[lojban-beginners] Re: mp3 files: can you help?

[m.kornig@sondal.net]

Selon Matt Arnold <matt.mattarn@gmail.com>:

> On 6/3/07, m.kornig@sondal.net <m.kornig@sondal.net> wrote:
> > (2) I'm surprised (and a bit puzzled) by the variety of
> >     accents.
>
> Why? Almost all learners understand the pronunciation instructions
> differently,

I would say, if instructions are understood so differently they
aren't any good. Or at least they lack clarity and/or precision.
What's the point in instructions so many people seem to mis-
understand?

Also, I do believe that it's extremely difficult to explain about
vowel sounds without any sound samples.

> ... More importantly, so long as the phonemes are
> sufficiently different from one another that they won't be confused
> for other phonemes, accents are unimportant.

I don't quite agree, Matt.

People with strong accents are hard to understand. If you
speak to an international or multcultural audience you
don't talk to them in some local accent. You want to
choose some kind of "mainstream" or neutral accent. If
you do speak in a local accent you are arrogant or ignorant
or maybe both.

This holds for almost any language, I believe. And it
should hold for Lojban, too.

This is why I think accents ARE important.