When telephony began, back in the day, I found that the best way to communicate with the phone application was to sound very pissed off. My words became clipped, my consonants were sharp, the phone knew I meant business.
I have now cracked a similar code for DuoLingo Russian. I have had trouble getting points for repeating words back into the application. To my ear, my mimicry was perfect, but I couldn't get full credit.
With my new technique I can now parrot the example exactly. As you might have guessed, it is to sound as much as I can like Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Just a little "Moose and Squirrel" mixed in and I get full points.
It seems obvious now that one should use a Russian accent to make Russian words sound more convincing.
лось и белка!
Whenever I am talking to somebody whose first language is not English, I completely change the way I speak. It's slower, more clipped, and... assuming I am familiar with their native language... my English is accented so they can more easily recognize the letter sounds I am making.It's kinda a reflex... because I know if I was learning a language and somebody did that for me in their tongue, I'd be grateful. Last week I was on the phone with a work colleague and they said "you are speaking with a Russian accent!" and I didn't even know I was doing it.
Posted by: Dave2 | July 27, 2022 at 09:15 AM
Dave2 - I hope they appreciated it! I'd be afraid they would think I was mocking them. Then again, it takes me about five minutes before I pick up someones accent anyway.
Posted by: theQueen | July 28, 2022 at 08:31 AM
Hilarious!! I've been using Duo for over a year now for Korean and I'll have to give this a try. All I need now is a Korean cartoon character for inspiration!
Posted by: Lynn | July 29, 2022 at 08:02 AM
Lynn - How about listening to Baby Shark?
Posted by: theQueen | July 29, 2022 at 04:53 PM