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Improving one’s accent

  Tags: Accent
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
FrenchLanguage
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5742 days ago

122 posts - 135 votes 

 
 Message 1 of 4
14 June 2009 at 1:35am | IP Logged 
Just out of curiosity - Has anybody tried a software program in order to improve their pronunciation? Do they help any? Or is the only thing that works working on it with an actual pronunciation coach?

I'm not really looking to become a native speaker, and my accent isn't that bad (I think - at least people never have trouble understanding me, which I can tell by how quickly they are capable of replying :P), but I thought it'd be fun to improve it some.

Has anyone tried doing this?
1 person has voted this message useful



zerothinking
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6378 days ago

528 posts - 772 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 2 of 4
14 June 2009 at 3:32am | IP Logged 
You know I've always been astounded at the distinct lack of in-depth pronunciation
courses for multiple languages. There is a score of 'English Accent Training' courses out
there but I'll darned if I can find a 'La pronunciation française pour les anglophones'
course! :D

In fact, I think there is a massive market gap right now for such products and I would
seriously consider starting a language company that creates in-depth advanced courses for
people wanting to squeeze something special from their language of choice.
1 person has voted this message useful



FrenchLanguage
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5742 days ago

122 posts - 135 votes 

 
 Message 3 of 4
14 June 2009 at 6:38am | IP Logged 
Maybe there's no demand, though?lol Ive never considered my pronunciation utterly important to be honest..at least not to the point where I cared about working on it other than simply speaking and trying to speak like the native speakers Ive heard before (I said trying ;)).

Has anyone on here ever wanted to do something like that?lol
1 person has voted this message useful



Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 6017 days ago

4399 posts - 7687 votes 
Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 4 of 4
14 June 2009 at 10:00am | IP Logged 
FrenchLanguage wrote:
Just out of curiosity - Has anybody tried a software program in order to improve their pronunciation? Do they help any? Or is the only thing that works working on it with an actual pronunciation coach?

Voice recognition programs are simultaneously too forgiving and too strict.

They're too strict in that there's only one right way to say it, according to the system, and that's in the dialect of the person they've recorded. Most people would fail the VR in their own language. They're too forgiving in that they allow you to be too far off.

I always point out that ever professional voice dictation package comes with a microphone worth around €100, because anything cheaper is noisy and unclear, and the software can't "hear" you properly. Some language learning software packs come with microphone headsets, but they're worth around €10. In order to compensate for the poor signal, it has to be very forgiving.

If you can be understood clearly already, you're probably past the stage where it would be any good for you.


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