A recent study shows that around 80 percent of French people are quite conscious when it comes to their foreign language accent.
Familiarity with the foreign language accent
For non-French speakers, we are quite very conscious of our French fluency. We try to pronounce and utter those lovely French syllables correctly and with the right slang. Little do we know that around 80 percent of French speakers are also quite as conscious as we are when speaking a foreign language accent.
Ipson conducted a study on 500 French participants regarding their fluency over foreign language accents, especially English. The results came out that only eight percent are confident speaking in a different language, 33 percent felt anxious, 24 percent are uncomfortable, and 11 percent considered the task embarrassing and with a great sense of discomfort.
According to Christine, 46 years-old and a real estate agent,
I find it uncomfortable and pretty close to shame.
Christine can speak English, and it’s just the accent that she’s quite worried about. Since French has a different slang compared to English, she feels that her accent makes her sound ridiculous.
She added,
Even our English teachers way back then have really bad accents.
The issue is the accent
Based on the study, 44 percent of the respondents blamed their accent on their feeling of awkwardness when speaking a foreign language. Twenty-five percent fear that their accent makes them difficult to understand. Around 19 percent are worried about how other people say about their accent, and only 20 percent are quite confident with how they speak.
One of the respondents is a 35-year-old kindergarten teacher. He is quite fluent with his English, but still, he considers himself lacking the confidence to get over being conscious of his accent.
I have a really good vocabulary, but because of my accent, I’m worried that others might not understand me.
It’s a global thing
Over 7500 participants of the study on a global scale, more than one-third of the respondents shared the same feeling of anxiety over the accents when speaking foreign languages.
Among the top of the list of most accent-conscious countries are from Canada, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
