on the native qualities

[Alina Israeli]

I am afraid that the focus on the phonetics in conjunction with the native
qualities of the language speaking misses some important points. I do
indeed know a number of Americans totally indistinguishable from native
Russians. In fact, one of them knows Russian slang much better than I do,
he spent years in pivbars collecting it, while I have never set foot in
one.

And yet none of it makes him a native speaker.

For example, for my linguistic research I constantly conduct tests on
educated native speakers who are not linguists or language teachers. When I
am short of Fulbright scholars, I send the questionnaires to the same
former Fulbright scholars in large numbers (to be passed around) or to my
old classmates (non-linguists). Whould I even dream of asking this
wonderful American? Absolutely not! For what purpose? I need a quick
intuitive reaction to a question, phrase, or situation. And the intuitive
knowledge is what's missing.

Let me give you a silly example from a class I took years ago in this
country, and my professor could easily pass for a native speaker. It had
something to do with suffixes and stress. So his first example was
"nos-nosik". Now take "moroz" he said - "morozik". The only trouble is that
it should be "morozec", and attaching a wrong suffix even for exercise
purposes grinds on my ear but not on his.

>* Speaking about actresses, Nastasia Kinski in a Moscow film "The
>Disgraced and Dispised" speaks like a Russian.
>Kinski also appeared in an English film "Tess".

I haven't seen this film, so I cannot judge. However, when she was a "hot
teenager" I read in some magazine about her upbringing: she was raised
trilingually, German, English, French. She was in some English boarding
school or something, while her early (I mean really early) career was
primarily in France, as far I recall. What I am trying to say is that those
who were exposed to several languages during pre-puberty have an easier
time of it picking up language. She certainly has some penchant for Slavic
(in addition to her Polish last name and a Russian variant of that Greek
first name): she gave Russian names to her first two children (Alesha and
Sonja?, I am not sure about the girls name).

I don't think the generalization works for all actors, while Meryl Streep
can master any accent, her partner Robert Redford could not produce even a
British accent when it was called for. In fact, every time an American
actor or actress does well the British accent it finds its mention in
papers, the same is true for Brittons mastering American accent. It is not
automatic despite the years of training.

Alina Israeli