"No matter how long you learn a foreign language, it never sounds as a native."
It is impossible to speak like a native speaker of any language unless you grow up in those environments . The only thing you can do is to have an aproximate perfect pronunciation, but it's never gonna be the same as a native. The best way to have the best possible pronunciation is by learning the sound system (manner and point of articulation) of the target language first of all.
***Do you agree?
I've never set foot on American soil, but when I tell this to people after they hear my English, they think I'm lying. I grew up speaking Ukrainian with my mom, Russian with my dad, so both of these accents come effortlessly for me. The Hebrew accent isn't quite as easy for me, even though I spent most of my childhood in Israel, but I've been able to do it. Also, it's not very hard for me to imitate Arabic accents, even though some of the phonemes are harder than the others and I experience some difficulty determining whether the vowel length is right. Getting the correct native pronounciation of individual words from other languages hasn't been difficult, either -- Polish, French, German, Icelandic, etc. -- but I haven't tried to expand beyond Indo-European and Semitic languages.
It is possible to sound like a native with work. In fact, there are professors here in iTalki who can help you and who have done it themselves.
The issue is that it really is an investment in time and effort well beyond simply learning the language enough that you can communicate well. I have improved my Spanish accent considerably since I started learning, but I found that I did not have enough time, energy, and motivation to learn how to sound like a native.
I believe in this fact, we can NOT speak as native speakers,we just struggle to get the most benefits of communicating with native speakers and practice. It is said in common, we have a maximum limit of our skill that due to how much the education system is perfect, how long time we spend in practice and how much efforts we exert. I am not sure about this, I have been struggling.
No, I would not agree. Many of my universuty professors speak like native Americans, although they have spent only several years in US. So I think it is possible to practice a good accent by talking to native speakers and by watching movies in English.
I think we can never achieve it because there is no such thing. For example, what is the standard american pronounciation?
We can only achieve an accent close to what is taught at a country's schools , which is more than enough in my opinion.
