Last night we had a real treat at language class: a guest! A few weeks ago, our teacher had told us about a friend of hers who was back in town. She had been here, but moved to London for work. We mentioned that we would like to meet her, and then left it like that. Well, last night, this girl came into language…and then Marijana told us who she was.
The first wrods out of her mouth were amazing…her British accent was…how should I say…spot on 🙂 At least to my American ears, she could pass for being a Britisher…no problem. Then, we asked how long she had been in London–in Serbian, of course–and found out she had been there for 9 months. We thought she had been there for a period of years…not just months. I was floored and thrown off balance the entire time because of this. I was just fascinated with her accent.
After more conversation, it turns out that in university she had studied linguistics and worked long and hard on her accent. We were able to talk about 1/2 and 1/2 English/Serbian with her. But more importantly, for me, she gave us some good pointers on accent development. I think the biggest or most important one was spending time observing where people put their tongue and shape their mouth. Then, practice practice practice in front of a mirror till you get it right.
So, if you are headed overseas, think about that. I’d say if you could get a video of your language teacher saying a bunch of words, then you could simply watch that and practice. Perhals you ought to have two cameras…one to focus on the mouth (a close-up type shot) and one to focus on general mannerisims. Then, you could get both subleties of non-verbal communication as well as that extreme close-up of the mouth, tounge, and lips.
Oh, you are probabaly wondering why the candy corn picture. Well, our friends from VA who came brought us tons of stuff. Part of what they brought us was candy corn. We took some to language last night to share with our language teacher. Turns out, she loved it (who doesn’t like sweet stuff). We also shared some pumpkin–well, sort of–with her. But, I’ll leave that for another post (we have pictures to share about making it).