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

<<Like I said, I can't please everybody. My "marry/merry"s may sound good to Midwestern people but off to guys from California.>>

Do you distinguish "marry/merry?" Most if not all Midwesterners and all Californians are "Mary/marry/merry" merged.

<<I hate to break it to you, Thomas, but regarding vowel length, I have american coworkers that tend to exaggerate. The take a loooong time to pronounce the vowel of some words (and they do that very often!). So, that specific thing is a matter of perspective or taste. Take Kirk for example, he finds no vowel length difference between the word "foot" and "food." Other americans do.>>

Well, as with most people in North America, I have a *phonetic* vowel difference in length there but not a *phonemic* one. In my dialect and many other North American ones vowel length is not phonemically contrastive but vowels may show up as longer on the phonetic vowel due to phonological environment, especially being before voiced sounds (this particular rule applies to English all over the globe). Thus, "foot" and "food" is not an equal comparison because one ends in a voiced consonant and another doesn't. Here are those two words for me--notice how the vowel length is only phonetic, not phonemic:

<foot> /fUt/ --> [fUt]
<food> /fMd/ --> [fM:d]

--X-SAMPA note: /M/ is an unrounded /u/.

A better comparison for those two vowels (/U/ and /u/, or actually /M/ in my case) would be "look" and "Luke." In my dialect the length for those two are the same, while in British English the vowel in "Luke" is longer. Here's my speech:

<look> /lUk/ --> [lUk]
<Luke> /lMk/ --> [lMk]

In RP those would be:

<look> /lUk/ --> [lUk]
<Luke> /lu:k/ --> [lu:k]

<<Regarding "occasionally", that is OK, and you can check a dictionary if you need to. About newspaper you're right; I don't know why I said newspAper instead of nEWspaper. But even so, you can listen to americans make that "mistake," just like the do it when saying the noun "addrEss" instead of "Address." The same happens with "dEtail" and "detAIl." This is a matter of regionalism.>>

Well, "address" and "detail" are examples of words which have variants in terms of stress but I've never heard a native speaker say "newspAper."

Kirk, what's the difference between "phonemic" and "phonetic". I don't understand. Could you explain it for me?

<<Kirk, what's the difference between "phonemic" and "phonetic". I don't understand. Could you explain it for me?>>

Sure :) I have just the thing for it--I wrote up a tutorial on phonetic transcription and gave some explanations for the terminology used in phonetic transcription and phonetics/phonology just for this purpose. Here's the link:

http://www.langcafe.net/viewtopic.php?p=9267#9267

You might want to read the entire tutorial if you're interested in learning how to transcribe phonetically but to skip to the section on the difference between phonemic/phonetic levels, go to the section called "Basics of Phonetic Transcription" and start reading at the second arrow.

If you have any questions after reading it, as always, feel free to ask (either here or at langcafe). :)

Yup, I know both Address and addrEss are correct; that's why I put the word mistake between quotes; it's "supposed" to be an error, but it's not. As a fact, in some cases, I use either pronunciation interchangeably (I don't do it with address but with other words that fall in the same category).

Kirk, about newspAper, I have. Big country, isn't it? :p

The "problem" with languages is that they evolve. Thus, something that was considered to be wrong years ago is now a rule.

We can compare old English to modern English. Words disappear, others appear; some rules change a bit. New phrases are considered to be completely OK because everybody start using them, etc, etc.

That's the funny thing of all this. :D

Oh, Thomas! Just a comment, I don't copy the opera singers' speech; I speak like that. As a fact, I sing opera (just a comment to clarify why I sound like that, not bragging about it, ok?).

But it's OK, some people believe that kind of sound has a nasal quality because they're not "trained" to distinguish between projected and nasal voices.

i would like to knw how letter b and v sound,cos that really seems to be giving me a tough time in differentiatin the words like e.g vein and bain and many more.infact i would rather say that ma native african accent is quite difficult for other people to understand which even made feel indimated when am around my friends.i have tried listen to english channels,watchin movies to improve the situation but still to sign of achievement,is it possible for me to really pick up anyother accent cos am in ma late 20s now?

I'm not sure if it's possible for you to sound 100% native-like, but it is definitely possible to pick up new sounds no matter how old you are. It could take some effort though.

1) Go to m-w.com
2) Look up the word "ban"
3) Listen to the pronounciation
4) Look up the word "van"
5) Try to hear the difference

For the V sound you can try to put your teeth on your inferior lip and try to say V, you will feel some vibrations in your lips and for the B sound put you lips together as if you were finishing to put some lipstick and say B.
It's funny Im telling you this if you could listen to me talking I have a very strong hispanic accent. I'm from Peru. I dont want to get rid of my accent because that's part of who I am but at the same time I want my english to be smoother . Does anybody has any techniques than can help me??
Thanks

Cesar,

I don't really believe much of what you were saying about your accent, unless you were very young when you started learning English. So how old were you then? I couldn't open your sound file to listen to.
You are saying that in 7 years you got an American Accent or you are accent less and not even living in the US?! Come on...that sounds scinece fiction to me.
I don' belive someone can just listen to an particular acccent and then just pick it up without speaking ...
I know many people here in the uS or around thw World who actually went to school to study English for years and they still have an accent.Or I know a lot imigrants who came over US when they were kids or young and they still have a liitle bit of accent, and they live here, which makes a lot of difference

Chamonix,

Cesar's accent is actually native to me.

Just returning to Mary-merry-marry, one interesting thing that's struck me is that the 3M merger regularizes (or "re-regularizes") some word pairs that had the same vowel in Latin but whose vowels subsequently split in English:

Unmerged speech (such as my own):

compare - [k@mpE@`]
comparative - [k@mp{r@4Iv]

prepare - [pr@pE@`]
preparatory [pr@p{r@tOri]

Merged speech:

compare - [k@mpEr]
comparative - [k@mpEr@4Iv]

prepare - [pr@pEr]
preparatory [pr@pEr@tOri]

"Shit, that one above was me. Pete "

Are you praising yourself or what?

ACCENTS CAN BE CHANCHED. I'M A NATIVE SPANISH SPEAKER. WHEN I STARTED LERARNING ENGLISH ON THE 6TH GRADE, IT WAS NOT EASY FOR ME. I MOVED TO THE UNITED STATES IN 1989. THEN I MOVED TO NORTH CAROLINA IN 1991. WHILE LIVING IN NORTH CAROLINA, I WAS ONLY 16 YEARS OF AGE. AT AGE 20, I WHENT BACK TO COLLEGE TO GET MORE TRAINING WITH THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. NOW I'M 31 YEARS OF AGE AND MY KNOWLEDGE OF ENGLISH HAS IMPROVED GRATLY ALONE WITH THE ACCENT BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN GOING TO SCHOOL TO LEARN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. FOR ANYONE OUTTHERE TRYING TO GET BETTER, HERE IS MY ADVICE. DON'T EVER GIVE UP ON DOING WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING. REMEMBER THE OLD SAYING, WITH PRACTICE WILL COME PERFECTION.

for my school play i need a great russiab accent but i dont have one at all

Hey guys. Today, I couldn't help but type "get rid of my accent" in the google search box because there's this guy at school who keeps asking me where I'm from, and when I answer with a "Why do you care?", he says "Because there's something about the way you speak". See, I came to the US 5 years ago from Europe, and all I knew how to say was "Hello" and "Goodbye", now I know so many flippin words, I don't think I can even count them. And I like how when I'm online, people can't tell whether I'm American or not since they can't hear me and my spelling and grammar are perfect (or so they say). I never thought I had an accent, until that guy mentioned it 2 months ago, and it's been bothering me ever since. I WANT TO GET RID OF IT! I mean, it's kinda weird too, because I've asked hundreds of people if I have an accent or not, and most of them say no, they say that they would never have found out that I wasn't American if I hadn't told them. And the people who DIDN'T say that I have no accent only said that I only have a very slight accent, but they still thought I was American because "everyone has their own way of speaking". So until 2 months ago, I thought I had no accent whatsoever. But it appears that I do, and I admit that I don't pronounce some words very well, especially when I talk fast, but other than that, I swear to god that I have no accent (I guess only some people notice, others don't...myself included). Now everytime I'm near that guy, I try not to talk without thinking what I'm going to say first and HOW I'm going to say it so he won't say I have an accent anymore. ARGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wish I could record my voice into some sort of recording program so I can upload it to the internet, let you guys download it and tell me if I have one or not.....too bad I don't have a god damn microphone.

Some people say they love accents, but I, being a foreigner, find mine to be uncool and others' to be cool.

by the way, I came here when I was 10, now I'm 15. Do you think it'll go away in 2 years or something?