accent sample (non-native speaker)

patryk   Fri Aug 01, 2008 1:56 pm GMT
Hi,

My name is Patryk and I'm from Katowice, Poland, where I study English at the local university. I've been working on an American accent for a couple of years now, and I have spent a total of 7 months in the US during that time. If you guys could listen to my speech sample and tell me what I sound like and what aspects I should try to improve on I'd be really grateful! Here's the download link:

http://www5.zippyshare.com/v/64563608/file.html

Thanks,
Patryk
Caspian   Fri Aug 01, 2008 2:19 pm GMT
Wow, that's really good! I'm British, but you sound completely American to me. Well done!
Dialect   Fri Aug 01, 2008 6:25 pm GMT
It's cool how it works. If you learn a different dialect of a language, you can usually fool speakers of other dialects into thinking that you are a native speaker, and your accent doesn't have to be 100% which is virtually impossible for most people. As an American, I can definitely detect a foreign accent on your English--although not a very strong one. Your English is very good. If you had learned a British or Australian accent, you could probably fool me, but probably not Caspian.
Guest   Sat Aug 02, 2008 1:51 am GMT
As an American, I would never for a second think that you were American. But your accent is still very good. Very good. Probably better than 96.7% of non-native speakers.
Guest   Sat Aug 02, 2008 6:04 am GMT
Yeah the two posters above are right
daren   Wed Aug 06, 2008 6:13 am GMT
hi patryk
Amazing work, well done.
To me, a non-native speaker, your intonation and rhythm sell you out more than your pronunciation.
If you can work more on stressing and intonation, you will probably be able to mask your real origin.
Xie   Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:03 am GMT
Quick question: are there many accents in the west of the US? Are they very similar?
Guest   Wed Aug 06, 2008 3:50 pm GMT
>> Quick question: are there many accents in the west of the US? Are they very similar? <<

They really overlap a lot. It's hard to separate them, and many Westerners themselves can't hear the differences, or be very sure where someone is from based on their accent. Places near the border with Canada tend to have some Canadian influence in the way certain words are pronounced, such as words like "writer" [-@I-] or "bag" [-eg-] (or just a raised [{]) or "tomorrow" [-Or\-]. Some Westerners (even those far from the border) have the Canadian vowel shift, but it's not as widespread as in Canada. California has some innovations, such as the California vowel shift, but not everyone in California has those features, and they also exist in neighboring states like Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon to a certain extent as well. Aside from the Canadian influences, the Northwest seems to have a more conservative accent overal than the Southwest, and Califirnia seems to have the most innovations.

Anyway, if you got 5 random people from various places in the West, and put them in a room together and had them try to correctly guess where the others were from, I would be very surprised if they could do that. Even people who are good at analysing accents tend to not be able to do it with any great certainty.
Super Korean   Wed Aug 06, 2008 6:32 pm GMT
What about my accent? How does it sound to British people?
I am not a native speaker of English either.

http://media.putfile.com/doksuri