Learning American Accent - Do you want to?

[paddy8788]

Well, recently I read an article (http://vietnamnet.vn/bandocviet/2007/11/755198/) on an internet newspaper website about Vietnamese studying English. The writer said that Vietnamese have many advantages in studying English, but now I don't think so. Without proper studying materials and methods, I don't think a Vietnamese native speaker can speak English in the correct way, especially about making the right pronunciation and intonation.

It is very hard to distinguish sounds in English for Vietnamese, and we are very bad at making some consonants like 'r', 'l', 'j' or 'sh'. I think besides studying grammar, people should pay attention to practice pronunciation in order to speak more smoothly (maybe not fluently, anyway).

Below is the chart I get from one website about the problematic sounds for foreigners who studies English Pronunciation.

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/2116/pronunciationchartpx8.jpg

As you can see, we Vietnamese have to deal with a lot of hard sounds in English, in my experience, I think the hardest sounds are 'r' (the hardest one), 'ʃ', 'ʒ', 'dʒ' and 'j'. The last three sounds (also the sound: 'ð') are very similar to Vietnamese ears, and most of us often change it into the sound "z" like in the word "da" in Vietnamese. I think Koreans work with the sound 'dʒ' much better than us.

To learn American Accent, first of all you should practice Pronunciation. It is a big challenge to master all of them, but you have to do it slowly, step by step. One of the most important part is to master the sounds "r" and always not to ignore the ending sounds of verbs.

After mastering some degree in pronunciation, you need to move on with practice intonation, which requires you to memorize many more complicated rules about sound combination, sound blending etc.

Now in my ftp server I have uploaded two materials for the two processes. These materials, in my view, are very effective if you can be patient enough to follow the instruction and spend your time to practice with your computer. My advice is that you should have a recording program to record your own voice and compare it with the sample voice you heard on the material, and as I've been told: "What the most important is that you are able to recognize your mistakes but not doing it well right away".

My ftp access information is: (Recommending using http://www.cuteftp.com for fastest downloading speed)
FTP Server: fun.nampad.info
User: anonymous@nampad.info
Password: any password is okay

First, please begin with the file called: Pronunciation.zip. This will help you to perfect your pronunciation step by step, and this material, I believe, it is a requirement to take if you want to study American Accent without the help form a native speaker.

After having some certain degree pronunciation skills, you have to work with your accent (Pronunciation is just a small part of the accent!!). This means you learn to combine the sounds you have learned together and put it into the sentences, with intonations to express your ideas and emotions. This is a hard part and it may takes a long time for you to master it. Maybe it can take months, or even years. You have to download the file: American Accents Training.zip to go on studying.

That's all. There are many more materials that you can take, and remember to stick with you materials. Sometimes you will get confused about what you hear or what you see on TV, radio or the internet, because it may sound a little bit different from what you are told to do in your books. Don't be worried, because actually there are many kinds of accents, what you are learning is considered as the "general American accent" - it is what you heard from Television, from Lectures but not from a talk of some gangs or some teenagers ^_^. Just stick with it or you are gonna mess up your own voice.

That's all! I am also taking these training courses, so I hope you guys can give me any comments if you have. I really appreciate that.

Have a nice day. 8)

[onefifth]

@ spider: why don't you post the original article about Vietnamese's advantages in English pronunciation, cos it would be better if we can see diferent points of view and test them on ourselves. :D
Besides, I'm afraid I couldn't agree with you about the 'r' sound :P . Because to me, the sound i most frequently hear vietnamese pronounce wrongly is 'sh' sound (like game-SHow and game-Sow), at least from the northern part. In southern part, somehow the situation is reversed. Usually everybody makes both 's' and 'sh' sounds as 'sh' :oops: (plz correct me if i'm wrong).
And lastly, IMHO, watching American movies would be better than any pronunciation textbook, of course, the best way is still watching news on TV, but I found it not so interesting and rather tiring sometimes hehehehe :oops:

[analog]

In my opinion, I agree with most of things that spider_man mentioned. It is usually a good ways to do things in a systematic maner, so courses are there to do their job.

Yeap, it may seem time-consuming and difficult to study a language alone, but it is great if you can add it to your many methods. I believe it does help. :wink:

I guess, my suggestion is try to practice as much as you can, even with a .. bad English speaker, as long as you pay attention and can find mistakes in conversations, which are either from you or from your partner. When you have a sense of ... "error identification" ^^, you will be able to make an "adaptive system" to correct it. It is like a check (compare) and feedback loop. Finally, we can sound ... American after a number of loops. Saying this, I assume your reference (to check after going home ^^) is a good dictionary with pronunciation. Do not learn a word with just spelling and meaning.
I wish to have a chance to practice with you guys sometimes soon.

I will ask you for the materials when I am more relaxed.
Thanks for the topic, spider_man

[paddy8788]

@onefifth: Here is the link of that article:
http://vietnamnet.vn/bandocviet/2007/11/755198/

About the 'r' sound, there are several kinds of "r" sound, like the 'r' of Spanish, the 'r' of French or the 'r' of some regions in Vietnam. Actually, in my province, I don't say 'r' as 'z' sound in the Northern part of Vietnam, instead of it, my pronunciation of 'r' in Vietnamese somehow similar to the 'r' in American English, but still they have a big difference. In my experience, as I talked to many Vietnamese, I realized that we Vietnamese don't make the 'r' sound using our mouth but we use only use our tongue and the sound have a somewhat properties of a nasal sound (sounds created using your nose, like the sound 'n', 'm' or 'ng').

The American 'r' is totally different! You should watch the very first video in the Pronunciation materials that I uploaded in order to see the way American produce this sound. Actually, this is a very hard sound, but it plays an important part in American English, because wherever you see the letter 'r' in the spelling, you HAVE to pronounce it clearly. In English, 'r' is considered as the strongest sound and it often effects other sounds around it. Additionally, Vietnamese don't put an 'r' sound at the end of the word, you know.

About the 'sh' sound, I made the same mistake like you when I use the "Vietnamese sh" to speak English. Vietnamese sh is weaker and the position of the tongue is different from the "sh" sound in American English. Because we're not native speaker, it is hard for us to distinguish between "Vietnamese sh" and "American sh", but I am sure that the native speakers can make the different easily (like many of us can't distinguish between the word "yet" and "jet" or "zoe" and "joe" etc). You have to take the course and see how they make that sound!!!

And I'd recommend you to watch American movies to improve your intonation and listening skills, but I'm sorry to say that hardly you can improve your pronunciation. Generally, pronunciation requires a lot of hard work with your mouth and tongue's muscles, and you can hardly notice the differences or changes of an actor or actress's lips or mouths, right? By the way, I guess not many of you really notice the change of pronunciations when you connect words together.

For example:
I can't let you go -> I can't letchu go. (the connection of t+j = ch)
Yes, you are -> Yeshu are -> the connection of s + j
Did you do it? -> Di dʒu do it? -> the connection of d + j
Miss her -> Misher -> the connection of s and h

Those examples are just some small numbers of changes that you have to deal in order to speak in American ways, and I am sure not many of you can really notice those changes on the movies or news without helping from the text book (I mean: totally using your own instinct).

So, sorry to disappointed you (actually I once thought the same way) but honestly, I believe you can not just follow the way actors and actresses speak to get American accent. Those skills once existed in you when you were a child, but now, as an adult, we can not do it any more :cry: :cry:

By the way, there are several kinds of accent you see on the movies, it can really make you confused. Let me give you a significant examples, when you watch movies with teenage girls, have you ever tried to imitate their way of speaking? Well, they don't speak in the general way, they often raise their pitch to get attention of other people, and I am sure you don't wanna bring that kind of intonation and pronunciation into your classroom or when you speak with an adult. Another example, the accent of black people, they have a hard accent and their pronunciation has been reduced and changed a lot, so it is not recommended to follow that way because you don't have the black voice, you know. And the British people also speak differently, they don't drop the 't' sound, so instead of "wadder (water)", you will hear "water" etc. If you want to speak in American accents, don't do that way (is it a bit strange, huh?).

So, to make it straight, to be not confused, you should follow a proper course with a Correct American Accent, which means, the accent you hear when you watch an American TV News, when you hear an American radio program or a lecture from an American native-born professor, you should take this course 8) (should, it is still up to you!!)

@analog: Now the new TOEFL iBT also test the ability to speak English, and I don't think PBT is gonna last forever in Korea. So maybe in near future, it is essential to speak English well and pronounce correctly to get a good score. The better skills you have, the more chances you get!

[eradt11]

Recently, in W5 and several room in W7 we speak English to each other. :thumright: :thumright: :thumleft: :thumleft:

How about N area? and other W buildings? :wink: How about setting some rule among us 8)

[rainmoon]

@eradt: I would believe you only if you can record one and post it on youtube for us to watch. :)

[tungbio]

Don't be misunderstood! Mr Eradt11 always talks beyond the true! :lol:
Learning American Accent is the important key to improve our Listening and Speaking Skills. Spideman had devoted a excellent post! We have a lot chances to practice and improve ourself by exploiting all the communicating chances with the other foreigners in KAIST, particularly, Students from European possessing very nice accent!

[hieutn6_84]

In general, I totally agree with what Spider_man has analyzed. In most cases, our Vietnamese don't pronounce "r" as what it should be. But actually I think, in our elementary school, we were taught to pronounce "r" or some other hard sound ( tr, s,.) in a correct way. But the problem is as we grew up, these learned things seemed to be disappeared, "r" or "d" or "gh" is almost the same pronounced, same as "ch" and "tr", "s" and "x". Why?? Because, just pay attention to it, everybody around us do that. So, the conversational environment has some effect on our own pronunciation.
Few years ago, I myself and my friend had problems with the "r" and "tr", also "s" and "sh". It sounds a very harsh work, but not so difficult according to my experience. In reality, I tried to follow this book: "English phonetics and phonology", it's an easy-to-understand book and really helpful. This book shows lots of details on the movement of your tongue, your lips or how to make nasal sounds. Spiderman, I heard that you have some rapidshare account, so I think you can download these materials for our guys to practise.
Here are the links:
download audio:
CD1 Units 1 - 5 http://rapidshare.com/files/1304180/CD1_Units_1-5.rar
CD1 Units 6 - 9 http://rapidshare.com/files/1317570/CD1_Units_6-9.rar
CD2 Units 10 - 13 http://rapidshare.com/files/1350629/CD2_Units_10-13.rar
CD2 Units 14 - 20 http://rapidshare.com/files/1384594/CD2_Units_14-20.rar
download BOOK
http://rapidshare.com/files/1441721/roa ... y.rar.html (http://rapidshare.com/files/1441721/roach_eng_phon-etics-ology.rar.html)
pass: ARCANGEL
This password is for extracting the *.rar file I think.
For a better listening skill, firstly, I think we should improve our pronunciation ability, this is much more necessary for those who want to take TOEFL iBT test.
For you're undergraduates, you have more chances to practise your speaking skill, 'cause you have many international friends, and I am sure that talking with them is more interesting and more useful than talking with Koreans.
Good luck.

[hieutn6_84]

By the way, this is an absolutely valuable topic for all of us. Let's share some ideas or findings. ( one more writing, keke :) )

[onefifth]

keke, wow this topic is kind of attractive isn't it? Still, as I see it, I feel like everyone is too addicted to academic books. Of course, I downloaded spider-man course, and I found it quite helpful, too (big thanks to you, spider). Still, language originates from life, isn't it that's why your TOEFL score cannot last longer than 2 years? In my opinion, bring your language into daily life and learn from it would be a greatly effective way to improve. Learn how to pronounce correctly from the phonetic course, but learn how to speak naturally from daily life events.
And Euporean accent is quite different from American, as well as pronunciation

[paddy8788]

I have downloaded the file that hieunt gave us and uploaded to my FTP server (File name: British English Phonetics). Honestly, I think that course is useful, but sorry to say, if you follow it, you are gonna speak in British Accent, but not American Accent. I once tried to stick with British Accent, and I realized that it is not a favorable accent in the world, and it consumes a lot of your energy to speak that accent (believe it or not, people all around the world agree with that).

If you have no accent right now (Vietnamese Accent when you speak English, actually), I'd recommend you to study American Accent, because it is more widely accepted in the world. Actually, it is very good if you can speak British Accent, but you have to stick with one kind of accent, don't try to jump from one to another without careful consideration, or you're gonna mess up your own voice (I had some kidn of experience like that). If you follow British Accent, there are less rules to remember, but you have to strengthen your voice a lot, and I am sure it is not an easy task as well :) .

Remember, English is totally different from Vietnamese, as you can see on the table, most of its sounds are different from our language's sounds. So don't put into your mind the idea to Vietnameselize the English sounds, it just makes your English sound worse. (@hieunt: Vietnamese 'r" is far different from American 'r' ^_^)

@Onefifth: I don't think stick with the academic materials is a big problem. Actually, I still agree that learning from daylife experiences are much more efficiency to improve our English. Unfortunately, we don't live in America, and as I read about one article from one Vietnamese students who is studying in US, he wrote that many foreigners in US have to take the Accent Reduction Skills course, and every language has their own problematic sounds when people try to learn English. That's why they need the teacher to teach them.

To be honest, I have never meet anybody who has never taken the Accent course that can speak English well. Somehow they got the right accent, but their pronunciation still got a big impact from their mother tongue, and that makes them not sound "English" anymore.

Stick with the books does not mean to be a bookworm. Only when you read it without actual practice and trying from everyday situation, that's when you have a problem. You should read the books, honestly ^_^

I totally agree with "learn to pronounce correctly from the phonetic course, but learn how to speak naturally from daily life".

Btw, Europeans tend to speak in British English, and that English to me, it sounds a little bit too "countryside". Generally, American English is thought as the English of education and business in the world, that's an important point.

[hieutn6_84]

Onefifth was wright, try to speak naturally and confidently.

[tungbio]

In my thinking, even you own a huge store of academic books, you still cannot significantly improve your skills without actual practice. Frankly, graduate students like me, don't have much time to read those kind of books. Reading an accent book cannot as efficient as practice directly with friends possessing nice accent. Of course, I don't deny the role of books in this case, but I think when you live in the English speaking environment your English will make a great advantage of your English. Therefore, we'd better concentrate more on the academic study to gain the excellent degree. With that degree in your hand, you will have a great chance to come USA for studying, you can speak English like native people after 1-2 years, as a results.
Remember, English is nothing but the tool for us to be successful in our future. Clear yourself what is the most important to you in this time. Try your best to approach the success and use English as the tool to complete your aim!

[cavipk]

Remember, English is nothing but the tool for us to be successful in our future. Clear yourself what is the most important to you in this time. Try your best to approach the success and use English as the tool to complete your aim!

Why English not Korean???? You are trying to improve your English in a Korean-Speaking country, should you learn Korean for a better communication. The big problem that prevented me from many research projects here is the Korean language. Since many research documentations are written in Korean, it is an obstacle on my way to approach the cutting-edge technologies and advanced research problems. Therefore, to open the door of your future, start to learn Korean from now.

In addition, you can get a very good job with satisfactory salary only if you can speak Korean.

Hopefully, you all intelligent students can know where we are living :wink:

[trung.ngvan]

:idea: Wow, capivk, you must be a super genius. I'm so admired of you. How can you do so many projects at the age of 20? :mrgreen: There're lots of controversial ideas here. I know that you guys are stubborn and have your own stances, so better pursuit your own dreams. They won't listen to you :lol:

[cavipk]

Trung, I think you cannot imagine how genius I am. I were born for researching :).

Back to my early age, when I was 5 years old, a fortune-teller had told me:
"Cavipk, your destiny is to save this world"

That's reason why I am here to tell you something. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[srap]

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deleted by eradt11
: violate the rule of this forum

[hieutn6_84]

@spiderman: My purpose in the last post was to point out a reason for our Vietnamese's pronunciation on "r" sound, or "tr" sound, and so it could have some influences on our way to pronounce these syllables. I think these two sounds are stronger in Vietnamese than on English, right?? :roll:
Another problem I found when I heard some of our Vietnamese speaking English is their mistake in pronouncing ð or θ. They usually pronounce these sound like "th" in Vietnamese. Or, in case of some ending sound like "η" and "g", compare "single" and "singer". Or, some nasal sound like "garden" ('ga:dn), "d" is a nasal sound but as I heard, many students pronounce it absolutely a "d" sound.
To speak English fluently and more correctly, even if it is American or British accent, I think, firstly we should follow some training program on pronunciation, as spider_man pointed out. One more thing, when we use the dictionary, don't just pay attention to the words' meaning, but try to read them correctly, don't pronounce by sense or vietnameselize those words, it is such a really bad habit.

[srap]

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No Vietnamese in this topic

[paddy8788]

@spiderman: My purpose in the last post was to point out a reason for our Vietnamese's pronunciation on "r" sound, or "tr" sound, and so it could have some influences on our way to pronounce these syllables. I think these two sounds are stronger in Vietnamese than on English, right?? :roll:
Another problem I found when I heard some of our Vietnamese speaking English is their mistake in pronouncing ð or θ. They usually pronounce these sound like "th" in Vietnamese. Or, in case of some ending sound like "η" and "g", compare "single" and "singer". Or, some nasal sound like "garden" ('ga:dn), "d" is a nasal sound but as I heard, many students pronounce it absolutely a "d" sound.
To speak English fluently and more correctly, even if it is American or British accent, I think, firstly we should follow some training program on pronunciation, as spider_man pointed out. One more thing, when we use the dictionary, don't just pay attention to the words' meaning, but try to read them correctly, don't pronounce by sense or vietnameselize those words, it is such a really bad habit.

Our Vietnamese's 'r' and 'tr' sound are weaker than English actually. The 'r' sound in English requires a lot of muscle movement and tension, thus, it is the strongest sound in English (Actually Vietnamese sounds do not requires to much tesion of our lips, a big different from English). "tr" sound is just a case when 'r' blends with 't' sound, like some other blending cases like: "pr", "fr", "gr".

In "garden", "d" is not a nasal sound, it is a normal "d" sound. Instead of that, "n" is a nasal sound, it blends with "d", that's why it makes you "feel" like "d" is a nasal sound, but it's not (when you pronounce it slowly, it no longer sounds nasally). And in American accent, "garden" is pronounced "garden" with an "r" sound, but not "ga:den" with a strong "a:" sound like British English.

@capipk: I disagree with you about the idea of learning Korean. Do you know how long it takes for you to read and write a language fluently when you don't have a full year to study it? It can take years, and unfortunately, not many people have much talent to shorten that period. Is this better to master English instead of speaking badly both English and Korean, which give you no helps?
Btw, I'd rather consider this topic not to be a joke, so please be serious.

@Tungbio: I am sure your friend can not help you to improve your pronunciation, honestly. Can you help a foreigner to learn Vietnamese? Can you make them understand how to position their tongue and their lips in order to make the right sound? It is very hard, and if I am not sure if you make your friends understand it.
With the instruction from experts, with clear and simple step-by-step manuals, you can imitate those sounds much more easily and less complicatedly. Living in US does not mean you will have US Accent, as long as you do not seriously take an accent reduction course.
By the way, studying accent means you have to work a long time, and the sooner you start, the better it is. It is no big deal if you spend 30 minutes a day practice some sounds. If you can do it regularly, I am sure your pronunciation and speaking skills will get better, and those things do not really effect your academic studying at all!
Btw, English is a tool, and people do not want a bad tool. Especially with undergraduate students, when we graduate, we will need a TOEFL Cert, at that time, I think it will be a TOEFL iBT Cert (Toefl Score expires after 2 years, so I am not sure we will have PBT for a long time). So why don't you take a chance and improve your chance when it is not too late? Because you can not improve your speaking skill just by a month practicing like other sections of TOEFL test!!

[eradt11]

In KAIST, there is an American man in Language center. His name is Mik, an English teacher.
His website: http://web.kaist.ac.kr/~mikklc/index.php
you may find some helpful stuff there.