International accent
Here's a sample of an accent I've been trying and with which I'm pretty comfortable. I intend it to be a hybrid between RP and American English. It's basically RP-type vowels (except for /o/ which is [oU]), with mild rhoticity, no TRAP-BATH split, and occasional t-voicing. Tell me what you think, if you think it sounds native-like (though of course nobody would actually speak like that natively) and if you think there are things I need to work on. Inspired by Xie, I'm reading from The Little Prince.
http://media.putfile.com/little-prince-39
I can't hear anythink, what plugin Am I supposed to have?
I'm sorry, I don't know what plugin is necessary. I tried to open it at work and it seems to play fine.
Thanks for your comment, Josh. I suppose that's the ideal effect I'd like to achieve. Regarding my /tr/ and /dr/, you're right, I was aiming for [tSr\] and [dZr\]. All the instances of DRAWING make the sound more noticeable in the recording. But I'm listening again and it does sound off. I'm not sure if it is because I seem to have something like [dZv\] in some of those.
By the way, that particular suggestion (to use [tS] and [dZ] before /r/) came from Canepari's proposal for an international accent, and I find it helps me to avoid using [t_h4] or [d4] (years ago these were easier for me, and since I was learning RP, they were considered acceptable variants).
Not all Americans use [tSr\] and [dZr\] though: they don't really come naturally to me.
I also wonder, in the interest of moving away from the traditional RP and GA models for foreigners: is a non-rhotic accent more pleasant and readily intelligible for rhotic speakers than a rhotic accent for non-rhotic speakers?
Guest - I'm a native non-rhotic speaker and I much prefer non-rhotic. But I think you'll find it's mostly a personal preference without any degree of consistency in opinion.
I don't like the Midatlantic accent, nor UStoRP hybrids created by Canepari.
It's not [tSr\] or [dZr\] but the /t/ and /d/ are made retroflex. Also, I prefer more rhoticity :-)
<<It's not [tSr\] or [dZr\] but the /t/ and /d/ are made retroflex. Also, I prefer more rhoticity :-) >>
Is that what you do, what you recommend or what you hear in my recording, Skippy?
>>It's not [tSr\] or [dZr\] but the /t/ and /d/ are made retroflex. Also, I prefer more rhoticity :-)<<
Depends on the dialect; at least here, /tr/ and /dr/* are indeed [tʃɹ̠] and [dʒɹ̠], not [ʈɹ̠] and [ɖɹ̠], except in more conservative speech (particularly by middle-aged and older people), where then they are just [t̠ɹ̠] and [d̠ɹ̠] (which are postalveolar rather than truly retroflex).
* aside from certain cases where the clusters are split by morpheme boundaries, where then one can get things like [ʔʁ] for /tr/.
I hope there never will be any such thing as an International Accent. I assume we are referring to the English Language here. I can't think of anything more dreary, linguistically speaking, than having every speaker of English using the same accent. So boooooooorrrriiinggg. We have gazillions of foreign tourists here in Edinburgh, and it's amazing how many of them speak good English, even though they do not come from an English speaking country. It's interesting trying to determine where they come from merely from their accent. In my experience the Dutch and the French (or Belgian!) are the easiest to identify; so are the Germans (or maybe Austrians?); the Scandinavians are easy to pinpoint to Scandinavia as a whole, but not so easy to tell the Swedes, Danes and Norwegians apart.
I'm now getting quite used to the Polish accent - I really like it. I hope to pop over to Poland sometime soon - a flight to Warsaw from here doesn't take long. It takes longer to pass through check-in, passport and security controls and then wait for your departure time! Time enough to swot up on basic Polish phrases - in a Scottish accent. Now what the (BLEEP) would that sound like?!
Long live all the variations of accents in English. It's fun, is it not?
''Long live all the variations of accents in English. It's fun, is it not?''
Yup