Thread: Natural, temporary, common speech impediments

That's an interesting read. I won't even try to pretend I can give a qualified opinion on that. All I can say is that having some foreign object in one's mouth will definitely impede one's speech to varying degrees, based on how invasive that object is. This, however, brings back memories or rather a memory that might be very well related to what we're discussing here. I remember a native English speaker, an English teacher, living in a foreign country as a permanent resident, saying that there was one thing that had always struck him as odd. He, as a language teacher, made some observations about native speakers of the language spoken in the country he lived in. He, with a lot of excitement said this: "We have this common bathroom in the University I work at. A lot of teachers come there to brush their teeth after lunch and they all speak to each other while doing that and they can still understand each other very well even though in no way the can articulate like that." Keep in mind, I can't really recall the exact wording but the meaning. So, yes, I think it's clear that "temporary accent changes" as you put it would be more or less the same between native speakers under somewhat similar circumstances.

As for different food affecting your pronunciation... I highly doubt that. Some fruit could theoratically do that, like хурма, sorry I have no idea what the word for it is in English. Anyway, that fruit can often cause a feeling that all the cells in your mouth have suddenly shrunk Yeah, it can be a bit difficult to talk like that, not impossible though.

As for illnesses that affect your nasopharynx in some way... Yes, that will definitely affect your pronunciation, especially when it comes to nasal "problems" as the air flow might be somewhat hindered. Also alchohol, that will probably ruin your speech the most.

Other than that, I think you're trying to read too much into it. All of pronunciation "problems", when speaking a foreign language, come to just this, the language being foreign. When speaking your native language you don't have to think about how you should move your tongue, what emphasis you should put on words, how you should change yor pitch, etc... You just speak, all of that is just embedded deeply in your brain and in your muscle memory. When it comes to your second language, you have to keep track of all that. Essentially your tongue must move differently and you must control it, you have to watch your grammar, your intonation. In other words you're extensively multi-tasking and eventualy it exhausts you both mentally and physically. That's the case with me at least. While I could mantain my "English mode" pronunciation for a few hours, I would inevitably switch it all back to the familiar "Russian mode" bit by bit the longer I talked. It just was way too much load for me to not crumble under Yes, it would progressively become easier and easier for me, up to the point where I couldn't draw a line between the two languages any more, but that's a very slow process that requires constant upkeeping. Unfortunately most language learners don't have the luxury of having a lot of people they can often talk to in their targeted language.

It's very interesting that you also mentioned the difference between "native" and "learners" typos. I never really thought of it this way, but I can agree that you can often realize who wrote something by noting where they made their typos or more like analizing their typos. I, for one, often don't type an "s" in plurals, even though I had a proper plural in mind. I don't have the faintest idea why this happens though.

Again, a very interesting read. I just wonder why you really raised these questions in the first place. Is this just something you try to analize and maybe pick up a few useful things from or do you want to completely lose your accent when speaking Russian/Swedish?

Oh, I absolutely recognize that none of this really has any effect on the world in any way; it's just to think about and question. But also, these questions could offer small insights into how the human brain understands and produces language; and that's pretty cool.

Also, perhaps, by asking these questions we can learn just how deep the process of fully losing an accent really goes.

The part about food may be due to something that was talked about in a previous thread, about relaxed tongue placement, where Russians versus Englishmen rest their tongues varies(Russians low and at the bottom teeth, English pushed up and more at top teeth). Perhaps, this is non coincidental, and certain tongue "stances" prime us better for speaking under the various conditions, and since I speak with an English stance, even though with fine Russian pronunciation, I regardless find trouble in ways natives wouldn't. I would agree, while speaking one's mother tongue, no difference will be noticed,, "fish do not know what the water is",, and whatnot.

Psychology.
-This story I should preface with the fact that I have never in my life before this event had a headache... from anything, only in years after did I, and they came from coffee withdrawal; what I mean to say is, I am abnormally incredibly UN-inclined to having headaches. However, when first learning Swedish, about which I am and was much more casual than Russian, I spent sometimes 6 to 7 hours at a time in a skype call with about 5 swedish people, who all spoke some or a lot of English. We occupied that time playing games, which essentially acted as menial filler tasks to pad the ""conversation"". However, as things go, the day would go on and the group would shift more and more away from speaking English to speaking Swedish. I was okay with this, I wanted it even, to hear more native speech.
At that point in time, I spoke no Swedish; I had learned well the sounds that made up Swedish, and could discern to an extent what sounds were being made at me; however, those sounds only just usually formed distinct words for me, and never did I make out any words whose actual meanings I recognized, besides, naturally, the occasional "Jag" (I), which, as one can imagine, being it outside of a pragmatic context, gave no consolation of internalizing meaning to my weary linguistically exiled brain. What I noticed, was that after the many hours of mental exile, that is to say, being *lingually* shut out from the conversation, quite literally, alone in a crowd, I felt over me came a powerful fatigue, unlike any other feeling I'd ever felt. Entirely in my head, it wasn't any pain, like a headache, just a powerful, perhaps unironically *deafening* fatigue, through which the only thought that could form was "get to English". The constant bombardment, the extended period of "active confusion" eventually wiped out some reserve of attention I had. Now one would probably just say "You were obviously tired from using your brain for so long in that specified manner", and yes, you'd probably be right, that is pretty much exactly -all it is-, but what is interesting!- is how specific that tiredness was to the particular part of the brain I was using. I did not want to sleep, not to relax, not to eat, but yearn to *hear things I can understand*.

An interesting thing to tie to this story, is the way I have seen my peers, who are utterly uninterested in languages, become suddenly violently repulsed by any exposure to speech they can't understand. Some people I know find it unbearable to... "waste" anything more than a few seconds on, for instance, listening to a song in a language they don't speak.

About slurring and still being understandable: -I've found, in my very own speech, certain more common phrases can be slurred and boiled down to an atrocious extent and still be perfectly recognizable, if at least slurred loudly.

One such phrase would be: "I don't know"
Once shortened to "Idunno", all the consonants can just be, in a way, debuccalized, or loosened into oblivion, so that the phrase can come out as some abomidable series of muddy vowels:
ãâò. For the life of me I couldn't write it, it's like the I-u-o sounds together, all weirdly almost partially nasalized.

This may be a pretty set phrase, but the process by which we got to this strange pronunciation can theoretically be extended to include an entire sentence:
/a~uh~o-wá~~yr~a~i~a~où'/ (I have personally said this exact... sound...)

This flows into the ears of the listener and gets massivley postprocessed to an assumed result:
"I don't know what you're taking about"

Another random story even more off track: Sometimes I call people a "kime"... What is a kime, you ask? Nothing. Literally nothing. It isn't a word as anyone knows it. Yet magnificently, people become very offended when called it. I've only tested this in English settings, but it would be interesting to see how different speakers react to a fake word like this. For example, what series of sounds would function better in Slavic languages, as a fake swear.