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How to improve spoken English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5556 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 17 of 29 09 January 2014 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I also concur that modern RP is the accent to go for. The reality is that few foreign
speakers will ever develop a native accent and to overlay a regional accent (where you have no contact with the region) over one's native accent is a recipe for non- comprehension at best and be insulting at worst. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5253 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 18 of 29 09 January 2014 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | ||
If I may add my two cents, one of the issues that many Europeans have with English on the continent is too much exposure to non-native speakers' English. Their level of English may be high, still, it isn't native speech. Few people, outside of the BBC, the royal family, Shakesperian actors or university elites speak RP. I agree wholeheartedly with the previous advice of Cavesa:
We have a saying in English "the blind leading the blind" that covers what Cavesa is talking about. If you want to improve your use of, and speed in, English, try to spend more time with native-speakers (though this won't help you develop RP- since very few people actually speak it in everyday life. Start listening to the BBC Radio 4 or World Service. Better yet, get hold of a dvd set of "Downton Abbey", pick just one upper-class speaker to imitate and concentrate on imitating him or her to the point of almost doing an impression of the character. You'll have subtitles/closed captions to help you and if you search "subs2srs" in emk's posts you can practice until you sound as upper-class Brit as you can. Though I am doubtful you'll ever be satisfied. It just isn't very easy to have a great accent in a second language as an adult. Fortunately for second language learners of English, native-urban-English-speakers are generally very tolerant of pronunciation mistakes and foreign accents as long as they don't impede actual communication, mainly because the English-speaking world has so many immigrants who are native-speakers of languages other than English. Edited by iguanamon on 09 January 2014 at 9:10pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5719 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 19 of 29 09 January 2014 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I doubt Tristano's goal is to be able to fool people that he is a British upper class guy. It's about having good, clear, pleasant pronunciation. I have to disagree with the Downton Abbey advice. The language, vocabulary might be too formal and sometimes archaic. I wrote it in my previous post and others wrote it as well, journalists from the BBC would be best to try to imitate.
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| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4281 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 20 of 29 10 January 2014 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, it should be "I began" and "We began", and I meant irregular verbs as being the
class of strong verbs in the Germanic family. For a Romance speaker, it probably looks odd, but the strong verbs are unpredictable and need to be memorised and internalised. Even occasionally native adult speakers make mistakes here. And yes, in primary school, some of my classmates said, "I gived him the book", "But we runned yesterday", etc., but usually until around age 8 or 9. I had some classmates who were immigrants so not native speakers, and one classmate said things like, "Why come?" instead of, "How come?" and "I eated my sandwich already", "I throwed the bag in the rubbish bin", even at age 11-12. So I would suppose that the class of strong verbs needs more focus for non-native speakers, especially Romance speakers I made a mistake with "begun" because I thought about "I have/had begun" and "We have/had begun", but I should not have committed that error. It did not help however, Ithat I stayed up until ten in the morning last night (or today, technically). Also interesting how I sound like a non-native Anglophone--I wish I were, so I did not have to have people switch to English when I speak in Northern and parts of Western Europe--can I upgrade one of my learning languages to "native" in exchange? Edited by 1e4e6 on 10 January 2014 at 12:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4038 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 21 of 29 11 January 2014 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Guys, I start by thanking all of you for your answers. I'm too much tired to answer all in this moment, but tomorrow I
will do it! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| josepablo Tetraglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 3981 days ago 123 posts - 141 votes Speaks: German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Turkish | Message 22 of 29 11 January 2014 at 12:47am | IP Logged | ||
What do you mean by 'unpredictable'? They come in groups, and once you've learnt a few, some of the other irregular forms are predictable, at least somewhat so. But even if they are totally unexpected, they are still quite easy to learn. Why do I say that they are easy? Because you can learn them like lexical items, one simple past form (except for "to be" of course), and one past participle form. No endings, no accord du participe passé, no sweat. I sometimes come late. I came early yesterday. I've come to give you a piece of my mind. I write emails. I wrote three yesterday. I haven't yet written any today. He goes to the pictures once a week. He went last night. Where has the dog gone? and my sandwich? etc. What's difficult about that? And, besides that pesky "to be", there are NO irregular verbs in any other tense or mode (present tense/imperative/future/conditional), only simple past and past participle. 2 irregular forms instead of the nightmare of French verb tables. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4281 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 23 of 29 11 January 2014 at 1:28am | IP Logged | ||
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If a B2 English speaker is having problems with those verbs, then perhaps it is not so
easy. It is easy for a native Anglophone, and sometimes even on rare occasion, like I did, native speakers might make mistakes with those strong verbs. The same occurs in the other Germanic languages like Dutch, German, or Swedish. Even at a young age, those who learn in an Anglophone envrionment have not fully internalised them if they are immigrants, that is why my classmate said, "I gived the book to him" at age 11. Were it truly easy, the "-ed" at the end like for weak verbs would be the only ending, and the preterite would be, "gived", "eated", "throwed", "drinked", "beginned", etc. It seems easy for Anglophones, but those Anglophones have problems with the past participles "compris", "bu", "eu", etc. But those are considered very easy for a Francophone. I have also encoutnered Anglophones who find that "write/wrote/written" is easy, but cannot remember the preterite of "decir" in Spanish: dije, dijiste, dijo, dijimos, dijisteis, dijeron, or "dizer" in Portuguese: disse, disseste, disse, dissemos, dissestes, disseram. I have met people in university who can write long reports but still make an occasional mistake with "I drived home yesterday". It is all relative. Edited by 1e4e6 on 11 January 2014 at 1:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4038 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 24 of 29 11 January 2014 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here I am! So, thank you very much @pesahson and @montmorency and @iguanamon for all the input you gave me!
About a language swap, of course I can swap Italian with British English via Skype :) Of course I don't want to pretend to be a upper class British man, but I want to have a beautiful British-like accent that is nice to hear and also spontaneous in order to communicate really nicely at a business level. I will take your advices as gold! Thank you anyone for all the material provided in this discussion! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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