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Getting rid of my accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 9 of 84 20 August 2012 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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http://depositfiles.com/files/umcmk4khs
that may be it! sorry, about half a minute sound file takes 2,7MB... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 10 of 84 22 August 2012 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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It got a bit lost in the flood of new threads but it is still here and with the audio.
Thanks in advance for any advice. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tennisfan Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5359 days ago 130 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German | Message 11 of 84 23 August 2012 at 7:47am | IP Logged | ||
Okay... I've just listened to the file, and I know this is probably exactly what you do NOT want to hear as it's not going to help you with your original question, but I'm really sorry---if there is a native French speaker that, as you said, has refused to speak with you because of your accent, then that is just beyond the pale. I've heard some pretty bad accents by non-native French speakers, and yours is no where near bad. I think you can tell that you're not a native speaker, but that's pretty much it. Your pronunciation is clear, I understand you---maybe when you are not reading something but instead in a flowing conversation your accent is slightly different (mine is with some languages I speak). But I'm really grabbing at straws. I'm sure someone else will be better equipped to help identify exercises to help your with your accent, but I just had to mention that bit. When I read your OP I was expecting something practically unintelligible. Your accent is not bad at all and in fact is quite good. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 12 of 84 23 August 2012 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks. Good thing is, that it's not too bad. Bad thing is, I don't know what to do with
it. Funny thing-even two Czechs, for years living in France, didn't recognize me as Czech until I spoke it (but of course they heard I wasn't native just like the natives heard it). I have some accent and I'm not sure where is the source. When I speak without reading, I speak a bit faster but I have less tendency to get stuck (you wouldn't believe how nervous I was when audacity started recording. I am used to fast reading to myself, not to reading AND being understood). Perhaps the melody of the sentence might be to blame? Or stressing wrong syllable? I don't know. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6438 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 13 of 84 23 August 2012 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Take my comments with a grain of salt; my spoken French is very poor.
It seems to at least partially be an issue of prosody. You seem to stress syllables a bit too strongly, for instance. Overall, your French gives an impression of being a bit more choppy (like Finnish, Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Italian, etc), while native French speakers sound more flowing. Wikipedia claims "French words are sometimes said to be stressed on the final syllable, although French has no lexical stress at all: instead, prosodic stress (see below) is placed on the final syllable (or, if that is a schwa, the next-to-final syllable) of a string of words, which may be equivalent to a clause or a phrase. When a word is said alone, its last syllable is also the end of the phrase, so the stress is placed there." To me, it sounds like you're putting stress in most words instead. One thing I tend to find useful is carefully shadowing audio, in a variant of what I understand of Olle Kjellin's method. Extract short sentences from a recording of a speaker you like the sound of. Pick one sentence, listen to it it 10 times, then repeat it another hundred or so, alternating listening to it and repeating at the same time as it, carefully listening for any differences in stress and prosody. This might sound like a lot, but a short sentence is about one second long, and if you loop it in an audio player, the whole process will take somewhere around 5 minutes. Once this is comfortable, start alternating repeating with the recording and repeating without the recording (and, as it feels necessary, simply listen to the original recording too). This is surprisingly hard, as short-term auditory memory (echoic memory) only lasts a few seconds, but if you persist through the original discouragement, it becomes quite helpful. Be very careful not to mumble, and pronounce things exactly as clearly as the speaker does, with the same amount of reductions and contractions; if you get too caught up in the prosody and mumble over the details, it's useless, in my experience. I find it useful to use audiobooks as a source, as they're generally quite clearly spoken. If you don't have a model in mind for French, Pomme might do. I've had much more mixed experiences applying this method to improving how I pronounce particular vowels and consonants, but it's quite good for prosody. My ear for French isn't good enough to say anything about whether you need to work on your individual sounds too. Good luck, and tell me if you find this to be of any use - or useless. Edited by Volte on 23 August 2012 at 8:39pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| FELlX Diglot Groupie France Joined 4769 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 14 of 84 23 August 2012 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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You have a slight... Arabic accent, because of your pronunciation of the letter R.
"La prochaine étape : le déménagement" This R is correct. "Je suis à la recherche [...]" This R is... how to say that... over-guttural ? Some pronunciation mistakes (particulier, mille (the L you pronounced). Liaisons seem to be respected. Also, Volte is right about the prosodic stress. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 15 of 84 24 August 2012 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes! Thanks a lot!
I'll start my search for French templates :-) Not sure how much I can do about the R (but it might get unconciously better when I'm learning the prosody), the other consonants like L might be easier to fix. Correcting the prosody is definitely possible, it will just need some time. And good models. Btw situating my accent to Arabic made me laugh. You know, a few people have already asked me whether one of my parents is Italian/Spanish/Arabic based on the colour I brought from holidays. :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4487 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 16 of 84 29 September 2012 at 12:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Listening of a recording of yourself or letting others listen to a recording of yourself can be disconcerting.
However, it might be a very effective tool in becoming more aware of your own accent. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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