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Interviewed live by BBC radio | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sydney Groupie Yugoslavia Joined 6444 days ago 58 posts - 71 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Serbian | Message 9 of 18 06 November 2007 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Francois, your accent isn't bad at all! And I don't think you were exaggerating the stress on the vowels too much, so maybe it's true what the lady on your tape said! Thanks for sharing.
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| HTale Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6370 days ago 164 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French | Message 10 of 18 06 November 2007 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just off topic - I'm going to hire your services in the future!
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| solidsnake Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7033 days ago 469 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 11 of 18 09 November 2007 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm going to be honest here and say that your accent is one of the heaviest foreign accents I have ever heard (it sound like a combination of German, russian and chinese speaking english all at once.）
BUT!！ the way you responded to every question, both in phraseology/ grammar and word choice is about as native as you can get, to the point where if i had read a written transcription of the interview, I would have easily assumed you are a native english speaker. I think that last bit pushes you above the "advanced" fluency level and lucky for you, english isn't a language that requires perfect pronunciation (or even standard pronunciation) to be understood and accepted into conversation. Good job, and congrats on your consulting career. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dogtanian Diglot Newbie Scotland Joined 6399 days ago 33 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Russian, Greek | Message 12 of 18 09 November 2007 at 7:04am | IP Logged | ||
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In my experience English speakers are quite fond of foreign accents, especially of the French variety, as long as they understand what is being said. In your case Francois, the fact that you obviously can function at a very high level in English, both in terms of aural comprehension and speaking skills, means that your accent doesn't sound silly at all. I expect most people will enjoy listening to it, though I understand your sense of pride tells you to improve upon it. Whilst working as an English teacher I had the pleasure of teaching a Chinese doctor of chemistry, whose skills, other than speaking were actually rather high. To cut a long story short his pronunciation was incomprehensible, so we put aside the lesson plans and just spent time working on sound of the language, using texts to begin with so that I could see what he was trying to say. This obviously doesn't apply to you, the point I'm making is I don't think you need a specialist (who will charge a small fortune), but a patient native speaker (even a student) who will "correct" and who you can mimic, would do. Very impressive in any case! Out of curiosity, how is your accent in other languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| gidler Senior Member Finland Joined 6615 days ago 109 posts - 118 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Finnish* | Message 13 of 18 09 November 2007 at 8:49am | IP Logged | ||
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This is a bit off-topic, but could someone tell what's "Ship or Sheep" like? I tried googling but found just some audio clips from the accompanying CDs.
Update: I went and bought it. It concentrates mostly on individual sounds. The initial test revealed that I had no trouble differentiating the sounds of English, but I'm going to go through all the units anyway. It can't hurt and I already paid for it. :) Stress and intonation practice will be useful, though it is given less attention in the book. Edited by gidler on 12 November 2007 at 12:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7310 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 18 09 November 2007 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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What a great milestone, being interviewed by the BBC! I agree with a comment above that the accent is mainly caused by a few mistakes. There was nothing wrong with the English itself (in fact, I've always thought that your written English is better than mine in many ways). You just need to tweak your accent a bit and you'll be close to native.
Another thing I noticed was that the accent wasn't very French (some French people speak English as if the sentences were French). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6308 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 15 of 18 09 November 2007 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree; from his comments I was preparing myself for something terrible! Sounds fine, man. Definitely foreign, sure, but perfectly understandable. I know people with far "worse" accents, trust me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6901 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 18 10 November 2007 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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In another thread we spoke about recordings, hearing one's own voice on radio et.c. and for what it's worth, I don't sound like myself in interviews on the local radio - and that is in my native tongue... I'm not only thinking of the voice itself, but also unexpected intonation and accent.
With that in mind, it is probably only normal to think of one's own voice/accent as somewhat disappointing. However, considering that you've used a program for accent reduction, that makes me wonder how your accent sounded earlier. I won't go as far as solidsnake, but you did indeed sound French. I'm pretty sure that you can sound less French/more American if you focus more on your pronunciation, read something aloud, sing, act et.c. Unprepared speech says a lot about our skills. Kind of like a boxing match in the language field. A test to see if the skills work under pressure. :) (I'm not so sure that I would be able to fool anybody with my English accent) Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 10 November 2007 at 5:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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