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Learning to hear myself... | ||
Tags: Voice Recordings | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5647 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 1 of 5 19 January 2010 at 11:04pm | IP Logged |
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I had to record something for a friend to help them with their English pronunciation and was shocked to hear my voice!! It sounds so much sexier in my head :D
I tried recording my German too and was even more surprised... When I played it back it sounded so different to the way it sounds to me when I speak, the vowels are so much more English and loooads of other things but all this lead to the question how can I learn to hear myself? My thinking is that I won't be able to perfect my accent until I learn to hear myself, and the way I'm actually speaking as opposed to the way I think I'm speaking. My plan for now is to record myself everyday speaking English and then play it back a few times. Once I start to get better at hearing my English voice the way it actually is (which is sooo much higher than it sounds to me) I'm going to start recording my German and playing it back *shudder* it sounds soooo English... Does anyone have any other ideas of how I could do this or experienced anything similar? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| victor-osorio Diglot Groupie Venezuela Joined 5434 days ago 73 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian | Message 2 of 5 19 January 2010 at 11:35pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, once I noticed the same. But I've also noticed the contrary. Once, I recorded
myself speaking Italian, then listened to recording and it sounded so nice! Better than in my head. Of course, I became more confident... But with another recording session (in which I tried to speak English with a pretended British accent)... Oh, my god, I felt like I was Penelope Cruz! Since then I've learned that my natural way of speaking English is with an american accent. In London someone told me once that I have the "american twang". Well... Tell me if you achieve something recording yourself and then hearing that for sometime. I remember reading somewhere (not sure if it was here) that you speak like you perceive other speaks in your L2, but the problem is, most of the times, you are not perceiving a lot of the details in their speeches because in your language those details are meaningless. Then, when you hear yourself speaking you realise "it doesn't sound like other's speakers of my L2". I found that to be true in certain cases: for example, I had listened a lot to Italian speakers but until a few months ago hadn't realised that they pronounce the "S" like a "/z/" when it's inbetween two vowels. I hadn't perceived that until someone told me! I mean, the difference between an "s" and an "z" is insignificant in my language, so my brain assumed it was not an important part of the thing at all. But for Italians that difference is meaningful. Since I had learned to pronounce those "special S" like /z/, my pronunciation sounds so much better. Why don't you try to check your pronunciation with the International Phonetic Chart and some good dictionary who has the phonetic transcription of German words? maybe you'll discover where does your German pronunciation fails. You say vowels... isn't possible that German vowels and English vowels, instead of being more or less long, are actually different vowels according to the International Phonetic Alphabet? Check that... Edited by victor-osorio on 19 January 2010 at 11:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Zeitgeist21 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5647 days ago 156 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 3 of 5 20 January 2010 at 12:02am | IP Logged |
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I've never actually learnt the phonetic alphabet, I'll check it out!
I'm kind of in two minds about accents, half of me wants to not speak at all and to hit massive exposure for a few months but another part of me wants to practice actively until I get it perfect... I think for now I'll not speak but listen alot except for my daily recording. Maybe I should repeat lines from a film and then compare my recording with the film version. I'll post the results of my experiments soon though there might be a bit of a delay because I promised myself I wouldn't do any more German or listen to any more until I finish my school work which might take a couple of weeks.... It's my last year and I've been kinda neglecting my school work in favour of my German, just slightly ;) Edited by WillH on 20 January 2010 at 12:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| victor-osorio Diglot Groupie Venezuela Joined 5434 days ago 73 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 5 20 January 2010 at 1:32am | IP Logged |
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Another funny theory I want to share with you (I read this one from the "Polyglot"
article of wikipedia, I think): people who has a better accent usually are people who "acts" as a native speaker. That means those people have some kind of "second personality" or, to be fair, a different personality for each language they speak. They somehow change when begin to speak another language. Those people who have better accents, in fact, have a different concept for words of their second language, even if they mean the same. Weird, isn't? For example: perro and dog are the same. The animal with four legs. BUT for those people, dog is the animal with four legs they have when they were children and perro is the animal they saw on a picture while they were learning Spanish. That's why they seem to have "a different personality", because they redevelop again their whole concept-word system creating a new one for their L2. But people who doesn't "change personality" when speaking another language, are those who speak more fluently. That means, people who can speak faster without stopping to think how to say what they want to say. They use a same concept-word system for the two languages, just add the new languages words as synonyms of those words they already know. They tend to have bad pronunciation. It's just a theory some linguist believe in. So: - Best pronunciation -> not so fluent / different concept-word systems for each language - Worst pronunciation -> tend to be fluent / the same concept-word systems for all the words they know in every language Edited by victor-osorio on 20 January 2010 at 1:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| maecenas Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5551 days ago 21 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: French, Portuguese, Persian | Message 5 of 5 20 January 2010 at 3:22am | IP Logged |
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I had the exact same reaction the first time I recorded myself the first time in the language I was learning (italian). I couldn't believe how bad I sounded compared to what I thought in my mind!
So, I got a small voice recorder that allowed me to very quickly record small blocks and play them back immediately. I would record a small phrase, play it back, record another, etc. until I found one that I thought sounded off. Then I would repeat it over and over (record and play immediately) until I felt like it it sounded acceptable. The speed at which I could record and play back these small clips was key- it took several voice recorders before I found one I was happy with. I would highly recommend this method, I feel like it helped me a lot. I don't think you should wait- my opinion is that if you can tell it doesn't sound right, you know enough for this to work! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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