Amun Triglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5057 days ago 52 posts - 72 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, French Studies: Spanish
| Message 1 of 7 30 June 2013 at 6:30pm | IP Logged |
For accent reduction purposes in my target languages I am trying out the 'shadowing'
method. So, I have a question if the sex really matters of the narrator (audio) you are
trying to shadow?
I ask this because there is a slight bias towards female narrators in the audiobook
industry (I suppose their voices are universally regarded as more pleasant). So, it can be
hard to find male narrators of the books I like.
Edited by Amun on 30 June 2013 at 8:34pm
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Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4307 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French
| Message 2 of 7 30 June 2013 at 6:58pm | IP Logged |
No I don't think it matters in the slightest. Shadowing, amongst many things, has helped
me enormously with my pronunciation but it can't miraculously make me sound like the
opposite gender.
Women tend to represent the more "posh" end of any community of speakers, so the worst
case is that you won't sound very street. I'd be interested to hear in a few months what
effect shadowing has had on your established foreign accent, if you would remember to
update.
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Amun Triglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5057 days ago 52 posts - 72 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, French Studies: Spanish
| Message 3 of 7 30 June 2013 at 8:14pm | IP Logged |
Retinend wrote:
No I don't think it matters in the slightest. Shadowing, amongst many things, has helped me enormously with my pronunciation
but it can't miraculously make me sound like the opposite gender.
Women tend to represent the more "posh" end of any community of speakers, so the worst case is that you won't sound very street. |
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Thanks for the reassurance. :) I'm not too worried about ending up sounding like the opposite gender.
However, I am bit worried that I'll subconsciously acquire the wrong pitch levels and inappropriate resonance in my L2 & L3..
I doubt it would have any major influence, but I still would like to know if people have successfully used recordings of the opposite gender for shadowing purposes.
Retinend wrote:
I'd be interested to hear in a few months what effect shadowing has
had on your established foreign accent if you would remember to update. |
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Sure, I'll try to update this thread if I manage to make shadowing a habit and stick to it.
I have a habit for breaking habits, but I'll do my best stick to this one. :)
Edited by Amun on 30 June 2013 at 8:23pm
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Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin
| Message 4 of 7 30 June 2013 at 10:23pm | IP Logged |
In my experience it doesn't matter too much, as I tend to use people I identify with as
voice models including pitch and modulation. When I don't particularly identify with a
native speaker I only copy and memorize the parts I recognize as not specific to that one
speaker.
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Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6438 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 5 of 7 01 July 2013 at 1:36am | IP Logged |
It depends a bit on the language. For both English and French, you should be fine.
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map
| Message 6 of 7 01 July 2013 at 9:58am | IP Logged |
I would be more worried about getting used to using the wrong grammatical gender.
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Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6438 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 7 of 7 01 July 2013 at 8:48pm | IP Logged |
Iversen wrote:
I would be more worried about getting used to using the wrong grammatical gender. |
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It's not much of a problem with literature, as the narrator often doesn't match the gender of the purported speaker either. With other formats, it can be.
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