What's wrong with my accent and how can I improve it?

Here is my recording of the "Daisy" paragraph that I found in another thread.

http://www.uploadhut.com/upload/488614.wav


I would like to know what makes my accent sound foreign and how I can improve it. I don't care about regional differences (e.g. wine vs. whine, merry vs. marry or Canadian raising); nor am I trying to pick up a specific accent, such as General American English. I'm only interested in mistakes that no native speaker from North America would ever make.

Did I hear "three" years old?
Can you record your native tongue at the same time so that people here can compare?
I am not a native speaker. If you remember, I speak Cantonese.

If you want to be rid of your native language's accent when speaking English, you need to pick an American, British, Canadian, or any other English accent.

I can say that you sound foreign basically cause of the way you speak, without taking into account pronunciation. In fact, your pronunciation is quite acceptable; I can understand what you say (except for the "thirty") but you don't sound like an american.

Is your native language Spanish? You sound like some of my friends when reading English texts.

My native language is Russian, and I've been living in Montreal, Canada since 1999. The reason why I'm not trying to pick up a specific accent is that every native speaker I met sounded different. There's no such thing as "Montreal English" because the dominant language in Quebec is French, and English is spoken by a large number of small minorities (Americans, Italians, Jews, Britons, Irish people, etc.), each of which has its own idiosyncrasies like pronouncing the final "g" in words like "annoying" and "hanger" or turning "h" into "haitch". However, their accents usually sound plausibly nativelike.

I watch a lot of American TV, but it makes it even harder, since only news anchors have the same accent (GA), and every other accent I hear can be traced to a specific region. For instance, Conan O'Brian sounds *a*lot* different from Dr. Phil because the former is from Boston, whereas the latter is from Texas. I tried to pick up a little bit of everything, but what I'm really concerned about is that I still have a heavy Russian accent despite the fact that I only speak Russian to my relatives, and I'm trying my best to imitate native speakers. I would like to get rid of whatever makes it sound Russian or otherwise "unEnglish" (i.e. unbecoming to North Americans).

There are lots of Russian accent sample in the Speech Accent Archive:
http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?function=find&language=russian

Try Russian #3. The others are so thick that the rolled Rs pretty much obscure everything else.

In the past, I was bothered by the idea of "having an accent." After almost seven years of speaking like a native american, I have come to the conclusion that you will always find someone who doesn't feel comfortable with your american accent.

So, there's one universal truth you need to keep in mind: you can't please everybody.

However, an accent like the "Standard American" is useful because, at least, most people will be able to understand you. They will not equal your accent to theirs, but they will feel comfortable when chatting with you.

Believe me, 1 out of like 50 or 60 americans tell me that there's a little something in my accent that they can't relate to a specific region in US. But when I speak, none of them believe that my native tongue is Spanish. Most believe that I "have no accent;" and I'm not gonna please everybody! Hehe.

Why don't you get the training course "The American Accent Guide" by Beverly A. Lujan? I am pretty sure it will help you a lot.

Since I'm in Canada, I'll probably try to pick up the "Standard Canadian" accent, but I don't mind sounding American. I already have an accent guide, albeit a different one. My dad got it as a gift from his boss when he turned "batches" into "betches", and the person at the other end heard "b**ches" ;) I'll try to go over the whole thing (including intonation and stress). Honestly, I only did the sections having to do with vowels, diphtongs and consonants that can be aspirated. The reason for that is that I didn't realize how foreign I sounded until recently (~2-3 weeks before I posted the first sample). If you want more details about my background and the reasons why I was misled into thinking that way, see the recent "Accent Sample" thread.

I know I can't please everybody, and I'm not even trying to do that. It's not about "pleasing people". There's a big difference between an accent that can't be traced to a specific region in the States (level 3 on the Antimoon scale) and one that clearly identifies you as a nonnative speaker of the language (levels 1 and 2). The latter is almost guaranteed to get in your way, especially if you're trying to blend into the English-speaking community.

For instance, consider a hypothetical accent that has the following features:

- A distinction between marry, merry and Mary
- Canadian raising ("There's a moose loose aboot the hoose"... Well, not really... There's a a [m..use] loose [ab..ut] the [h..use])
- Lots of flapped and silent ts ("take it for granite", "the Inner Net")
- A distinction between "whine" and "wine" ("that's hwat the hwite man calls them" -- Hank Hill)

That kind of accent would be from NoHWere, USA because it combines both Northern and Southern features. However, it wouldn't sound the least bit European. In fact, it's possible for an American or a Canadian to sound like that provided that he didn't spend his whole life in his hometown. BTW, that's exactly what I would sound like now had I succeeded to ditch the Russian accent (at least for the most part).

Then take GA and make one slight modification... Turn all Ws into Vs! That accent vill sound like Schvarzenegger's right avay, even though only one feature makes it different from GA. When it comes to the phonetic and prosodic features common to all American and Canadian accents, "ninety-nine and a half just won't do". Just one bad mistake can make one sound like an F.O.B. and "kick them out" of the language community. Think of the "b**ches" example. The accent might still be "understandable" provided that the listener is paying attention, but it can cause quite a bit of confusion.

Oh! Sorry! Don't take me wrong, buddy! I said that "you can't please everybody" because some people strive for a perfect accent and that just doesn't exist. :P

And about the rest of your reply... YUP! You're right, man!

The "thirty" issue is pretty easy to explain now that I understand it. I didn't actually pronounce it as "three", but I turned it into [ther?i:]. ("?" = a glottal stop). If I say it fast, it's almost guaranteed to sound like "three". I think I heard some native speakers do something like that in fast speech, but unlike me, they can make it sound natural. To avoid confusion, I just have to actually pronounce the "t".

I would like to know what else makes me sound foreign (other mistakes, intonation, stress, timing, vowel shortening, aspiration, etc.)

Hate to break it to you, César, but there's no way you sound like a native speaker of American English. There's something weird about the lenghts of your vowels, the 'a' in "calls" sounds non-native and the 'o' in "office" at least unusual, and you stress "occasionally" and "newspaper" wrong. With your newscaster intonation you sound a lot like that Japanese reporter on Family Guy.

Is it impossible to get rid of your accent if English is your second language?

Thanks in advance,
- Borat

We don't know... It's still a hot issue in linguistics. While it is quite clear that children pick up accents better than adults do, there is no consensus as to whether it is possible for an adult to get rid of his accent given the motivation. Research shows that about 5% of adult learners end up speaking like natives, but there are too many factors involved to come up with a definite answer. For instance, there's no way of telling if it requires a special talent. The Critical Period Hypothesis seems clear-cut in theory, but empirical research has produced mixed results.

What we do know is that it's possible to learn how to speak with a "reasonably" nativelike accent. Perhaps it won't be 100% indistinguishable from a native accent, but it will be more or less close to the standard, and it won't strike people as foreign anymore. Research shows that even "native bilinguals" who actually grew up speaking two languages usually end up speaking both with a slight accent. For instance, their voice onset times were found to be somewhere in between those of the respective monolingual groups. But they couldn't care less.

Check out the links below:

http://www.antimoon.com/other/myths-foraccent.htm
http://www.antimoon.com/learners/tomasz_szynalski.htm

From my experience, it's definitely possible to make incremental changes. When I first came to Canada, I couldn't even distinguish between "a bit" and "a beat", and I somehow managed to fix that problem with no special training whatsoever. I did have a dictionary though. The same goes for full vs. fool, dark ls, etc. I think I fixed more than 10 errors in total, but I got to the point where I can no longer figure out what exactly I'm pronouncing wrong. But even so, I'm not sure I've reached my biological limit. The thing about fossilized errors is that more often than not, you're not even aware of them because they _appear_ as if they were part of the normal variation in the language. It's relatively easy to unlearn something once you're aware of it.

>>For instance, their voice onset times were found to be somewhere in between those of the respective monolingual groups.<<

What do you mean by voice onset times?

"In phonetics, voice onset time, commonly abbreviated VOT, is the length of time that passes between when a consonant is released and when voicing, the vibration of the vocal cords, begins." -- Wikipedia

The VOT is what makes it possible to distinguish between "it's been" and "its spin" (as in the electron's spin). Since the "p" in "spin" is not aspirated, the only difference between the two is the time when you start voicing the consonant.

How can such be "somewhere in between those of the respective monolingual groups", if the comparison is made between groups of words?

I'm sorry, but I wasn't clear enough. Here's how the experiment was set up:

The experimental group consisted of English/French bilinguals. In addition, there were two control groups consisting of monolingual English speakers and monolingual French speakers. All of them were asked to read words in English and in French, and their voice onset times were measured. It turned out that the bilinguals' VOTs in all the words they read (i.e. in both languages) were somewhere in between those of the monolingual controls.

For instance, consider a native speaker's pronunciation of "occasionally" and Samson's, which sounded like "ocashionally". For a native English/Cantonese bilingual, it would be somewhere in between (i.e. still "occasionnaly", but not quite), and it would affect the other language as well. The VOT would appear to be slightly shifted toward "occasionally".