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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Achmann Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 5689 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 17 of 29 03 June 2009 at 2:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Look as it was said above you are not a native speaker. It really doesn't matter to us English speakers. Now that English is the Lingua Fraca or whatever is it called the natives of it just got used to the accents. I had a native speaker of English from wales come into my butcher shop the other day wanting bait for crabs it took ages to understand him, so you are fine.
If you really want to be tricky learn an Aussie accent. That'll be champion! :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| couragepiece93 Groupie United States Joined 5801 days ago 77 posts - 78 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Latin | Message 18 of 29 06 June 2009 at 3:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think you speak very well! You hardly have an accent at all, and many times during the video I could have mistaken you for a native speaker (such as around 0:26). If I were you I wouldn't spend much time worrying about your pronunciation, except for your "th" sounds. You probably have the best, or one of the best, american accents I've ever heard from a non-native speaker, and I go to a school with one hundred foreign students. ;)
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| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5871 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 19 of 29 16 June 2009 at 11:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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1) Accept that unless you learnt English to fluent level BEFORE your teens, you will always have some degree of accent ---- now the challenge is to have the faintest & nicest accent possible. Some people are more gifted in this respect than others. Some people couldn't care less as long as others understand them.
2) For improving British pronounciation, vocabulary and grammar: Listen to BBC Radio 4 and read English litterature. ------------ I was fluent when I moved to the UK but didn't want to sound like a foreigner, so I imitated my (then) fiancee and Radio 4 at his advice. As a result I now sound "posh", but I can pass for a native up to a point... (After 5 minutes of speaking with me most Londoners are on to me.... On the other hand, I can 'fool' Americans, Ossies and some Brits from the North indefinitely :-) ) One unexpected result is that a lot of people, (read guys!) are genuinely disappointed at my lack of foreign accent. At first I was very confused by this but apparently men find a foreign accent in women sexy! A lot of other English speakers just find accents interesting or something like that. Professionally your English accent matters little as long as your speech is clear and your spelling and grammar up to scratch. English speakers are easily the most "forgiving" in the world when it comes to having their language abused by non-natives and putting up with accents and other mistakes. The biggest problem that you will have is not knowing EXPRESSIONS and the finer nuances of what slang to use and when. Personally I stay away from slang most of the time because I've burnt my nose a few times. If you are going to try out slang or expressions that you don't know: DON'T DO IT AT WORK!!! Incorrectly used slang, swearing, and expressions is where English speakers sympathetic attitude towards non natives END! If you mis-use an expression or accidentally sound ruder than you intended to, people will NOT REALISE that this is due to your language difficulties. They will think that you are rude, thick, weird. This is nor done on purpose, it's just the way it works out... Therefore, be very careful about how you use slang, local expressions and the like! Stick with what you are 100% confident with. Among long-standing friends it's fine to take a chance, but at work it can be suicidal. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6067 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 20 of 29 16 June 2009 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Radio 4 is very sterile when it comes to accents. It is also overly "posh". I don't know about you but I find it embarrassing to imitate the poshest accent there is. This is something that was holding me back for quite some time. I find phone-in debates on Radio 5 to be extremely beneficial, not only with regard to pronunciation but also listening comprehension. You can hear people from all over the UK. Every now and then there is some guy who really challenges my listening comprehension skills. You simply don't get that sort of challenge on R4. I also put some of Radio London and R2 in the mix but generally try to avoid R4.
Totally unrelated comment: "ossies" or "aussies"? I wonder which one is more popular and in what part of the world. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5871 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 21 of 29 16 June 2009 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yeah, but Sennin, the learner should start with the correct accent. They're hardly going to get that by imitating EastEnders, Coronation Street or Ant & Dec...
Once they've got the basics right they can start speaking more "local" and use slang. The English obsession about accents is specific for England and is not applicable to the same degree in any other country. It's rather ludicrous to non-Brits. It's a sensitive topic here and it is used to critisize people for being too snobbish or too "common" depending on your inclination. Enough said. There is no point MIXING accents, you pick one and stick with it. For example if a learner moved to rural Yorkshire, Scotland or the American South there is no reason why he shouldn't emulate the way they speak locally. But for learners who are not in the country it usually makes sense to pick a major accent that is highly regarded. Such as BBC English or CNN American English. In my case I live in London. The only "local" accent I could possibly pick is Cockney (East London slang) but it is not spoken where I live (South West) and I don't actually know anybody who speaks that way. It would probably have a negative impact on my career if I started speaking Cockney and my friends would think I was very odd. I do use a bit of London-type speech, slang and expressions, but I don't go overboard because it's very easy to make a mistake with slang. If the fact that most of my friends speak RP-ish makes me "snobbish", then yeah, guilty as charged. I see your native tongue is Bulgarian, so if someone wanted to improve their Bulgarian accent, would you recommend that they go to Sofia, listen to some good quality radio broadcasts, or that they travelled to some rural part of of Bulgaria and watched trashy TV? Ossie was a spelling mistake, I meant Aussie. Edited by cordelia0507 on 16 June 2009 at 5:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6067 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 22 of 29 16 June 2009 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm not convinced. I know this is a unique British thing and being a foreigner, there is no stigma on me trying to acquire the 'standard' pronunciation. However, RP is in such a minority position in the UK that I would hesitate to call it 'standard'. If RP is the only accent you can understand then you will not be able to communicate with 60% of the people in the UK. They may well understand your accent but you will not understand theirs. There is another, even more menacing, problem with Received Pronunciation. Often times students pick up exactly the things that make it sound posh and exaggerate them, without getting the 'basics' right. The result is a way of speaking that is not only pretentious but also very far from native. These are my reasons for advocating exposure to a variety of native accents. I am not suggesting that you should imitate a regional accent but rather to gain understanding of what is typical for British English, not for RP alone.
You can't make a direct comparison, because in Bulgaria there is no prestige accent. No one will accuse you of being an elitist if you have the standard Sofia accent, at least not in any part of the country that I know. Also, the phonetic diversity is much smaller.
Oh :). Edited by Sennin on 16 June 2009 at 8:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5871 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 23 of 29 18 June 2009 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Oh, ok! (For some reason I had the idea that Eastern Europe was extreme when it comes to accents. Perhaps Bulgaria is more compact and less mixed than many of the other countries.. Actually I have never been to Bulgaria and I don't think I would recognise Bulgarian if I heard it spoken. A while back two Bulgarians delivered me a new washing machine --- they couldn't speak English at all (apparently the team member who COULD speak English was sick) But they could speak really good Russian (sounded native to me, I was very impressed) and they laughed their heads off when I said I was learning it... (huh??) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6067 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 24 of 29 18 June 2009 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Haha... well, what can I say. It is a strange state of affairs and I can't imagine what sort of life history led to it. People the age of my parents were forced to study Russian but without using it for 10 or 20 years, you can imagine how much they retain. People my age (24) either don't know it at all or have 'studied' it (uh, is that the right word? maybe 'attended classes' is more appropriate) as a second foreign language. That's my case and I know about 5 words ^_^. I don't know why these guys were so good at Russian, maybe they have lived in Russia or in some of the ex-soviet republics. Edited by Sennin on 18 June 2009 at 3:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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