Asking about travel experience: How to understand various English with local accents?

In many years of work and travel, Fei Xiong often fell asleep while listening to Indian English, and was suddenly awakened by Japanese English. Finally, after a great enlightenment, Fei Xiong could understand some words from Friends from different countries speak English. I believe that the experience accumulated in the process will be helpful to travel friends who travel to various countries, so I wrote it as follows. First of all, let me state that this article is not for those who have prepared for CET-4 or CET-6 and other English exams. Feixiong has just passed CET-4 and is still a few points short of CET-6, so he is not qualified to write any articles aimed at helping improve his English test scores. Secondly, it must be said that learning English is only the first step to going out into the world - after all, most airlines and international hotels provide English services. If you want to have more interactions with local residents at your destination, it would be better to learn some local dialects. Of course, there are too many types of local dialects, and it is difficult to learn them during a short trip. You can consider contacting some languages ??that are widely used. For example, in addition to English, knowing some Spanish and French will improve your knowledge in Africa and Latin America. Mobility. 1. Segmented geo-cultures cause differences in pronunciation standards. First of all, it is unrealistic to expect people from different countries to speak English with the same accent. Just like the tones of Mandarin spoken in mainland China and Taiwan are different, Mandarin in Taiwan is obviously "softer". This difference has become standard - that is to say, this difference already exists when the official media of the two places speak Mandarin. There are many similar situations. For example, compared with Cantonese in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, Hong Kong is also "softer". In the same way, you can also compare the Korean language in North Korean news and Korean dramas... Feixiong believes that this is the result of the impact of geographical divisions in history on language. The same goes for English. There are also considerable differences in pronunciation between the two countries where English is the mother tongue: the United Kingdom and the United States. British pronunciation is "harder" and requires less tongue curling. The United States is very different. Today's Standard American English, which has more retroflex sounds, is actually closer to the English of the 17th century. The subsequent development and changes of British English did not continue in the United States. This shows that although the United States has maintained close ties with the United Kingdom from beginning to end, differences in pronunciation standards can still occur due to geographical separation. On this basis, the accents of countries that are heavily influenced by the British will be relatively close to the British, and the same is true for the United States. Feixiong feels that Australia is more typical. As a Commonwealth country, its English accent is closer to that of Britain, which has a "harder" pronunciation. Australian English seems to be "harder" than London English. The most interesting thing is that many words similar to [e] and [ei] are pronounced a bit like [ai]. For Feixiong who is used to American English, there is always a feeling that is completely different. feeling. However, if you master such a rule, Australian English can be easily solved. 2. The influence of mother tongue on accent. Pronunciation standards are one thing, and each individual who speaks English is another. They may have a local dialect accent, or English may not be their native language. As a second or even third language, English speech is influenced by the native language. The most typical one is that when certain English syllables do not exist in the mother tongue, similar pronunciations in the mother tongue are used as "substitutes." Indian English is really difficult for Feixiong to understand. On the one hand, it has many local pronunciation characteristics. On the other hand, as one of the official languages ??in India, English has a very high penetration rate, so the locals speak it fluently, giving people the impression that it is "fast and inaccurate", so listening to It is very difficult to understand. I don’t know if it’s because there are no voiceless consonants in their mother tongue. Many Indians will use the corresponding voiced consonants instead when speaking English. For example, [t] will become [d]. In addition, the sound [r] is not pronounced well. Sometimes it becomes a bounce sound [rrr], or sounds like [l], so there is a joke that Indian English will say totally different as "dodally diflend". However, , after knowing which syllables they tend to make mistakes on, you can guess eight or nine correctly when you hear similar sounds and pay attention. There are not many people in Japan who can speak English very well. Because many English syllables are not found in Japanese. For example, [?], and Japanese must have single vowels except n, which means that the compound vowel ai may be pronounced as a-i, and [r][l] is not separated, and [f][h] is not separated. So Japanese English sounds a bit different. Feixiong once held an English conference in Japan.

The other party had been talking for three minutes. Fei Xiong thought the other party was speaking Japanese and did not change the channel. In fact, this friend has already started speaking English. The English level in some European countries is not as good as we think. You will get the feeling if you go around Europe. Theoretically, European countries are so close to the UK and there are frequent exchanges. There should be many people who can speak English. It was difficult for Feixiong to understand at first. Later I learned that these countries do not advocate learning English. It may be that the Commonwealth was too powerful in the past, which made those neighboring countries who were once equals feel sour, so they have a certain rejection of British culture and even language, especially official. Some European colleagues told Feixiong that their English needs to be learned at the university level or on their own, and cannot be learned in primary and secondary schools. This increases the difficulty of mastering English. Fortunately, Europe is rich in languages, and everyone is a genius at learning multiple languages, so there are still quite a few people who can speak good English through self-study or university study. Just don't think it's too weird when Italians speak English. Of course, Chinese people also have similar rules when speaking English. For example, there is no [sh] sound in Chinese, and it is usually pronounced as [x] in Hanyu Pinyin. In other words, the lips are not prominent enough. And [tr] is often pronounced as [c] in Chinese Pinyin, because the lips are not strong enough to protrude. There are also Chinese people who are not sensitive to long and short round sounds, because the length of vowels in China is the same. If you want to listen to the purest Chinese English, you can buy a ticket from a domestic airline and enjoy the fast and accurate Chinese English service throughout the journey. It feels like you are in India. What Fei Xiong felt most deeply was when he took a China Eastern Airlines flight last year. The flight attendant had to pronounce "Better City, Better Life" instead of "Butter City, Butter Life", which made me tired for several days. Occasionally, Fei Xiong couldn't help but want to express his heartfelt praise when he met a flight attendant who spoke well. Of course, this is normal. Just like foreigners who learn Chinese will be stumped by the four Chinese tones, because tones are something that most languages ??do not have, and this alone can put most foreigners off. 3. Experience in communicating with people with strong accents. After ten years of English classes, Fei Xiong never remembers the teacher teaching this. However, this is an objective problem that you have to face when communicating in English when traveling. As analyzed earlier, it is impossible to expect everyone to speak standard English. So what should you do when you need to communicate in English while traveling? 1． Pronunciation Problems As for the common pronunciation errors in a country, you can actually understand them easily as long as you find out their rules. After listening to it for a while, you need to build a "conversion formula" in your head. For example, pronouncing "t" as "d" is a problem with some local accents. When you hear a syllable like "d", you need to Think about whether the other person is actually pronouncing the "d" or possibly the "t". In fact, we often use this point when distinguishing various dialects of Chinese. If you have just arrived in a place and there is no such set of "conversion formulas" yet, for words you don't understand, ask the other person to speak slower, or even write them out, so that you can know which chapters the other person's pronunciation is different from our expectations. To "draw inferences from one example to other cases", you can slowly adapt after a period of time. 2. Vocabulary issues In a new environment, there must be some well-known local vocabulary that we do not understand. This is also one of the main reasons that affects understanding. Learn every unknown word as a new vocabulary and ask the other party to explain it. Ask why? Generally speaking, new vocabulary is always limited. Learn more and communicate more, coupled with good memory, you will definitely experience the joy of communication. 3． Grammar Issues Like accent, grammar is more easily affected by the grammatical structure of the native country. Feixiong’s experience is not to care too much about the English grammar of people from non-native English speaking countries, because their grammar may not be too rigorous or even correct. The main thing to pay attention to is listening to keywords, which are basically enough for communication during travel. When you speak, you should also keep your grammar as simple as possible, and use less complex language structures that you are not good at, to prevent the other party from becoming dizzy. 4. Pay attention to expressions and body language. There is a theory that when two people communicate, only 20% of the information is communicated through language, and the remaining 80% is through body language such as expressions and postures. Of course, when language communication is not smooth, you must be better at using other means. Nowadays, everyone has a mobile phone. If you don’t understand something, the worst case scenario is that you can just let the other person type it out on the phone while talking! This way you will know the pronunciation characteristics of the other person. It is basically a summary of my own experience without quoting too much information. You are welcome to add any omissions.