The colombian singer Shakira is fluent in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Catalan. She has some knowledge in Italian and French🌟 POLYGLOT CELEBRITIES PLAY...
She’s rather proficient at both Portuguese and Italian. She has a bit of a hard time distinguishing mid-open /ɛ ɔ/ and mid-closed /e o/ in both (see: PT “história” and “adora”, IT “scuole”), so you can kind of guess that she’s a native Spanish speaker, but past that her pronunciation is clear and fairly easy to understand - to the point that you can even pinpoint which varieties she’s taking (conscious or unconsciously) as pronunciation reference:
Portuguese - Paulistano for sure. She kept Spanish coda [ɾ] intact, but she’s raising the final vowels (even if not necessary).
Italian - Northern-ish, urban. She renders /s/ as [z] (Southerners would use [s]).
Her Italian prosody sounds a bit off, but I can’t pinpoint exactly why. She also realised “specialmente” with /s/ instead of /tʃ/, but this sort of “slip” happens. (At least she isn’t hyper-correcting “caso” if, in case into “cazzo” dick, like the pope did.)
Her English shows a rather thick American accent (rhotic, tapping), but that’s kind of a given (she lives there IIRC).
Great comment. She effectively communicates in all those languages, which is impressive. Who cares about her pronunciation mistakes or her accent ! Still, your analysis is interesting to understand the roots of Latin languages and how subconsciously we tend to phonetically use our mother tongue phonetics when communicating using other romanic languages and dialects. It happens to me when speaking specially French or Italian that I cannot avoid but using the tonic syllable of my native language.
I always say that, even is not a Latin/greek based language, I love how Swedish pronounce their English: in my experience, kind of trying to communicate efficiently and forgetting, as much as neutrally possible, about the accent. (To be said that later on I learnt that most Scandinavians also have a strong accent when speaking English).
I guess that the question is if to be considered a proficient speaker of a specific language, do you need to loose all traits of a foreign accent?
subconsciously we tend to phonetically use our mother tongue phonetics when communicating using other romanic languages and dialects.
Yup. The “posh” word for that is transference; you transfer features from all varieties that you speak into each other. It isn’t exclusive to Romance varieties, it’s just that among Romance languages you can get away transferring more stuff (as there’s a good chance that the feature in question also exists in the target language).
This gets interesting in Shakira’s Portuguese, because she is not transferring a few Spanish features into Portuguese, even if she could theoretically do so, and still pass as a native. A quick example of that would be how she pronounces “determinante” with [tʃi], even if plenty Portuguese speakers would use [te] instead, as you would in Spanish.
I guess that the question is if to be considered a proficient speaker of a specific language, do you need to loose all traits of a foreign accent?
It depends, really. There isn’t a single answer. For some, full proficiency is to speak a language as native speakers would; for others it’s just about being able to communicate with other speakers (native or not) efficiently.
Personally I’d consider the Swedish speakers from your example as fully proficient, as long as they’re able to communicate what they want.
She’s rather proficient at both Portuguese and Italian. She has a bit of a hard time distinguishing mid-open /ɛ ɔ/ and mid-closed /e o/ in both (see: PT “história” and “adora”, IT “scuole”), so you can kind of guess that she’s a native Spanish speaker, but past that her pronunciation is clear and fairly easy to understand - to the point that you can even pinpoint which varieties she’s taking (conscious or unconsciously) as pronunciation reference:
Her Italian prosody sounds a bit off, but I can’t pinpoint exactly why. She also realised “specialmente” with /s/ instead of /tʃ/, but this sort of “slip” happens. (At least she isn’t hyper-correcting “caso” if, in case into “cazzo” dick, like the pope did.)
Her English shows a rather thick American accent (rhotic, tapping), but that’s kind of a given (she lives there IIRC).
Great comment. She effectively communicates in all those languages, which is impressive. Who cares about her pronunciation mistakes or her accent ! Still, your analysis is interesting to understand the roots of Latin languages and how subconsciously we tend to phonetically use our mother tongue phonetics when communicating using other romanic languages and dialects. It happens to me when speaking specially French or Italian that I cannot avoid but using the tonic syllable of my native language. I always say that, even is not a Latin/greek based language, I love how Swedish pronounce their English: in my experience, kind of trying to communicate efficiently and forgetting, as much as neutrally possible, about the accent. (To be said that later on I learnt that most Scandinavians also have a strong accent when speaking English). I guess that the question is if to be considered a proficient speaker of a specific language, do you need to loose all traits of a foreign accent?
Yup. The “posh” word for that is transference; you transfer features from all varieties that you speak into each other. It isn’t exclusive to Romance varieties, it’s just that among Romance languages you can get away transferring more stuff (as there’s a good chance that the feature in question also exists in the target language).
This gets interesting in Shakira’s Portuguese, because she is not transferring a few Spanish features into Portuguese, even if she could theoretically do so, and still pass as a native. A quick example of that would be how she pronounces “determinante” with [tʃi], even if plenty Portuguese speakers would use [te] instead, as you would in Spanish.
It depends, really. There isn’t a single answer. For some, full proficiency is to speak a language as native speakers would; for others it’s just about being able to communicate with other speakers (native or not) efficiently.
Personally I’d consider the Swedish speakers from your example as fully proficient, as long as they’re able to communicate what they want.