I have niece-in-law who is native Quebecois. Her English is great, with a rich Quebec accent. All fine and good. But her job is school teacher and one of her classes is "English". I sometimes wonder about all her little students leaving school proudly fluent in English. Does their Quebec accent come from being Quebecois, or because they worked hard to mimic their teacher? Or are they going to get some "double-dip" accent?
Accents are funny. In my limited experience they tend to be much more influenced by general environment (parents, colleagues, media, etc) than by any one person. And they tend to be easily influenced by a change in environment, especially for younger people, so the students will probably be fine. Interesting though
I think it is a bit of both, and not only applies to the Quebecois, but to everyone who is taught English by a non-native English speaker. For instance, to us Finns, it is both our native language's phonemes and our English teacher's pronunciation that contribute to our Finnish English accent.
I have niece-in-law who is native Quebecois. Her English is great, with a rich Quebec accent. All fine and good. But her job is school teacher and one of her classes is "English". I sometimes wonder about all her little students leaving school proudly fluent in English. Does their Quebec accent come from being Quebecois, or because they worked hard to mimic their teacher? Or are they going to get some "double-dip" accent?
ReplyDeleteAccents are funny. In my limited experience they tend to be much more influenced by general environment (parents, colleagues, media, etc) than by any one person. And they tend to be easily influenced by a change in environment, especially for younger people, so the students will probably be fine. Interesting though
DeleteI think it is a bit of both, and not only applies to the Quebecois, but to everyone who is taught English by a non-native English speaker. For instance, to us Finns, it is both our native language's phonemes and our English teacher's pronunciation that contribute to our Finnish English accent.
ReplyDelete