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British & American accent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6264 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 17 of 31 18 March 2009 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Also many northern English dialects. Scotland is rhotic-speaking and I certainly am. Southern English people mimicking my accent tend to roll the r sound, annoying swine. In fact, I don't roll it but because I give it full value in pronunciation and they often don't pronounce it at all, it can seem that way. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| SlickAs Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5869 days ago 185 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Swedish Studies: Thai, Vietnamese | Message 18 of 31 18 March 2009 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
I absoultely agree. Hypercorrection is worse to me than undercorrection (for those trying to use RP, wrongly used "whom" is worse than saying "youse" for "you" plural, because saying "youse" means that you have spent time amongst English speakers and picked up bad habits on the streets rather than from books). For the Chinese guy learning (and English pronunciation is going to be a challenge for you to sound more English than American or any other acecent rather than just Chinese) the best English to learn depending on how "royal" you see yourself is what is now called Estuary English (Somewhere between Recieved Pronunciation and Cockney ... "It does my head in" [as opposed to "Does me 'ead in, it does"], everyone wants to be friends with everyone else and therfore moderates their accent to "fit in". This is the compromise.) It is what most people speak in the area around London now, does not designate class, is understood in Scotland and Ireland and Australia and America and everywhere else, and is open to changing upon circumstance. Alternatively you can just learn the American accent (which is simpler) and be less well recieved in other parts of the world (like even Asia as in Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Iran, Jordan Syria, etc. ... and that is before we go to Africa and South / Central America that Reagen meddled in and has not recovered .. England represents class and old colonial powers that arrived with tact and gifts, the Americans represent interference and unnessesary civil wars against communism that arrived with gun boats and money for the rebel minority tribes in the hills). So pick the accent that less people want to bomb. (And I say that as a Canadian who speaks with an Australian accent and has lived many years of my life in the US and loves America and Americans ... I am talking about the outside world, and the accent I choose to speak when I could easily speak in the American / Canadian accent). Edited by SlickAs on 18 March 2009 at 3:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| MäcØSŸ Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5801 days ago 259 posts - 392 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German | Message 19 of 31 18 March 2009 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I personally prefer American English for a number of reasons, but since I like British TV shows I'm getting used to
the sound of British accents and I don't dislike them the way I did before. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5757 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 20 of 31 18 March 2009 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
I speak with an estuary English accent these days, but not because I consciously tried to adopt it. I grew up with a strong Suffolk accent, then spent 3 years in Manchester followed by 8 years in London, hanging out with friends from all kinds of class/regional/national backgrounds. If anything I was probably trying to make myself sound more RP when I went to university, and 'Estuary' is just where it's ended up. Although, when I see my family, I have an embarrassing tendency to slip back into my old Suffolk accent without even trying- and it lasts for a few days after I've got back to London. I think it would be difficult for a foreigner to try and 'learn' estuary English because it is (I think by definition) something you just slip into unconsciously. Surely you have to learn how to pronounce words 'properly', before you can begin to mispronounce them correctly, if that makes sense. Really, estuary English is just a kind of 'lazy RP'. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kaikai Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5747 days ago 27 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 21 of 31 19 March 2009 at 2:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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"...who speak with...
In this case, we're talking about the subject of the sentence so you've got a choice between "who" and "that". What you've done is called "hypercorrection". You're so used to being told that the way you speak is "wrong" that you try to correct things even when you're unambiguously correct." Thank you for the correction. Funny thing is that I received perfect marks in school for English. Clearly, the internet has destroyed my native tongue. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| skytk Diglot Newbie Singapore Joined 5719 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 22 of 31 21 March 2009 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The same thing is happening in places like Taiwan, China and SEAsia too. American English is replacing British English as the standard. Probably because of the mass influx of american culture into asian societies in the past decade or so. Just have a look at some Taiwanese variety programmes. The deliberate attempts to sound american completely butchers the English used.
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| FrenchLanguage Senior Member Germany Joined 5728 days ago 122 posts - 135 votes | Message 23 of 31 21 March 2009 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Personally, I find it amusing that you perceive American English to sound softer than British English. I perceive it the other way around (My mother tongue is German). Must be different for a Mandarin- and a German-speaker, I guess?
Anyway you said this: "and hated American accent because I felt American accent is too "sweet", too "soft"" --> I think you would have to say "I hated the American accent, because I felt the American accent is too (...)" I'm not trying to be an ass, but I like when people tell me about the mistakes I make in another language, so it's just meant to be constructive criticism :-). However, if I'm wrong, somebody correct me please! (Personally I probably would have said "American English" or something along those lines, so I'm not sure if what I stated above is correct) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5853 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 24 of 31 21 March 2009 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have nothing against a British accent, but I doubt if it's better received in the places you mention. And if you will kindly edit out the political BS in the same paragraph, I will edit out this sentence. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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