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My accent?
Even if my accent and microphone aren't the best, I'd like to get some feedbacks about my accent, if you could give it a mark out of 10 or tell me where a word sounds off, it would really help.
Thanks a bunch! http://www.zshare.net/audio/152670385e0b858e/
Well, it sounds mostly like Received Pronunciation British English, but with some other influences. You would probably not pass as a native in Britain, but with a few changes to your pronunciation, to make it sound more Irish, you could probably pass as a native speaker from Ireland if you went to North America.
Since your r's sound very Irish (when you do pronounce them), you should try to aim for a rhotic accent--as you might be able to pass as a native speaker. So pronounce your r's in words like "air".
Thank you for your answers.
What a shock! I never thought I sounded particularly Irish, but I gather my R's aren't British for some reason. Sadly enough, I don't have an Irish pronunciation dictionary. But is it only a matter of R's or are there other Irish features in my speech?
Irish English has /A/ in long, song, wrong, and /U/ in Dublin, love, sung...
That's not how I say these words. Anyway, thanks for the information.
Do you think I could easily switch to pure British English, though?
I don't plan on dating Prince Charles, haha.
I mean I'm fine with Irish but the thing is, I've never ever talked to someone who is Irish and I don't even know what an Irish accent sounds like, even though I found samples on the web. That's what creeps me out.
Well, you can speak British English for the most part, but you should take advantage of the fact that you can do a beautiful Irish-sounding R. Your accent sounds quite pretty, and is quite good. However, you would not be able to pass as someone from England (without many, many years of some sort of intensive accent reduction program). However, if you just add a couple of Irish features to your accent, and use your beautiful R's all the time, you would be able to fool many people into thinking that you were a native speaker of English from Ireland. Of course, this is not necessary, but since it would be quite easy for you to do, since your accent is quite good to begin with, and you can get those Irish R's that are very difficult for most people to produce, it would only take a few days or a few weeks to be able to speak with a native Irish sounding accent (rather than years or decades to be able to speak with a native British sounding accent.)
***but I gather my R's aren't British for some reason***
You gather right.....and it's the Rs which are the reason. To my ears they sound quite American. Is it good or bad for me to say that? I really think you should try and cultivate an Irish accent rather than a British one. You have an extremely pleasant sounding voice, nice and soft, and from the various intonantions in it I think your best bet would be to opt for Irish than British, by which I mean English English. With practice your voice would sound like the gentle murmur of a soft scented breeze wafting over the rippling lakes of Killarney.
Thank you so much for your answers and thanks for the compliments!
"it would only take a few days or a few weeks to be able to speak with a native Irish sounding accent " Well, that's great news! However, I really don't have any Irish model that I could copy, and I mostly listen to American English and British English material. I don't know whether I'm able to do those Rs all the time either, I was actually genuinely trying to do a British R! I'll give it a go though, and I'll try to find Irish podcasts or audiobooks that I can listen to and copy. If anyone can give me a crash course about being Irish, I'm up for it. |