Thread: Please check my pronunciation

http://files.mail.ru/YB50EL

Right off the bat I've noticed a couple of mistakes that stick out like a sore thumb.
Let me run it down for you.

1. I'd like to call your attention to the word "that"/"with"/"the." You pronounce it like "Zat"/"wiz"/"ze" and that is incorrect - there's no "Z" in "that"/"with"/"the". You need to put in a lot of work on those words to achieve perfection.
2. You're confusing the lax and tense "i". You pronounced "tip" as "teep" and "skills" as "skeels".
You need to learn to distinguish between
"pit" and "peat"
"lip" and "leap"
"bit" and "beet"
and so on
3. Also your "r" sound is off. It is one of the most difficult sounds to master, granted, but you have to get a good handle on it before you will sound good.

Try this site
http://www.englishpronunciationpod.com/newarchive.html
It is a mother lode of useful info on educated American pronunciation.

My suggestion: try to work on the words/problems I have just outlined for you, using either the link I gave you or some other material, then make a recording of those words and ask for an opinion. That alone will do your accent a lot of good. Learning accents is a strenuous job and at times can be frustrating, but you have to be assiduous, to keep at it and you accent will be gradually improving.

PS: When I was listening to you I couldn't help but think of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Seriously, you sound like him, I waited on you to say "I'll be back".

Your pronunciation is usually easily understandable. The biggest area for improvement, as mentioned, is with the "th" sound. Maybe this will help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3B5zvxSe1E

In general your emphasis and word accents are quite good. You correctly stress the important words in the sentences and your pauses usually sound natural. One wrongly-accented word: "profiting" ("explore ways of profiting from opportunities") is stressed on the first syllable: PROF-it-ing. Also: "attentively" ("listen actively and attentively") was mispronounced: it should be: a-TEN-tiv-ly. There is no "sh" sound in the word.

If you post the text, I'd be happy to record it for you (with an American accent), if that would help.

Something that struck me was your pronunciation of words with double vowel letters: coach. This two-letter sequence represents a single vowel sound. Coach is close to коч not коач.

In a formal presentation like you are doing here, do not pronounce the -ing forms of verbs as -in. I know that the final nasal consonant /ŋ/ is not present in Russian, but this /in/ pronunciation is very informal. Not something you would say standing in front of an audience!

I think your intonation is good; it's clear that you understand everything that you are reading. You are putting the emphasis on the right word in every sentence. That is a very good start.

It's too hard to give feedback in writing. I recommend: If you have the text available, post it here, or on Rhinospike.com so that a native speaker can read the text for you; one time slowly and one time at normal speed.

I agree with Chaika about the word "coach" -- practice that a bit more.

American English is really taking over in Russia isn't it..? Only a few of the ladies on this site seem to prefer British English, everyone else is full on yankee.... Personally my recommendation to Russian speakers would be: Go for British unless you are going to live in North America or work with Americans on a daily basis. But of course, I am just a tad biased in favour of British English...

Originally Posted by Lynn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3B5zvxSe1E

The explanation in the web video has a little problem, in that both explanations start from jaw positions that are different in their initial positions. That is, starting with s and z sounds, very different than th.

If you start with v sound, as a continuous sound, the jaw is in almost exactly the right place as for both th sounds. Then the lip is simply moved out of the way, and tongue gently touches the bottom of upper front teeth.

It is relatively easy to go from vvvvv to continuous th (voiced) and back to v, without major jaw movement. The lip and tongue tip simply replace each other touching the bottom of the upper front teeth. The s and z explanations require very significant movements that do not help the explanation. Very little movement is required going from v to th, in either voiced or fffffff sound to unvoiced th.

Try going from (unvoiced) fffff to unvoiced th, and back to f.

Thanks a lot to everyones for your pieces of advice.
This is my second speech.
http://files.mail.ru/PW33UQ

I would appreciate it if somebody read it.
Thanks.

http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnengl ... gement.pdf
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnengl ... aching.pdf

Да, кстати, а скажи-ка пожалуйста, на каком английском ты пытаешься говорить: американском или британском.
Для американского буквы R у тебя недостаточно, для британского - почти правильно.

Of произносится ов, но не чистая О, а между О и А. А вот off произноситья с чистой О. ОФ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdGZBRAwW74
Слушай of в припевах и во втором куплете.

Buxton произносится без o. Там идет glottal stop вместо этой буквы. Посмотри канал JenniferESL на Youtube. Просто awesome stuff. Там же есть и про Th, да и вообще полно разных "вкусностей".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edxwQK1zBxw

Th - ты действительно произносишь его как С. Не надо. Попробуй сказать русскую Д, но воткни язык между зубами при ее произношении (можно наружу высунуть не больше чем на миллиметр), а альвеол не касайся. Давление только вверх (на верхние зубы), но несильное. Типа как поглаживание. И ооооочень быстро убирай язык от зубов как пойдет звук. Полчаса тренировки и будешь говорить как натуральный американец.
Кстати в той песне Katy Perry тоже полно th.

"wanted to talk to you about today" очень плохие t, а их ритмичность просто подчеркивает это.
Вот образец: http://www.sendspace.com/file/srcoru .
Btw native-speakers, please tell me if I said it incorrect. I may sound pretty angry, but I am not. I am "mild and downey". :"":

Не перекрывай полностью поток воздуха когда говоришь Т. Должно быть небольшое шипение как будто ты говоришь ТС одновременно.
http://lingvo.yandex.ru/en?os=translati ... anslate=on (здесь образец, обрати внимание на Т).
Кстати О в talk здесь тоже неправильно. Прямо русская. Попробуй сказать О с широкооооооооо открытым ртом. Для этого тебе придется расширить горло (другие мышцы работают). Вот это и будет настоящая английская длинная О. Теперь скажи ее в нормальном положении челюсти. В американском варианте говорится почти длинная А в таких словах. Talk Walk, Want и т.д.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNIsY6J ... Crx5FEPo0U
Послушай там Т, Д, и т.д. А также walking во второй строчке второго куплета. Ммм!! обожаю эту песню.
И кстати сразу же в начале во второй строчке идет she's going off about something that you said. Здесь слушаем OFF и ABOUT.

today говорится без О/У вообще там шва (непонятный звук, похожий на мычание наших политиков когда они не знают что сказать и подбирают слова) звучит типа тыдэй.

Ну и так далее, просто лень так много писать. Поработай над тем, что тебе сказали до меня. Там действительно куча работы. И потом запости еще одну попытку. Не спеши, научись сначала говорить правильно, а уж потом отрабатывай fluency. Во избежание закрепления и автоматизации неправильных звуков. Кстати, если ты хоть что-нибудь произносишь идентично русскому аналогу, тогда можешь быть уверен, звук неправильный.

А, забыл. Вот еще ссылочка на аабалденный сайт с американским произношением. Я очень часто использую его.
http://www.rachelsenglish.com/mouth_positions
Удачи.

Originally Posted by Johanna

Personally my recommendation to Russian speakers would be: Go for British unless you are going to live in North America or work with Americans on a daily basis.

Why in North America?
As a matter of fact, American English has permeated the world and its preponderance over British English is more and more conspicuous. I think everybody who's setting out to learn English would do much better to get a handle on the American accent. And above all else, the American accent just sounds cool :"": I especially have a liking for the Southern drawl. Something to die for.

Originally Posted by Mr Happy Go Lucky

Originally Posted by Johanna

Personally my recommendation to Russian speakers would be: Go for British unless you are going to live in North America or work with Americans on a daily basis.

Why in North America?
As a matter of fact, American English has permeated the world and its preponderance over British English is more and more conspicuous. I think everybody who's setting out to learn English would do much better to get a handle on the American accent. And above all else, the American accent just sounds cool :"": I especially have a liking for the Southern drawl. Something to die for.

I would still prefer British English since it's an "English" language and AFAIK England is located at the British Isles.

I would still prefer British English since it's an "English" language and AFAIK England is located at the British Isles.

Of course it's entirely at your discretion what language to choose to learn, I'm not going to pitch you American English, nor am I going to malign BrE.
But I just can't wrap my head around why some people are so obsessed about British English. What's its upsides? Do some people thing that BrE is somehow unsullied? Some people argue that BrE is "immutable", as opposed to AmE that changes every so often, but that's a bunch of hogwash. Look at how BrE has changes over the years (for one thing, it now has "get-got-got", when the older form is "get-got-gotten" and AmE has retained the older form, but examples of such changes in BrE abound on the internet).
In all honesty, American English has taken over and it is truly ubiquitous now - take any movie and in ninety percent of the time it will be in AmE. Now I'm not gonna get all chocked up about the matter, vindicating my point here, I'm just gonna let the matter drop.
Bottom line: I am all for AmE.

Mr Happy Go Lucky, buddy, by no means am I going to alienate you, I just couldn’t help but notice that your speech is abound with fancy words and idiomatic expressions. Instead of “I can’t understand” you say “I can’t wrap my head around”, instead of “it’s up to you” – “it's entirely at your discretion”, “that’s not true” – “that's a bunch of hogwash”. Nothing wrong with that grammatically and it illustrates that you like the language, but do Americans really talk like that? I bet many of them don’t even know what
to malign, unsullied, immutable, ubiquitous and vindicate mean.
I’ve chosen AmE for myself too, but entirely due to the fact that 90% of English on my satellite dish is American English. And I have nothing against BrE, it’s beautiful.
And by the way, where are those people who promised alusov to voice his pieces of pronunciation exercises in a genuine American or British style?

American vs British:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxFSXao4 ... SUzsQ5umUM

My personal choice is American variant since I have someone who helps me learn English in America.
And I agree with him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vk-WyQkWOE&feature=fvw

Here you go, "Coaching" read in a genuine American style (for better or for worse -- I've lived in both countries, but I'm keeping clear of this debate). Recorded once slowly and clearly enunciated, and once at natural speed. I tried to keep the first recording free of regional peculiarities. (I grew up 20 miles from Manhattan, where we tend to swallow Ts in the middle of words: water = wadder, kitten = ki'en, and as you'll hear in the second recording, postpone = pospone.)

Hope they're helpful.

Slowly: http://ifolder.ru/17475742

Natural speed: http://ifolder.ru/17475936

Did you notice the ominous number of my posts? 666 What could that signify, I wonder? Devilishly good, maybe?

Originally Posted by Lynn

I tried to keep the first recording free of regional peculiarities. (I grew up 20 miles from Manhattan, where we tend to swallow Ts in the middle of words: water = wadder, kitten = ki'en, and as you'll hear in the second recording, postpone = pospone.)

It may come as a total surprise to you, but not only does such pronunciation obtain in your neck of the woods, so it does all across the United States, as far as the eye can see.
"t" turns into "d"
Water => Wader
Futile => fudile (sounds the same as feudal)
What => whad
Clot => clod
And so on and so forth

"t" is a glottal stop:

Mountain => moun-ain
Internet => in-nernet
Advantage => advan-nage

Mind you that such transformations are considered educated speech, not what some rube living far out in the willy-wags would say.
I've been studying the American Pronunciation for quite some time now and I know my way around it.

Originally Posted by alexB

do Americans really talk like that? I bet many of them don’t even know what
to malign, unsullied, immutable, ubiquitous and vindicate mean.

I'm French, currently staying in Russia on business. (that's why I'm frequenting this site )
I lived in the USA for a time and believe me, these expressions are well known to one and all across the USA, they pop up in conversation repeatedly. (well, I don't take hicks into consideration, they may not be cognizant of "vindicate" of course, but I haven't gotten a chance to talk to hicks and truth be told I don't regret it )
I have made it my business to learn idiomatic expressions, when you're stuck for words, they always come in handy. Knowing a couple of ready expressions that fit the bill always go a long way and you can avoid many embarrassing pauses when you're frantically groping for a word and keep coming up empty. It have already saved me a great deal of embarrassment, take my word for it.
PS: Also as a pleasant side effect the number of mistakes I make have greatly reduced ever since I started picking up expressions, many of my native speaker acquaintances can testify to that. And I owe it all to the expressions I know. But I'm already steering the conversation away from the subject matter.

Originally Posted by Mr Happy Go Lucky

Originally Posted by Lynn

I tried to keep the first recording free of regional peculiarities. (I grew up 20 miles from Manhattan, where we tend to swallow Ts in the middle of words: water = wadder, kitten = ki'en, and as you'll hear in the second recording, postpone = pospone.)

It may come as a total surprise to you, but not only does such pronunciation obtain in your neck of the woods, so it does all across the United States, as far as the eye can see.
"t" turns into "d"

Think more like the TV show "The Sopranos." The Italian-American community in New Jersey has taken this widespread tendency and raised it to an art form. (You won't hear it in those recordings though. I've learned to repress my inner Jersey girl.)