Thread: Do Russians like American accents in spoken Russian?

i have an American friend who has to speak Russian very often... When we hear him speaking with someone Russian on the phone, we can barely hold laughter. The thing is if an American is not trained to develop Russian pronunciation s/he will have a thick accent. In my opinion, they found funny. In the same way, Russians speaking English also sound funny if not trained how to pronounce English sounds and develop rhythm, intonation, etc.

Originally Posted by alexsms

i have an American friend who has to speak Russian very often... When we hear him speaking with someone Russian on the phone, we can barely hold laughter. The thing is if an American is not trained to develop Russian pronunciation s/he will have a thick accent. In my opinion, they found funny. In the same way, Russians speaking English also sound funny if not trained how to pronounce English sounds and develop rhythm, intonation, etc.

This applies with every accent of course. It's especially funny when things are seriously mispronounced or with different pronunciation mean something different. One example is the word писать (when "a" isn't stressed, its meaning changes to "urinate"). I remember during Russian class one of the students said (with a heavy Vietnamese accent) said: "я писаю на бумагу сейчас" and of course he meant to say "I am writing on paper" and the teacher understood that, but she herself is Russian, so she has been used to "пишу" since early childhood. She cracked up laughing, and tried to hold it back, but just couldn't do it. The moral of the story is be careful with foreign languages and pronunciation cause sometimes it means something very different. I am talking mostly to tourists but this applies to everyone. This is not new advice but it goes good with this story. BE CAREFUL KIDS