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Getting rid of my accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4826 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 17 of 84 29 September 2012 at 2:48am | IP Logged | ||
The good news is, that if you listen to yourself often enough, you get used to the sound of your own voice as others hear it (or more or less as they hear it), so that self- consciousness (for want of a better description) goes away, and you can concentrate on the sounds more objectively. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5667 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 18 of 84 29 September 2012 at 9:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Just this week I met two Czechs in Mancester in the UK who had startlingly different accents in terms of speaking English.
The first was a Czech man who has been in Manchester for eight years, and for quite a while I thought he was a native of Manchester. His accent was astonishingly authentic. It must have been a good five minute before I asked him whether he was English or not. He explained that accents just come easily to him, then switched to speaking with a Liverpool accent, then a Glasgow accent. It was an enviable talent, since he claimed to put no effort into accents - he said he just absorbed them. The second is a Czech woman who has lived in a small town just outside Manchester for nineteen years. She had a very heavy Czech accent, and even I strained to understand some of the things she was saying in English. She told me she does not mix with Czechs, her husband and children are English, she works in an English-language environment, and has worked very hard at improving her accent, all without success. Of course, these are only two examples, but I have seen similar examples before, where some people absorb accents effortlessly, others improve them with effort, and others never seem to improve at all. I remember reading somewhere that a lot of people who have difficulty with accent are not having speech difficulties, but rather hearing difficulties, since they cannot hear the subtleties in pronunciation that distinguish one accent from another. When they try to reproduce a word they hear their own pronunciation as correct (or close to it). I actually asked the Czech woman (mentioned above) if this were the case with her, and she told me that it actually was: she listened to sounds, and repeated them, believing she was doing well, only to be told by others that she was way off target. So, I do wonder if the first step in improving ability with accents is to improve listening ability. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4826 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 19 of 84 29 September 2012 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that would be an excellent candidate to replace "our motto" (as in "Please remember our motto: “If you can't spell it, don't write it.”) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hiiro Yui Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4715 days ago 111 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 20 of 84 29 September 2012 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think so. I've been trying to improve my Japanese accent for some time, now. While it's true that I'm one of those that can't self-correct their accent, I am capable of following instructions. It's frustrating when I tape myself and show it to people who should know how to help me, but all they say is "try harder" or "listen more closely". I need to be told in detail exactly where to put my tongue and lips, how hard to breathe, and how to vary my pitch from moment to moment. If someone with a talent for accents would tell me that, I think I would make progress.
Of course I'm trying my best. Of course I'm listening closely. It's just not enough because even though I think I sound pretty darn close sometimes, they tell me I still sound foreign. It's kind of like teaching someone to whistle by telling them to listen more closely. I am not Japanese, therefore I do not possess their physical dimensions. My throat, tongue, lung size etc. are different. Doesn't this contribute to my voice? Yes, when listening to my recordings, I can tell it's my voice but I can't change my voice--I was born with it. Given that, how close can I actually come to sounding like I was born in Japan? Edited by Hiiro Yui on 29 September 2012 at 8:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Goindol Senior Member United States Joined 6072 days ago 165 posts - 203 votes | Message 21 of 84 30 September 2012 at 4:06am | IP Logged | ||
How do Japanese Americans born with physical dimensions different from yours -- throat, tongue, lung size etc., learn to speak English so well? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5379 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 22 of 84 30 September 2012 at 4:54am | IP Logged | ||
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If you are going to improve your accent in any way, you need to know what you are doing
wrong. Not just a vague impression from what others have told you (99% of people have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to pronunciation), but you need to understand what is physically making your sounds appear off... and you need to learn to feel how the current sound and the goal differ. So, first of all, you need someone to listen to you -- reading a text can serve some purpose, but you need to accompany that with a session of natural speech. Reading a text makes you do all kinds of weird things and it never sounds natural. However, it does allow you to rehearse the result a bit. Still, I'd much prefer you rehearse a spoken discussion than read a text. I've held a few personalized "analysis" sessions where I sit with the person, chat and take notes, and then, after about a half-hour, I give them the run down of the most important things they need to fix. Because there is some hierarchy of seriousness. Most of the time, people are completely unaware of most of what I tell them. More discouraging, though, they also have no idea how to fix it because most people cannot -- at least not immediately without training -- feel how tongue and mouth movements translate into specific sounds. I think it's this element of control that's hardest to acquire. I think self- experimentation and exploration are the most effective way to do this -- spend a lot of time slightly modifying the sounds you make and listen to the difference it makes, both in L1 and L2. I'd like to listen to the file you posted, but I only have my iPad right now and I can't open it. You could perhaps create a Dropbox account, put the file there and provide us with another link? Create free Dropbox account (Warning: this is an invitation under my own name. I fully trust and endorse Dropbox and I've been using them for years.) Edited by Arekkusu on 30 September 2012 at 7:34pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5379 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 23 of 84 30 September 2012 at 5:06am | IP Logged | ||
Your physical attributes have nothing to do with it. There are natural-sounding Japanese people of every imaginable sizes, shapes and configurations. The problem is not there. In some cultures, people do modify the way they speak out of cultural habits, but all these modulations are available to everyone. There are technical ways to explain exactly how the sounds you make differ from how they should sound. Some people can figure it out intuitively, but it's very not common at all. I think I'm such a person, and with regards to Japanese, but I've been told at times that I said sentences that sounded native, but as you know, the darn issue of pitch is a tough one to fix, and I just don't have the time to work on that to my liking right now. I pointed out a few things you could improve a while back (have those improved?) -- I'd like to give you better advice, but Japanese is my 5th language, so I'm not exactly the best person to ask. You need a Japanese person with some linguistic training and insight. Unfortunately, that's not exactly easy to find... Perhaps a foreigner who did acquire near-native ability? I can tell you though , from the videos I saw of you earlier, that I would recommend making a recording where you record the voice very clearly and where you concentrate on slower, more natural speech, as in a relaxed conversation or monologue -- both these things will make it easier for the listener to pinpoint exactly what's happening. Edited by Arekkusu on 30 September 2012 at 5:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hiiro Yui Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4715 days ago 111 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 24 of 84 30 September 2012 at 5:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Goindol,
What you're saying is that if I had been born in Japan and spent my entire life there, my physical attributes would have no effect on how Japanese I sound, right? Sure, I would have a perfect Japanese accent, but isn't it possible the characteristics of my voice would be different from people with Japanese physical characteristics? Besides, different Japanese people have different voices. How am I supposed to know which voice type to mimic based on my voice? To be clear, I'm not talking about accent differences. I mean, I will try to sound as close as possible to Japanese people, but just as there are physical limits to me sounding like a child or old man, aren't there physical limits to me sounding like Japanese people my age? Is it possible for me to sound so much like them that I can't recognize a recording of my own voice? Edited by Hiiro Yui on 30 September 2012 at 5:12am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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