Please give me some advice on my English audio sample
Caspian, your guess is right. I come from Asia. I guess you've heard the trace of tonal language in my English accent.
daveyboy, your tip about the speed control in Windows Media Player is very useful!Ｉ've been using Media Player, but never before had I noticed that feature! Using the slow play mode, I can hear clearly the pronunciation and capture the intonation. That really help! Thanks a lot ! But I hope the software can provide more features, for example, allowing repeated play from point A to point B. This feature will help me focus on the segment I am interested in. I've been studying English on and off for more than 10 years, (quite a long time, isn't it?) Initially I only put effort in learning new words and grammar, without much attention to my pronunciation. And there is not environment for me to practice spoken English. Now I regret that and want to make some effort to improve my spoken English. How long have you studied Spanish? With a Spanish girl friend, you shall learn Spanish quite easily!
Hey Clari, i am glad you like the feature on the media player, i dont think it will have the reapeat feature you have mentioned, you mite have to do it manualy with your cursor. 10 years is a long time Clari, but who is counting eh..? haha.. just keep going. I have been learning spanish about 2 and half years, but the first year me and my girl friend spoke english in the house..!! which was a very bad choice to take.!! but now we speak only in spanish. I can speak and write more spanish than i can understand spanish [ if that makes sense ] i think spanish is a very fast spoken language and i have big problems understanding it, i need to listen to spanish a lot more as well as read in spanish, i still do the grammer and the verbs but for me i think listening is more important at this time. You probably dont have problems understanding spoken english after 10 years Clari, what did you do at first ..? did you listen to english audio more than anything eles..?
Thanks..
Forgive my spelling.. i blame my keyboard..hahaha..
дейвибой, ты ОМЕРЗИТЕЛЬНЫЙ ОТМОРОЗОК!
You have a strong French accent.
Daveyboy makes a good point about accent variation, and you make a good point about bad habits. We will all have them in other languages -- shortcuts that we use to get around sounds that are hard for us to pronounce well. I do the same in Spanish -- I have used a tapped (single) R in every word that has a double R for so many years that I have no idea how to insert a real double R. And the couple of times I have succeeded in making a real double R and not a strangled gargling noise, I certainly couldn't actually make it in the middle of a word -- just by itself. So that's a skill I will have to master and a habit I will have to break if I want to sound less like a gringa in Spanish.
I'm not a teacher of any kind but I have a Mexican boyfriend, and one thing I've noticed that probably applies to everyone learning a new language is that there are sounds you just don't "hear" correctly because you have no point of reference for them from your own language. Spanish has no aspirated T like in English, so when I stress a T to him, he hears not T but TS, and then that's what he tries to say, which needless to say doesn't work well. He also can't do an American R or approximate any short vowels. I bought him a book by a Mexican author that attempts to approximate English sounds phonetically in Spanish, but I found that I disagreed with a lot of the pronunciations -- unless the author was going for an English accent. Which didn't seem to be the case, but I digress. My point is, these things are a hurdle we all face, and now that you seem to have mastered the vocabulary and sentence structure very, very well, the next step is to work on "hearing" the language as we do, so that in time you will speak it the way we do.
daveyboy,
In my opinion, English is a very fast language, much faster than my mother tongue. I can't imagine that Spanish is even faster than English! You should have spoken to your girl friend more in Spanish, but I wonder maybe she wants to practise her English?
I have no problem understanding spoken English by both British and American, since I watched English channels like Discovery, National Geographic, and listen to BBC on a daily basis.
But speaking is something different. It is much harder than listening. Firstly, I the pronounciation. Like Uriel has pointed, I have problems with some vowels and consonants, especially the R sound. I found it hard to pull back the tongue to pronounce the R. Occasionally I can pronounce it correctly, but next time I may forget the rule and end up curling the tip of my tongue.
Secondly, the intonation. I find it hard to mimic the intonation even with a slow playback. For even a very simple sentence like "hello,everyone, welcome to bbc", I found my intonation of "everyone" and "welcome" is different. The difference is more obvious for longer sentences. I try to analyze the intonation of native speakers in the hope to find any rules, but it is a very challenging task.
Clari. I have talked to a few people that are learning english and everyone of them says english is spoken very fast..!!. Because i am native english i dont sense the language as being fast. The people that i have talked with are spanish people and they say spanish is about the same speed as english.!! hahha.. not to me it is not. I have read on a site a very good peice of advice about learning spanish, " The first time you listen to spanish it will sound like its pronunced like this eg.. "quebuenosabesloquequirodecir " but the more you listen to the spanish, the more it will seem to slow down so the eg above would be "que bueno sabes lo que quiero decir' eventually the words will separate and not seem very fast..!! its probably the exact same in all the languages that people think are fast. For me Clari my speaking and pronounciation are better than my listening comprehension [ more listening for me ] Clari do you listen to american and english audio..? if you do it would maybe better for you to just practice the one audio, because they are very different accents, and thus making it twice as hard for you to practise them both. Yeah Clari in the first year me and my girlfriend talked in english in the house so it was very good for her English comprehension, i dont blame her [ we are both to blame ] but honestley she nor i did not really know how hard it would be for me to learn and understand spanish. Apparently the listening comprehension for the native speakers of English learning spanish is very very hard..!!. Clari just keep going on with the practice, you can write english, understand english, just concentrate only on your pronounciation for now.
Thanks.
<< I found it hard to pull back the tongue to pronounce the R. >>
Hmm, I don't think you need to. You just make your lips into a round shape with just a small opening and make the sides of your tongue touch your teeth slightly.
I could understand about 70% - 90%.
In Asian languages, the vowels are more important.
But in English, the consonants are the MOST important.
The two best things you could do to improve, are:
1) Slow down and put spaces between your words
2) CLEARLY pronounce each consonant
After learning to do that, THEN you can bring your speed up. You don't HAVE to talk fast just because we do. But you DO have to speak clearly.
For example:
Word: University
You: "U-VERSE-DEE"
Me: "U-NIH-VERSE-IH-DEE"
Word: Conducted
You: "CUN-DUH"
Me: "CUN-DUCK-DID"
Word: Accounts
You: "UH-CUSS"
Me: "UH-COUNTS"
Please post more YouTubes. You are doing well!
Hi, Timothy,
I am so thankful that you give me some VERY and REALLY important and valuable advice. I really appreciate the two tips that you give.
1) Slow down and put spaces between your words
2) CLEARLY pronounce each consonant
About the (2), you added
"In Asian languages, the vowels are more important.
But in English, the consonants are the MOST important. "
Thanks for highlighting the importance of English consonants. I think many English learners including me are not fully aware of that.
Your point that “In Asian languages, the vowels are more important” is arguable though. I am not sure of other Asian languages, but in my mother tongue, vowels and consonants are equally important.
The reason why I have problem in pronouncing some consonants clearly especially in multi-syllable words as you point out may be attributed to the nature of my native language which is a relatively slow language compared with English. In my native language, each word (or known as character) always consists of one consonant and one vowel. Besides, each character is pronounced with the same interval and we put space between each character. For example, the English word “pronunciation” may sound “pro – nun – ci – a - tion” in my native language. For that reason, single-syllable English word is not a problem, but multiple-syllable words pose great challenge to me, as my tongue keeps changing positions in a really fast pace which is not required in my native language. As a result, some consonants may be missing.
Ever since I started this thread, I got so much valuable advice from you, Uriel, daveyboy and Caspian. Thanks to your help, I have a much clearer idea of my problems now. I've started working on improving my pronunciation, but it may take me several months to make big progress since it is really hard to break old habits. But I will keep trying and upload new audio files if I feel ready.
Happy New Year, Timothy, wish you all the best in 2010!
Clari,
Glad my words were helpful!
You mentioned that multi-syllable words are difficult because of how fast your tongue has to change positions. Maybe I already said this, but I think it would help if you slow down. If you slow down, your tongue will have time to get to all the consonants. It may feel frustrating, but then people will understand you 100%, and once you get used to accurate pronunciation, then you can get fast again.
Your writing however seems perfect.
Happy New Year to you too! :)
Don't try to talk fast until you get your tongue trained to make those transitions between syllables automatically. A lot of native speech is muscular memory -- your tongue just knows what position to get into after certain sounds, because it's so used to certain patterns and combinations. I run into the same problem with Spanish -- when I try to say even words I know pretty well too quickly, they become really garbled, because my tongue automatically goes back into "English mode".