New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How to retrain tongue/mouth muscles for foreign language pronunciation?
Ask HN: How to retrain tongue/mouth muscles for foreign language pronunciation?
2 by panabee | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Everyone is born with the ability to speak any language accent-free, so biomechanically, it seems possible for someone to learn a foreign language and eventually speak with minimal accent or no accent. To draw a sports analogy, everyone is born with the ability to play at least one sport perfectly. We spend childhood training our mouth and throat muscles for this one sport and eventually become very adept. For example, individuals may perfect hitting a baseball but struggle hitting a golf ball. The differences between baseball and golf swings are large enough that it requires tremendous talent and dedication to translate expertise from one to the other. Assuming this sports analogy holds, a key step in developing accent-free pronunciation requires defining and learning the biomechanical fundamentals of the language "swing" -- similar to how beginners learn the fundamentals of a golf swing. The second step is transferring this knowledge from the mind to the body. With golf, this is achieved by visiting the driving range or golf course and repeatedly training our muscles to swing a golf club instead of a baseball bat. Questions: 1. How do you learn the "swing" (e.g., tongue and mouth movements) of a language? Most language resources are rich in grammar and vocabulary but sparse on pronunciation. 2. What is the language equivalent of the driving range, meaning what are the most effective ways to retrain mouth and tongue muscles on your own? (Immersive learning or speaking with natives may be ideal, but they are also more difficult to arrange.)
2 by panabee | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Everyone is born with the ability to speak any language accent-free, so biomechanically, it seems possible for someone to learn a foreign language and eventually speak with minimal accent or no accent. To draw a sports analogy, everyone is born with the ability to play at least one sport perfectly. We spend childhood training our mouth and throat muscles for this one sport and eventually become very adept. For example, individuals may perfect hitting a baseball but struggle hitting a golf ball. The differences between baseball and golf swings are large enough that it requires tremendous talent and dedication to translate expertise from one to the other. Assuming this sports analogy holds, a key step in developing accent-free pronunciation requires defining and learning the biomechanical fundamentals of the language "swing" -- similar to how beginners learn the fundamentals of a golf swing. The second step is transferring this knowledge from the mind to the body. With golf, this is achieved by visiting the driving range or golf course and repeatedly training our muscles to swing a golf club instead of a baseball bat. Questions: 1. How do you learn the "swing" (e.g., tongue and mouth movements) of a language? Most language resources are rich in grammar and vocabulary but sparse on pronunciation. 2. What is the language equivalent of the driving range, meaning what are the most effective ways to retrain mouth and tongue muscles on your own? (Immersive learning or speaking with natives may be ideal, but they are also more difficult to arrange.)
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