I am a 39 year old man. Pretty much all my life I had accents that sounds foreign to native speakers. The problem is that I always had a problem hearing and noticing my own accents even though I have no problem noticing other people's accents. I have had many other issues that made diagnosis of the problem difficult. First of all I am a native of South Korea who immigrated to the US around when I was sixteen. Naturally most people simply assumed and continue to assume that I have accents because I was born in a foreign country. Except for the fact I always sounded strange even in my native tongue. When I was around thirteen I was treated for Ankyloglossia and had my frenulum cut. The doctors since then verified my tongue has normal range of movements. Okay that may seem explain my speech problem. But even before the treatment I could never hear my own accents and I continued to sound strange while speaking Korean to this day. To be clear if I record myself and playback I can clearly notice my accent (in both Korean and English.) But when I speak I simply can't hear my own accents so I had a great difficulty correcting my speech. As a side note people hearing me over the phone sometimes mistook me as speaking with German accent. Traditional accent training failed for me. My trainers got frustrated greatly because traditional methods of correcting accents just didn't work for me. If you watch a Pink Panther movie the movie makes fun of Inspector Clouseau as he grossly mispronounces English words. An English speaker corrects him by saying "You mean '" Then Inspector Clouseau protests "That's exactly what I said!" To me it was no laughing matter as that's how I felt all my life. I also have mild ADD and Asperger's syndrome although the symptoms subsided somewhat as I got older. I wondered if I have a form of aphasia or a form of FAS. But none of them seem to fit the bill exactly. Any suggestion or idea would be appreciated.
2015-02-03 03:47:41
Hello You are right: it is a bit difficult to figure out now whether there is an underlying problem that makes it difficult for you to reproduce the sounds of any language with the native-like precision. I am sure you have met other individuals who acquired a language in adolescence and can speak it fluently but still have a bit of an accent. This is not surprising because there is a time window in our lives when our brain is particularly sensitive to the slight differences in the sounds of any language and can learn to reproduce these differences with precision. This window is typically open from birth till 10-12 years of age. After that the brain becomes tuned in mostly to the native language of the individual and might not even notice slight variations in the sounds of other languages let alone mimic them. Often accent training programs can help reduce the accent to some degree but not eliminate it completely. Your experience of being able to hear your accent when your speech is being played back form an audio-recording but not when you are actually speaking is quite normal. Thus it is not surprising that you have an accent in English. What is more unusual is that you had the same problem in your native tongue. Additionally people who have the diagnoses of ADD and AS are more likely to have some processing deficits than others in the general population. One possibility is that you have some abnormalities in the auditory processing. If you are interested to get to the root of it find a clinic that does Audiology Auditory Assessment and get one for yourself. In this test the audiologist will use various apparatuses to check your ability to process auditory stimuli. Aside from that you can also get an assessment from a Speech-Language Pathologist. They will use different tests to determine how you can hear and differentiate the smallest units of language – phonemes; in other words your phonological processing. For the successful acquisition of speech we need to be aware of the smallest phonological units of language to have a good memory for phonological information and to be able to retrieve it from our memory in a speedy and efficient way. If some deficits are found perhaps they will be able to recommend some training programs to correct them (there is a number of good software programs which will make it cheaper for you). Hope this helps
2015-02-03 03:48:12
