Thread: how to do a russian accent

Originally Posted by alexsms

Always make your consonants at the end of the words UNVOICED. The ending consonants are all the time unvoiced in Russian. For example, a Russian would say 'as I know' like 'ass I know' which immediately distinguishes Russians (weird example, but it's from my experience and i remember it well).

This isn't a problem for Russians only -- many ESL speakers have trouble with voicing (or devoicing) consonant sounds at the end of words, especially the -s in plural nouns and third-person singular present verbs, and the -d in some past tense verbs. For example, in a native speaker's pronunciation, the -d in walked should sound more like a -t (because of the influence of the unvoiced -k-), while the -s in verbs sounds like a -z (because the -b- is voiced).

As a kid, I was always greatly amused by the ABBA lyric (from "Knowing Me, Knowing You"):

In thessssse old familiar roomsssss, children will play...
Now there'sssss only emptiness, nothing to sa-a-ay.

The pronunciation should be "theez" and "roomz" and "there'z", but the singer very noticeably over-pronounces the "s" as it's written.

(What makes this funnier to me is that, generally speaking, Agnetha and Frida did NOT have heavy Swedish accents in their singing, especially considering that they hardly knew English at all and learned the songs phonetically. So when they sing roomsssss, it really jumps out at you because most of the time, they don't "sound foreign.")

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

As a kid, I was always greatly amused by the ABBA lyric (from "Knowing Me, Knowing You"):

The pronunciation should be "theez" and "roomz" and "there'z", but the singer very noticeably over-pronounces the "s" as it's written.

Funny thing, this is exactly what I noticed one day too, and I’ve always been sure they spoke or rather sang perfect English. I think we should ask Hanna if Agnetha and Frida really hardly knew English at all. I strongly doubt that they did. I think everyone in Sweden speaks English, don’t they?.