Thread: Not sure what’s being said here

I don't hear any accent, but it sounds strange anyway. Perhaps because of unnatural or oldfasioned inflexion? Add I don't hear preposition 'в' (in) at all? Did you hear it?

Originally Posted by adoc

I don't hear any foreign accent, I don't know where this came from. They speak unusually slowly, and that's all. Well, the lady talks like an old first-grade teacher, so I would not call her accent sexy, but it is still Russian. Many of the sentences are OK, and at this stage might serve their purpose.

У Петра есть явный (для моего уха акцент), У Ирины акцент слабее, но тоже мной улавливается. Музыка речи тоже подхрамывает. Уверена на 99.9%. Наверное, они таки да носители языка, но приехали детьми и потеряли чистоту произношения.

Originally Posted by mariashara

I don't hear any accent, but it sounds strange anyway. Perhaps because of unnatural or oldfasioned inflexion? Add I don't hear preposition 'в' (in) at all? Did you hear it?

Come on, no accent my bum. Listen to how she says Анночка - the a is more like the "a" in the English "Ann" and the ч is not Russian - it's too hard, it's more like the English ch in "match". The vowel о in носит is more like the aw in "law" in British English than the true Russian o. Overall, her intonation is foreign.

Originally Posted by adoc

I don't hear any foreign accent, I don't know where this came from. They speak unusually slowly, and that's all. Well, the lady talks like an old first-grade teacher, so I would not call her accent sexy, but it is still Russian. Many of the sentences are OK, and at this stage might serve their purpose.

This is not a Russian accent. It's got the word FOREIGN written across its forehead in block letters.

This sounds like a weird mixture of old-fashioned pronunciation (you can hear it in intonations -- I heard some elderly people talk like that when I was a kid) and, yes, a touch of foreign accent. I would go with Lampada's theory that they used to be native speakers who lived among the foreigners too long.

Daughter of a "white officer"?

They are Russian speakers, but sometimes some slight accent can be heard, I guess they spend quite a long time in USA or UK.

They speak slowly, and that changes intonations sometimes, probably because they were forced to speak slower then usual. But exercises sound OK to me to learn Russian, but I am not an expert.

Originally Posted by VendingMachine

Daughter of a "white officer"?

I spoke with some immigrants from times of Revolution-1917, and their children, they spoke perfect Russian, sometimes better then many Russians in Russia.

My wife already gets ribbed by her mates for having picked up a funny accent when she goes home to visit, and she's only been in the UK on-and-off for about 4 years.

I've heard a couple of non-native speakers (Britons) speak Russian with a better accent than that lady in the recording.

I can't remember where on the tape but I recall hearing Пётр say a short sentence in English and I thought at the time ‘Wow, he’s got a perfect English accent anyway’ so it looks like it was rather too perfect if it came at the expense of his Russian accent.

It’s a shame their accents are not very obviously Russian. There shouldn’t really be an issue with it. You’d think the makers of the course would have at least gone to the trouble of selecting speakers with authentic and indisputably Russian accents.

The copyright notice on the tape says 1979 and like I said, they were produced at the University of Exeter in Devon, England. They were obtained from ‘Drake Educational Associates’ at an address in Cardiff and the address and details were given in the Penguin Russian Course (the predecessor to the more familiar New Penguin Russian Course). There are 30 different sections corresponding to the 30 lessons in the book with an average of maybe four or five different exercises for each section.

That exercise is taken from lesson 11 so they’re perhaps still speaking somewhat more slowly and unnaturally at that stage. I think they might speed up a bit later on in the course. Still, it’s no excuse if the accent sounds that foreign to some people.

I have to say though, I have found them quite useful so far, if only to get me to practice speaking some Russian. When I have to construct a sentence and speak it within the pause given it does feel like I’m exercising a different part of my brain than usual

If anyone is interested in hearing some more of them, I guess I could upload them but I don’t really have any webspace for it. I just quickly got that geocities site set up to upload the original clip. I don’t know if they’ll close it down if it’s just being used to upload and download files.