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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| hobom Triglot Newbie Joined 4219 days ago 33 posts - 61 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 3 24 December 2014 at 2:43am | IP Logged |
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Recently, I played a bit with the Chorus method to improve my English accent.
I took a speech by Marc Cuban and repeated the individual sentences over and over. While I feel that I made some progress, I feel that my accent is decidedly not native. However, I cant really point out the differences to an original American accent, all I can say it does not "sound quite right" So I would appreciate your criticism and suggestions as to what I can improve. Thank you. Here is the link (it is taken from an interview by Marc Cuban on racism) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 3 24 December 2014 at 3:41pm | IP Logged |
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Excellent job! Accent is minimal, but the hints increase as you go along.
After a few quick listens, the main issues are: t becomes ts: into, to, take r is sometimes German-sounding There is some German-sounding raising (usually?) on stressed vowels: learn, responsibility karet (ʌ) is off sometimes (too open): because, customers, somewhere Edited by Arekkusu on 24 December 2014 at 3:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6359 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 3 01 January 2015 at 7:41am | IP Logged |
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Your American accent is very good. If I had to rate it, I'd give it a 90% or so.
I'm not an expert, but I would never guess that your native language is German, so you're doing a good job of losing what a typical German accent in English sounds like to me. Here are my suggestions to improve, but I'm not sure I can help, since I am pretty ignorant of the IPA designations like schwa, etc., and have no idea what a karat (^) sounds like with respect to pronunciation. Also, the examples I'll use below may be particular to my personal American accent (southeast Pennsylvania my whole life) and might not be the same as standard American English. In your sound clip, the most obvious variance from how I speak is the way you say "to," which is most exaggerated at time 0:17 (try to) and 0:26 (to improve). You're pronouncing the vowel in "to" the way I would say Would, Could, Should, Wood, Took, Foot. But I pronounce "To" like the o's in all of the following: Who, Do, You, Boo!, Boot, Shoot, Two, and Too. At time 0:43, you're pronouncing "learn" in kind of a British way, hardly pronouncing the "r." I pronounce Learn with a strong American "R" sound, just like I would pronounce the "ur" sound in Burn, Turn, Fern, Church, Birch, Skirt, Bert, Alert. Edit: LOL, I just watched Mark Cuban's talk on YouTube, and he sometimes pronounces it the way that you tried to copy it. You will sound better if you pronounce "To" the way he pronounces it in this video at time 1:12 (live up to) and 1:40 (to improve). Mark Cuban Comments on Racism Vid Edited by TerryW on 01 January 2015 at 8:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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