accent sample: one Russian Guy

deaptor   Thursday, August 14, 2003, 20:23 GMT
Here is a sample of one Russian guy who offers an accent training course. I'd like to hear opinion of native speakers about his
pronunciation.

http://www.ameaccent.nm.ru/
===

BTW, I sent a sample of my speech to Tom, and I hope he will post it on this forum too.
Richard Li   Thursday, August 14, 2003, 21:55 GMT
The Russian guy sounds American.
deaptor   Thursday, August 14, 2003, 22:06 GMT
Yes, he is offering American accent traning, so he tried to immitate an American accent in the two first records; in the last (to garans) he sounds like someone with a British accent.
Btw, what do you think about his pronunciation? Is it really good?
Tom   Thursday, August 14, 2003, 23:28 GMT
He inserts r's where they don't belong. His "but" sounds like "burt". He screwed up the pronunciation of "season" (used a short [i] instead of [i:]). In Untitled.mp3 I couldn't understand the last part (before he starts speaking Russian).
Richard Li   Friday, August 15, 2003, 00:27 GMT
Golly! That Russian's imitation of a British accent is one of the most artificial and insulting I have ever heard. I suppose he copied an American's imitation of British English.
Richard Li   Friday, August 15, 2003, 00:33 GMT
Look, chaps, if you were brought up to speak American English, please do us Britons a great favour by not trying to speak like us. You say wahder and we say wottuh.
Richard Li   Friday, August 15, 2003, 00:35 GMT
Yes, we say wottuh, not wottah, as that old Slav would say when he is mocking us.
Guofei Ma   Friday, August 15, 2003, 00:39 GMT
...And we don't raise our voices at the end of every phrase like Americans think we do. In fact, Americans probably do that more than we do. Golly, that Slav's pronunciation of "Christopher" is ugly.

Please excuse me for making four posts in a row. Phew, I was indeed exploding.
jack   Friday, August 15, 2003, 00:41 GMT
Guofei or Richard? Or are they the same?
Richard Li   Friday, August 15, 2003, 00:44 GMT
Ah, sorry. Richard. Guofei is actually my cousin. I am taking a holiday in California and I am now staying in Guofei's house. We are on Antimoon together.
Antonio   Friday, August 15, 2003, 21:07 GMT
I think the brit imitation is fairly standard E.

what´s so wrong about it Richard?
Antonio   Friday, August 15, 2003, 21:09 GMT
´for a change´ sounds good. I agree that he sounds american in certain points
Dave   Friday, August 15, 2003, 22:01 GMT
i think he did a real good job, i dont know what you are so offended about.
Ryan   Saturday, August 16, 2003, 04:17 GMT
He did okay, although he sounds vaguely like Kermit the Frog to me. It sounds completely forced and not natural at all. It's probably better than I could do a Russian accent though so I'm not one to criticize too much.

Ryan
mjd   Saturday, August 16, 2003, 07:39 GMT
Yeah, the voice did sound a bit like a caricature and I found it to be pretty amusing. I think the 2nd mp3 was supposed to sound like a Texas accent.