Despite being a native English speaker (born and raised in Bethesda like you in fact), I have an atypical manner of speaking. I tend to speak more formally, and I don't link words as much, or change the "t" sound into a "d" sound. I'm much more likely to say "should have" instead of "shoulda", for example. I definitely do not have the Baltimore accent when it comes to saying words like "water" or "Baltimore." I don't know what caused me to be this way: I tend to speak more slowly and more precisely, and that's helped tremendously in developing friendships with people who are not native English speakers who have found it easier to understand me than to understand other native speakers living in Montgomery County who have the typical mid-Atlantic accent. I studied Spanish in high school, but I didn't have much interest in it, and my teachers were not native speakers, so my accent was horrible. About 8 years ago I asked some friends from Colombia and Bolivia (as well as Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina) to help me to relearn Spanish, and I think my Spanish accent is much better now that I am practicing with and learning from native Spanish speakers every day. Practicing with native speakers is very important, and I've learned much more through chatting with my friends on WhatsApp and in person than I did through attending classes in school (that I wasn't particularly interested in back then to be fair). One of my peculiar traits, which I found out during college, is that my precise and more formal manner of speaking disappears when I get drunk. Not only do I link words together and slur my speech a bit more, but I somehow develop a more southern accent, which is very strange because neither of my parents grew up in the south. The most noticeable change isn't replacing the "t" sound with a "d" sound, but it's actually the way that I form vowel sounds when I'm drunk. Drinking a little bit can help with a language, but getting drunk is definitely not conducive to speaking a language better. One of the ways that I have learned Spanish grammar is to pay attention to the grammar mistakes that my native Spanish speaking friends make when they're speaking English. Usually these mistakes occur because they're using Spanish grammar and English words, and that allows me to see how they're constructing sentences in their head in Spanish and then translating them into English. I still mostly think in English and translate into Spanish in my head, but I've slowly begun to be capable of thinking in Spanish directly. The key to learning a language isn't to learn the vocabulary of that language, but to learn how to express ideas in that language. Words don't have a 1-1 correspondence between languages, but when we learn vocabulary, we're trying to force words into that 1-1 correspondence between languages (I'm a math person, so I'm using math terminology here). The key is not to form a mapping between a word in one language and a word in the other language, but to instead form the mapping between a word or phrase in a foreign language and a concept or idea in your head. I'm slowly getting there with Spanish, but it's hard for me because I'm more of a math person than a languages person. I'd love to start learning other languages, too. I've learned a tiny bit of Tagalog, Russian, and Portuguese, but only a few phrases. I really envy people who pick up languages easily. But I'm grateful that I'm a math person because I don't know how non-math people can function in life.
@LaomaChris11 ай бұрын
Love this! Thanks for sharing Gabriel
@osvaldobenavides508611 ай бұрын
Siempre he querido aprender Chino. Cual servicio o método recomienda Usted para empezar? Yo soy Cubano y mi esposa es de Honduras. Hablo español, Ingles, Frances, Portugués y Italiano, pero esas lenguas no me van a ayudar con el Chino! Gracias!
1:13 A founder of a multi-billion company in China was so self-conscious when speaking in public, he had to drink alcohol before and even in the middle of the lecture to keep it going.