This is a question for all the Dopers who learned English as a second language in school, college or any other educational institute.
I learned English for nine years at Gymnasiumbeginning in 5th grade in 1978, and at the time British English was predominately taught. Our early textbooks were mostly about private and public life in the UK (though later we also learned about American matters), and spelling and vocabulary was British English (though the alternatives for American English were always noted in the books). Our reference dictionary was the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. I still have my copy.
I’ve been noticing in the last years that many Germans, especially younger people than me, rather speak English with an American accent than a British one. This also applies to myself, today I rather tend to speak something that sounds like American, and my default spelling is also American (which of course has to do with the fact that I’m posting a lot on an American message board ;)).
I learned British English for 2 years (88 and 89 I think) but that was just the bare bones of the language, it was enough for me to continue learning by reading, (first the messages in computer games and then actual books), since most of the games and books were in American English I ended up knowing American better than British English.
Also since I learned from books my spoken English is very very bad
A great many people who learn English as a foreign language, reproduce it with an American accent. Either they learnt it from an American teacher, (or the teacher learned it from an American) or it’s the influence of TV and films.
I knew a young lady from Algeria who spoke fluent French and English. Flawless, fluent English, but with a French accent.
I know someone originally from South America who learned English in Tennessee. She’s mostly lost it now, at one time you could hear the occasional Southern twang in her voice.
The influence from TV and films was almost non-existent in my youth in Germany because almost everything was dubbed (and mostly still is). I’ve always thought that this gives people from smaller populated countries where that is not the case like the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries an advantage for adapting proper English pronunciation (you can clearly notice it). I got my pronunciation clues only from music.
I’m Dutch, we started with English in school in the last years of primary school. Then another 6 in high school. Still it feels like TV played the biggest role in learning English (and books). I noticed that when I did the Cambridge Proficiency Exam a few years ago… a lot of things I just knew Just because it sounded “right”. My work paid for it and they arranged classes…I was surprised to see that some people that seemed to sprak English well, really struggled once the topicd became a bit more colloquial.
I’m American, but I just want to comment that I noticed when I visited India most people speak English well, but they speak British English. They say “lorry” rather than “truck” for example. I assume that’s an artifact of their colonial past.
I once saw a TV movie about a Cambodian family who got to emigrate to the US. I think it was to North Carolina, or somewhere in the South. The eight year old daughther obviously was learning English by the immersion method. I saw the actual girl later, not the actress, and boy did she have an American Southern accent you could cut with a knife. This Asian heritage girl sounded like Scarlett O’Hara if you closed your eyes.
I was told, by a German, in the 1980’s, that a BBC accent was a requirement for a job with proper English as an explicit requirement. He spoke good English with a bit of a northern accent, and said that disqualified him.
I’d wish to know what job that was required for :eek:. In the eighties, fluency in English was still rare for Germans, let alone fluency in perfect British English. The only chance to have adopted that would be to have been raised bilingual or having spent time in a British boarding school, or maybe in a very exclusive private German boarding school we don’t have much of and which are very expensive, think Salem school.
Not English, but I learned French as a second language. It was very much formal (Parisian) French, and I rarely had a problem in work meetings with my largely Francophone colleagues, but found anyone veering into general conversation to be less understandable, as their speech patterns normally changed dramatically, much more rapid with a lot of slang and joual.
I worked for a German company in the mid-90s. German executives would rotate through the American branch regularly. I never heard any of them speak with a BBC accent. Believe it or not, they all had German accents.
You would know more than me about German proficiency but when I was stationed there in the late 80s/early 90s it seemed pretty rare to find someone who didn’t know English at least reasonably well.
I was taught British English in school (mostly 1990s). I was recently told by an Englishman that when speaking, I sound like a mixture of German accent with a Scottish accent.
When I started learning English in fourth grade in the mid eighties it was British English, but once we became semi-fluent we were allowed to use either, as long as we were consistent in our spelling.
And of course most kids leaned a bit American in accent due to the prevalence of US movies.
IME people from LA, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and other cities all sound different, so what standard is being enforced at these American language schools?
I believe the BBC itself no longer requires an absolute BBC accent.
My HS teachers were extremely confused (the ones I had before were just bad).
They were teaching me Her Majesty’s English, which in their view was the only Proper English there is. I spent a month in Ireland during my first Summer in HS. I’d never watched American media. And yet, somehow I’d ended up with what to their ears wasn’t the desired RP accent or a Spanish-influenced accent: it was, clearly, an American accent!
I’ve been known to joke that I was just called to go to the USA. I had the accent before I’d even landed! Not so much for American ears, true, but once I was there it took me a very short time to start being mistaken as a Midwesterner by Midwesterners. The greatest hint that I’m not from anywhere near Kansas is a name which definitely does not match American naming patterns.
Later, two years in Scotland kind’a grabbed my accent and drenched it in the middle of the Atlantic, oh well, and a lot of years of speaking English-for-foreigners of different nationalities have caused some serious butchery. But I still can recover my American accent pretty quickly if and when I set myself to it: more than one imbecile who’s made fun of my “broadened so the person with the worst accent in the room would understand me” English has been surprised when I suddently came out with something American TV stations would be perfectly happy to hire.
