Discussion Post 6

[Nile Harris]

Not much has changed. I have gotten to the point to where I have set my mobile phone system completely into Portuguese. One thing that I found very useful from the lectures in class was the speech accent archive. There are so many different Portuguese accents and the speech accent archive really helps me understand the phonetical inventory between different Portuguese speakers across the world. There was also another resource in class that I forgot what it was called. With this website, you can speak in a language and it will type out what you have just said and talk about your accent accuracy. I think that resource would be very useful in helping you speak correctly. The resources given during the lectures have really helped me a lot to say the least. To improve my communicative competence, I just need to practice speaking a lot more. Language and culture have always been linked to each other. They go together like peas and carrots. Languages are linked to a specific group of people from a specific geographical region. Overtime we have seen languages globalize through conquest and imperialism. 

[Tommy Na]

Wow Nile, that is so awesome! I once tried changing my phone to Korean but it made authenticating things difficult for me which led me to change back to the original language I use. I agree it helps with learning common vocabulary and picking up system software that I previously would not have done without having changed language settings to improve language skills!

[Vivian Shon]

Nile, 

It is very impressive that you can reset your phone system into Portuguese! I bet this allows you to really hone into technological Portuguese words, so I also might give this a try and turn my mobile system into Korean. Also I agree that ultimately, practicing speaking is the best way to truly improve in a language. Even when you don't have a language partner, it would be awesome to find tv shows and movies in Portuguese to try re-iterating and understanding what they are saying. 

[Marco Barcenas-Consuelo]

There are definitely a lot of different Portuguese accents throughout the world and even Brazil! Compared to the US, I have found out that Brazil itself has so much variability when it comes to accents, where speech sounds are completely different in the northern parts of Brazil than the south. One app I know that also assesses accent accuracy is Mango Languages, as it overlaps your speech with that of a native speaker and provides feedback.