Discussão:Sotaque

The wretchedness of phoneticians

eu nao sei falar ingles. I have been trying to highlight the problem of the origin of accents for 39 years, but no one seems to want to even try to understand it.

Anyone who does not learn a foreign language during early childhood will speak it with the sounds of their mother tongue, because adults can no sooner produce new sounds through ordinary practice than they can grow themselves a new set of teeth. Phoneticians fail to grasp this elementary truth and they are behaving like the officials in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes (and I am the one who says that the Emperor is naked).

I would like to ask you all one fundamental question: does a speaking process that lasts months and years leave its mark on the impressionable tissue of a child’s articulatory base or not? I call it the ‘nest of articulation’, but phoneticians see no changes here at all.

Phoneticians are short of words when in question is this problem. Is it possible to ask them how many adult learners have received help from the current theory of accent´s formation?

The question is examined in more detail on the Internet at www.hot.ee/lklaar Silence around the accent.

Leonhard Klaar Tähe 50-2, Tartu

Estonia