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Getting rid of my accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5324 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 25 of 84 30 September 2012 at 5:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
This is an absolute truth: it doesn't matter what your physical attributes are (except for obvious defects), if you grow up learning a language, you will sound like a native. There are tons of people who are adopted into families of different ethnicity and sound just like them. This - is a fact.
And this is exactly why I think shadowing is BS. Ok, shadowing can help you improve, somewhat, but it is NOT the key to a perfect accent. On the contrary, one can only attain a near-native accent in their own natural voice after having been exposed to various different voices -- it's not the voice that matters, but the underlying phonological processes. For instance (if you forget about gender-specific or age-specific sociolinguistic differences), an adult man could sound native from only listening to young girls, or a young girl would sound native even if she were only exposed to old men. Shadowing cannot be an exercise in imitating people's voices. Ultimately, you need to reproduce instinctively the phonological processes that others use, whether you do it in a high or low pitch voice is irrelevant. What matters is how much nasality you give your vowels, how much aspiration you use after consonants, where your affricates are produced, etc. And this, you can do anywhere, anytime, when listening to anyone. It doesn't have to be a rehearsed speech, it can be a word or a phrase you heard someone say and you try to repeat it with the same phonetic and phonological features, and whether you do this in a high or low pitch, male or female, old or young voice is irrelevant. Edited by Arekkusu on 30 September 2012 at 5:27am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Hiiro Yui Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4660 days ago 111 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 26 of 84 30 September 2012 at 5:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Arekkusu,
Thanks for your reply. I sure like to think that my pronunciation improved since you gave me those tips. I'm proud of my t sounds now because no one has said anything is wrong with them yet. I heavily rehearsed those news stories so I would remember the pitches. I'm still in the phase of experimenting with everything, so I haven't incorporated that style into my unrehearsed speaking. I sound really akward, but I guess I should go ahead and make a video of it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 27 of 84 30 September 2012 at 8:14am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Here is proof - 2 white men raised in Japan 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5636 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 28 of 84 30 September 2012 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Cool video, thanks for sharing it! I liked listening to David speak, even if I don't know enough Japanese (read: any at all) to be suitably impressed. However, it looks like the other guy, Ken Tanaka (or David Ury) is not actually Japanese... a few sources on the internet claim that he is a native English speaker who invented the character of "Ken Tanaka". Nothing against that, of course – and his Japanese is clearly very impressive – just wanted to spread the facts.
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5324 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 29 of 84 30 September 2012 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes, Ken Tanaka is definitely a character. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5324 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 30 of 84 01 October 2012 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I was finally able to listen to your recording.
First of all, it's not nearly clear enough for us to provide you with any decent analysis. You'll have to make another clearer recording. Still, a few things pop out. -Rounded vowels eu and u are not rounded properly: eu is not rounded and [y] is pronounced too far back as a [ u ] (ou). -R is not right -- the friction is way too intense. It should be closer to an approximant. This means that the vowels on either side are too tense as well and the rhythm of words is halted at every r because there is too much emphasis on them. They also tend to be too devoiced. -l is sometimes off (too apical?). More obvious in "particulier" as the l should be slightly palatalized. -Nasal vowels are not spot on, and an n or m is often heard after them. Native speakers stop nasality (more or less) exactly when the vowel ends; in your case, air continues to exit the nose as you form the following consonants (so before a p, you get an m). I could tell you more if you make a clearer recording where you speak more slowly and more naturally. Edited by Arekkusu on 02 October 2012 at 6:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5324 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 31 of 84 02 October 2012 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Cavesa, I just realized your recording was from 6 weeks ago. Still, many people have come to give you advice and we'd like to know if you've made progress since :)
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4999 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 32 of 84 02 October 2012 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
How can "r" be affricated? "l" is too hard probably, can we say so? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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