The British vs. American accent thread reminded me of something I’ve wondered about. Let me preface by saying that I speak only American English. I’ve taken classes in Spanish and French, but didn’t manage anything remotely like proficiency. I’ve forgotten most of it, as well.
I live in a pretty cosmopolitan town, and I interact with people for whom English is not their first language on a fairly regular basis. Lots of them speak the language well, but there are always some who haven’t really gotten the hang of it yet. So I occasionally can’t understand them, and must ask them to repeat what they just said.
As a speaker of English, when I’m not understood, I’ll slow down a bit on the repeat, as I find this aids comprehension. So do a lot of other people.
But there are many people that repeat themselves exactly as they said it the first time, with no modification at all. Leaving aside that it’s also a good idea to rephrase if you’re not getting your point across, why don’t they slow down?
My hypothesis is that their native language has some sort of dependency on the tempo, so they never even think of slowing down. In whatever language they’re most proficient in, slowing down would prevent understanding, rather than assist it.
Note: I am not a linguist, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Anyway, I’m thinking that maybe the tempo has something to do with comprehensibility. I do know that when people speak fast, the sounds that come out of their mouths change. Native speakers usually do and understand this automatically somehow. I think the example I recall is that if you say m (just mmmmmm) when you speak fast it starts to sound a lot like b (just the sound that b makes) because the mouth has to move to whatever sound it’s going to make next, and that gives a bit of a little plosive, that in the end is what separates m from b.
So, if you’re just learning a second language, your teacher probably speaks slowly, so you’re just more used to how things sound slow, that getting to understand the transformation when it is spoken faster can take a lot of effort and guessing.
All this is to say that there might be a language out there that depends on the differences of speed that restrict the range where a speaker will be comfortably able to actually get the sounds out. And then, perhaps not.
Also, the m is allowed to vibrate through the nasal passages. That’s why people with a stuffed nose make m’s that sound like b’s.
(Also not a linguist, just a fan of phonetics. If phonetics had a football team, well, I still wouldn’t watch foodball. But I’d buy some of their merch.)
I’ve heard of languages in which length is phonemic (Attic Greek, e.g.), such that you’re limited physically in how quickly you can enunciate them, but I don’t know of any mechanism by which a language can be limited in how slowly you can enunciate it.
In my personal experience rephrasing when repeating seems to throw at least some people for a loop - I have been asked “Yes, but what did you say before?”
In German vovel length is definitely more important than in English, and it does not limit how slowly you can speak German.
I would be astonished if there were some language whose comprehension wasn’t improved by speaking slower. The fact that some people haven’t caught on to speaking slower doesn’t prove a thing. Some people never catch on to all sorts of things.
Thanks for this. It’s good to have some details cleared up.
Also, maybe if you speak really slowly, it is possible to understand every word more clearly, but then not understand the sentence because by the time the speaker gets to the end, the listener has forgotten the beginning. This has happened to me (on the listening end) every now and again. I’m not sure if that sort of thing is what the OP wanted though.
IAMNALinguist, either, but have had experiences with Swabians (who have the worst dialect I think of the Germans), and I think it’s simply a personal problem, that is, some people haven’t learned to slow down. They think they are speaking slower and clearer, but they aren’t really. If these persons had regular and often contact with non-native speakers or if they would try and practice, they could certainly learn to speak slower and enunciate clearer, but since they get by mostly with their won group, and not being understood by others has no signifcant negavtive effect on them, they continue rushing.
You could compare it to some people who always talk in a whisper or in a shout, even when you tell them to speak up/ hush down, they try but there’s no noticeable difference.
Well, stretching the definition of ‘language’ perhaps, but many computer communication protocols have some timing elements hard-wired (modems, etc.), so you can’t always slow them down arbitrarily or at all.
Maybe even more of a stretch but magnetic card readers require motion to read anything. Slow the card down enough and there’s not enough signal to read.
Pro tip: if you’re having trouble getting a swipe machine to read a card, speed up when you swipe, don’t try and swipe more slowly, which usually makes things worse.
When I took Spanish in high school and the teacher was speaking too fast, we’d ask him to slow down. He pointed out to us that when he ask someone to slow down we dooon’t meeeaaannn streeeetch oooouuuuut theeee vooooweeeels, what we really want is to. pause. between. each. word. I found this to be true. It’s easier to understand someone if they stop between each word so you have a chance to figure out what they are trying to say before they get to the next word.
That would be Bavarian IMHO . Non-Swabian German here - when I moved to Swabia I first thought the older indigenes were all longtime alcoholics or had had a mild stroke. And that was when they thought that they spoke standard German.
Yes, I mean, that in my personal opinon*, Swabian is most difficult to understand for native speakers of High German, and their inability to either slow down or enunciate more clearly makes this worse.
While Bavarians also gargle in the back of their throat, they can make an effort to slow down and then you can guess at least half back to standard German.
I can’t think of an objective way to measure “most difficult to understand for standard speakers” dialect
I always liked this line when learning Spanish: “Yo loco-loco, y ella loquita.”
When I was teaching my wife English, I’d find that I’d always pronounce words differently when speaking slowly versus faster. It’s why we have all of these bastardized, pseudo words like “chillin’” and “goin’” and “wanna.” To some extent, things like this happen in Spanish. To use an extreme example, I learned central Mexican plateau Spanish, but have a coworker who’s Puerto Rican. I’ve got to ask her to slow down all the time when she’s not speaking English. On the other hand, now that I’ve gotten somewhat used to her, I can go to coastal Mexico with a lot more confidence (they do a lot of the same cutting of the language).
. Non-Swabian German here - when I moved to Swabia I first thought the older indigenes were all longtime alcoholics or had had a mild stroke. And that was when they thought that they spoke standard German.