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Turn pseudo-USaccent into an English one? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5846 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 17 of 22 21 July 2009 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Fairyfountain --- you are making the RIGHT choice mate! After all you are a European. Don't start speaking like an American unless you are going to live there.
Personally I think it sounds pretty bad when French people speak American English (it suits some accents, but not the French!) I keep saying this, but BBC Radio 4 is really very good for this purpose. It has a wide range of interesting talk programs on lots of different subjects, and the accents used are exactly those that you should be aiming for. Don't worry about the pro/contra "RP" debate... It can be confusing and is irrelevant at this stage. Just go for the straight BBC "no-regional" accent. This gives you the British equivalent of the "Tours" French accent if I understand French accents right. If you feel a strong need to sound like a "common" person, you can always add that later. The important thing is not to walk around in the UK sounding like a wannabe cowboy! ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| krog Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 6057 days ago 146 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Latin | Message 19 of 22 21 July 2009 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
I concur, I think that's excellent advice. I think the kind of accent on Radio 4 is a kind of technocrats' accent, divorced from a particular regional or class background - or at least, it's a neutral middle-class accent. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6136 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 20 of 22 21 July 2009 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your answers guys, but I gave up on the English accent a week ago, lol. By the way, I don't sound French at all in English, just American-foreign, but most people can't place my accent. I'm not saying that being a "wannabe cowboy" is the epitome of awesomeness, but I think I'm okay with it :-)
Anyway, unless someone finds a magic potion for English accents, I'll never get one, and that's perfectly fine with me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ACMark Bilingual Triglot Newbie Uruguay Joined 5599 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese*, English | Message 21 of 22 04 August 2009 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, after reading almost the whole topic (except the last post) I was a bit worried about what I had to say, but after you said that you're giving up on the accents, I'm gonna give you an honest opinion.
But before, I must say that I really do NOT know if this is the case, as really, no one can prove it, but it's just a theory I thought of a while ago, after listening to my friends from Uruguay trying to pronounce some words in Portuguese, and obviously failing. I believe that when you're a kid, your ear gets used to certain sounds, and so does your tongue; what I mean by this is that I'm pretty sure that there are certain words in some languages that (I'd risk saying 95% of) most people who learn it as a foreign will not be able to pronounce, simply because they can't tell the difference between the sounds, cause their ear isn't used to it and just won't tell the real difference, which in a lot of cases is a pretty slight one. I'd like to re-state though, that this is just a theory I have, and I obviously can't prove it. (And even if this is ever to be considered true, I wouldn't know if this is your case anyway!) Edited by ACMark on 04 August 2009 at 9:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gbarv Groupie Cocos (Keeling) Islands Joined 5645 days ago 49 posts - 60 votes | Message 22 of 22 05 August 2009 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||
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It is possible to train the ear to hear these differences. All the contrary with training everybody can pronounce all the sounds of the world languages. Any phonetician can sound out all the symbols on the IPA. Can't they?
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