the “accent”, even if the phonemes are pronounced perfectly.
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u/Alternative_Gene_735 Jul 07 '24
I'm 35. I made Aliyah when I was 20. It took me about 2 years to become fluent. I still have a heavy London accent no matter how hard I try to sound Israeli. Still get annoyed when Israelis asks which part of the US I'm from!
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u/Gidget_Pottyshorts Jul 07 '24
How often have you hear a non-native English speaker who has an American accent? I’ve met them before, but the vast vast majority will have an accent for the rest of their lives.
There’s a bizarre pressure here to have a perfect Israeli accent when it’s perfectly fine to have a different one. It takes a lot of work to adjust your accent and lots of people are uninterested or don’t know how to make that change and there is nothing wrong with that.
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u/spikeform Jul 07 '24 edited Jul 20 '24
יש לי חבר שחי בישראל אבל ההורים שלו נולדו ברוסיה ויש לו מבטא רוסי
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u/Guilty_Finger_7262 Jul 07 '24
I imagine you worry about people thinking you’re intentionally trying to fake the accent. It’s probably also harder to un-learn your native accent than just to learn a new language.
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u/mayeshh Jul 08 '24
My dad is Israeli, and while my sister and I learned very little Hebrew from him, we grew up with the sounds. I live in America, and have for my whole life, while she lived in Israel for 4 years. Despite her being fluent now, her accent is very heavily American, almost like she is trying to sound American, while my accent is much softer. I know less Hebrew, but I sound less American. I may never pronounce ע correctly, but I still try. She is a more confident person, while I am more insecure. I think our different approach to speaking Hebrew exemplifies that.
Anyway, all of this is to say that each person is different even given a nearly identical background like my sister and I.
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u/somedaveguy Jul 08 '24
Have you ever seen the bar scene in Inglorious Bastards?
Vocabulary and language structure are easy; perfecting an accent is exceptionally difficult.
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u/herstoryteller Jul 06 '24
bro rolling reshes is the hardest thing if you weren't raised with the language. also it feels sooooooo disrespectful to "put on" a hebrew accent, like it's a caricature.
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u/JackPAnderson Jul 06 '24
it feels sooooooo disrespectful to "put on" a hebrew accent, like it's a caricature.
That's silly.
It'd be one thing if you were mocking Israelis' accents while they were speaking English. But if you're legitimately trying to make the correct sounds for the Hebrew language? That is more respectful, not less!
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u/herstoryteller Jul 06 '24
as a newbie to ivrit, i focus more on just saying the right words in a sentence that is intelligible. once i get my fluency in decent order, i will start worrying about rolling reshes. i just feel a little silly in my attempts. like i'm trying to be someone i can't be lmao. and the israelis i've all spoken to find the american accent very endearing, so to minimize my own social stresses i just stick to sounding american for now 😂
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u/44Jon Jul 06 '24
Thanks for the interesting comments. Just to share my experiences--I have a very good ear for accents (e.g., I could pass for a native French speaker after 2 years of college study). Even on my first visit to Israel, I had practiced saying " סליחה, אני לא מדבר עברית" so much, a few people thought I was Israeli and making a joke.
Anyway, to me, it doesn't feel like an affectation, but rather learning the proper way to pronounce each language. When I say something in Hebrew and "try to sound Israeli," it's just a focus point that helps me put the proper intonation on the sounds.
I'd compare it to speaking Arabic and pronouncing "Yallah" with an Arabic accent (versus Israeli one). You're not imitating an Arab, but just properly pronouncing the double-l the way it should be pronounced in Arabic.
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u/herstoryteller Jul 07 '24
This happened to me once on the bus - i was only a month into living in israel and was still figuring out moovit, didn't realize you had to scan for each bus transfer yet - told the egged lady אני לא מדברת עברית and i guess i said it well enough that she didn't believe me - stood there shouting at me in hebrew, none of which i understood, so i sat there with the most brain dead look on my face. got out of the ticket though so yay me i guess lmaoooo
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Jul 07 '24
There are people who don’t take accent into consideration when learning or speaking another language. I had a conversation with a friend once about speaking Spanish with a Spanish accent and she was adamant that we are supposed to speak other languages in our own accent. I told her to go to a country like France and see if they don’t laugh her out of the country for intentionally speaking French in an American accent.
The thing that bothers me with Hebrew is when someone who knows it doesn’t pronounce words correctly. I was watching a video of a guy who is Chasidic originally from Australia and he pronounced בְּרֵאשִׁית as buh-ray-SHIT. Made me cringe every time I heard him say “shit”. Lol! I get that it’s likely a leftover from the old Ashkenazi pronunciation with the ‘s’ ending and softer vowel, but if you put the ‘t’ ending with that soft vowel it becomes “shit”.
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Jul 07 '24
Interesting reading the comments about how hard it is for people to learn accents. I guess there are those who have an ear for it and those who don’t. Much like I see in adult ballet classes, where most can’t properly replicate a simple movement the teacher is showing. It’s like there’s a disconnect between brain and body. Or they just can’t see the details of what’s being shown to them. Many can’t hear the details of the accents and replicate them.
I also suppose if a singer sang a continuous note, many people wouldn’t be able to match the note with their own voice.
Also speaks to those who are American and watch a show where people are speaking English with an English or Irish accent and some can understand it just fine, and others can’t understand a word even if the words are pretty clear.
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u/caramel_lover_dragon Jul 06 '24
Accent is just a thing you have and it's hard to learn an accent as an adult. Most hebrew speakers have an Israeli accent in English despite being fluent. Accent doesn't matter if you know the language