5th July 2016
Following on from last week's post on using the IPA with your classes, this week we ask: does your accent matter?
Teachers often get asked who speaks better English; the British, Irish, Australians, New Zealanders or North Americans?
Actually, the question itself is meaningless as currently, English has many variations (grammatically, lexically, and phonologically), which do not affect the quality of the language. To compare these differences is to suggest that language is defined one way or by country. Variations do influence a speaker’s pronunciation, grammatical usage, and vocabulary, but ESL instructors should not immediately assume that these are errors.
What is variation?
Let’s take a look at American and British English which have many different variations. Firstly, accents within their own country. Throughout the US and especially the UK, accents change dramatically, from Chicago to Dallas and London to Newcastle, native speakers sound quite different from one another. In fact, even vocabulary can change e.g. a ‘bubbler’ is a drinking fountain in Chicago but not in Dallas, and ‘howay’ is ‘how’s it going’ in Newcastle, but not used in London.
Between the UK and USA grammar is often used differently. Generally speakers from the US use the past simple rather than the present perfect to ask about an experience (e.g. ‘Did you go to Paris?’ instead of ‘Have you been to Paris?’). These are not considered errors, but rather variations as it does not affect intelligibility. Furthermore, English is used worldwide and now, more than ever, there are many different variations.
An assumption made when learning to speak English is that one’s accent holds responsibility for unclear communication. However, the culprit is mostly mispronunciation. ESL instructors need to ask “What denotes an error and what is a variation?" This is an important distinction to consider as mentioned previously English pronunciation can differ among speakers, but it does not necessarily impede communication.
Is it really an error?
Let’s expand by looking at a few more examples, starting with the International Phonemic Alphabet (IPA). There are different versions of the IPA, for example the General American IPA Chart (GA). A particular issue with the GA is in its irregularity regarding vowel sounds despite having less variation in accents compared to Britain (Thornbury, 2010). Nevertheless it is still considered an accepted difference, because it does not affect intelligibility.
Another typical pronunciation variant is dropping the unvoiced /th/ as speakers of Irish English may do, (e.g. three tends to sound like tree). Likewise Mandarin and French speakers generally convert an unvoiced/th/ to a voiced /s/ when speaking in English; this may be considered an error by some people, but is it? There is also a tendency not produce the third person ‘s’ (e.g. He like chicken). Again some linguists would argue this does not detract from communication (nor does it enhance the information being communicated, and may be considered a low-impact feature of the language).
The key question to ask yourself is: Does the difference impede communication?” if so, is it an error? And if not, is it a variation? As different variations of English continue to evolve and become standardized versions of English (e.g. Varieties of World English), it is necessary to rethink original pronunciation standards and the notion of what speaking English well actually means.