Native speakers, How can I get an American accent?

yea right

I think latino accent sounds nice, don't you?

GO US ,haha

please mail me names of authors of american accent

I have heard that middle english (such as spoken in Shakeseare) actually sounded more like an appalachian accent than an english accent, with extremely wide vowel sounds. "Ah" sounds such as in "wAter", were pronounced with a harder "ah" as in in "Apple".

American Accent is crap!!

latino accent spunds very low class to me. no offense

Well, a lot of latinos are illegal immigrants that dont know the language and take on low paid jobs to get by. Maybe thats were your perception comes from, not the accent itself.

Ryan: sorry for the correction: not glottal stop in "better", but flap t. however I really do think this debate leads to nowhere as who wants to play God to say what is good. in UK they call it RP, and hardly anyone speaks it. in America it would be the North American English that is the standard, but so many local and personal variations exist, and that is what it makes it beautiful. I think.

Why would you want an American accent you say...uhh, because America rocks?
How about telling us why not? Hell why wouldn't you want to sound native to the earths only superpower nation? Not flaming The UK or anything, I have been there twice and it's a pretty neat place honestly if you don't mind a few things, and London was ass soup :0

I presonally think all accents sound neat.

Cool Brit, why r u saying that American Accent is crap? Well, i guess that's ur opinion and i don't care if i ptu, u, ur, and 2, because Im American

and im not thick!

well,l i think if you are not American, well, native, I mean, then probably you can't learn the accent!

Well, if someone wants to learn the America accent, it's his right to do so, isn't it? At least Standard American English is recognised and understood almost everywhere.

Americans until ca. 1945 actually believed the british king's english was better, and upper classes and wannabes tried to approximate the british pronounciation. In Canada, this went on longer (until 1955 or 60?). That style has lost prestige and is pretty much deemed wooden. The British are too busy deciding which accent to standardize on, the BBC speech of Prince Charles or more muscular varieties.

Now, what linguists call the midlands accent is thought to be the most prestigious. That's the accent you will hear in Hollywood movies--not a California one, and probably the most useful one for a foreigner to learn, IMHO.

BTW, nasal accents mainly occur in New York and cities participating in the northern cities sound shift (Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Chicago, then winding down to St. Louis) That variety, especially in its most advanced/working class form, sounds nasal and grating to the midlands speaker and others. It's gotten to the point that the northern cities working class accent is the butt of more jokes than a southern accent. Hillary CLinton speaks with the less advanced/upper-middle-class version of the northern cities accent. Bill spoke with the southern middle class accent of today which is really a combination of southern and midland.

THe most acceptable accent to most north americans is probably found from Columbus Ohio to Indianapolis and extending west to Denver. I read that a Japanese professor takes his students to Indianapolis to work on their english, surely because the midlands dialect is, overall, the most useful dialect of english. Besides, it's easier for a brit to understand an american than vice versa. The british cultural influence, outside of music, is nil, so north americans are not often exposed to british english.

Put it this way: if you were a germanic barbarian in the year 0 first coming into contact with civilization, would you learn latin or greek. Probably latin, even though much of the knowledge came through greek originally, because latin was the language of the country that was overwhelmingly politically and culturally predominant, like it or not. I do not mean this chauvinistically; it's an observation.

Well, I'm a native NY'er from Long Island and I think I'd rather speak with an English accent than an American one. You should think about an ernest attempt to learn the Queens English rather than Queens (a bourough of NYC) English. You'll find you'll eventually get many more dates with a British accent in the States... Chicks dig the cleaner sound of a proper UK dilect I think... Grass is always greener in the Neighbors yard I guess...


I wonder if my NOO YAWK accent would do me well in Bath or Manchester?
Ahh Whateva , Fugettabowtit...


DouBro@optonline.net

A foreign accent will for the most part get you more attention in mosts places... women included... a new yorker in caslifornia will experience the same effects if he has a stronger accent.

i think the "queens" english is an over-done affair, and am not particularly inclined to liking it at all... in fact i find british english grating and a little irritating.... and certainly rough and less lilting than american english.

Though there is a certain cadence to queens english which can be considered "musical", i find american english to be far more fluent and easier on the ears. Lots of soft sounds in our accent.

Speed in language is really a reflection of the speaker, there are many people... myself included who tend to speak quickly.... and many others who talk slowly, the american dialect is certainly for the most part at a slower cadence, however the plethra of shortened words , contractions, implied words and so on make communicating less needfull of being verbose. This however requires a cultural knowledge expecialy with implied words and contractions as well as the seemingly endless Acronyms in US english.

BTW IANAL but I C U need 4 me 2 brb if i go afk
u ain gon like it, but u know short talk fas

;-)

The above is far more efficient at communicating information, allowing for more information to be transferred in less time... this is not laziness... however, both parties must understand the rules and definitions governing these manners of speech, as is the case in regular speech as well.

At any rate, gauging someones "inteligence" via their accent is obviously a fools errand... you will quite easily underestimate someone. Or get taken in by someone else thinking them bright just cause they sound pompous.