Can you comment on my pronunciation, please.

videogamer   Fri Jan 15, 2010 4:11 pm GMT
http://www.roundshare.com/818002.mp3

Please, download the above sample and tell me: whether my ordinary accent and pronunciation sound generally agreeable or they are hard to understand?

Actually, having listening it I can distinguish where the majority of my mistakes is and I will most likely avoid repeating them if I read the text multiple times, but I guess it will not be fair, so I've uploaded the original ver.
Ania   Fri Jan 15, 2010 5:51 pm GMT
Again, I 'm not a native speaker (And I'm waiting for their answer as well) but I can tell you what I think from the phonetic point of view ;P (I don't know which mistakes you're aware of, so I'll just write everything that came to my mind)

First I'd say your intonation is unusual, an American would never read a text like this.

I've noticed you didn't pronounce /b/ at the end of job nor the /dʒ/ in porridge. And if you want to sound American you should pronounce it /dʒab/ (with a /a/ like vowel, not to get into details;)

Your /w/ sometimes sound like /w/ combined with /v/.

Your /ei/ is also rather high like in face and plain. Could be dialectal, but I don't think that was your intention.

And the /i/ in kit should be a short one.

These are the most important things I think, or at least the ones I can distinguish.

All in all I think you're accent is very good. You should hear students of English from my faculty... ;P
Uriel   Sat Jan 16, 2010 3:37 am GMT
I'm not even sure where to start. Your intonation is almost perfect -- that's a normal rhythm and stress pattern you've got there.

Your accent, on the other hand, is really, really strange, and doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard before, so as a native speaker, I will have to strongly disagree with Ania's last statement. I couldn't understand your first few words at all. I have to assume that all the Z-sounds I heard in the beginning were an attempt at a hard TH (as in this or that). Your vowels were very odd. So you still have a lot of accent reduction ahead of you.
Sexy Allah   Sat Jan 16, 2010 5:28 am GMT
You have a sexy voice.
Robin Michael   Sat Jan 16, 2010 5:45 am GMT
I was hesitating before making any comment. But I think that my comments will have more validity than Sexy Allah.

First of all, I recognised the piece you were reading as a well known script.

So, how did you do.

I felt that you went through the script, (reading the piece), as if it was an exercise. You read it very quickly.

I found it a little bit difficult to make out the meaning.

If you were a native speaker and you were saying something to someone. You would make a point of pronouncing any difficult or unusual words carefully.

If you were saying something important, you would slow down. If you were reading a formula, you would go through it very quickly.

I felt with this, you just went through it very quickly.
Wintereis   Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:13 am GMT
I would have to agree with all that has been said, except for what Sexy Allah said. You need to work on the (w) sound. It is very (v) oriented. As a tip, the (w) is more aspirated than (v) it is as if you are trying to blow out a candle with short, stacatoed breaths. Also, you do need to slow down and separate the words. That is deffinetly not how a native speaker would read something.

(w) and (v) sound (English accent, but the v and w have the same sounds as aAmerican accent):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeW_ZQwx27A&feature=related

(r) and (w) sound (this is more commonly a problem for East Asians, but she explains positioning of the mouth--General American):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKHYnavxMns&feature=related

(th) sound (General American accent, but the th sounds the same as in an English accent):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mOlEh5bdNQ&feature=related

As Robin Michael stated, a native speaker would speack more slowly and with more emphasis on pronouncing every sylable. Here is an example where a reader is trying to really make the reader understand what he is saying (for your information, this is a General American accent):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm-n9wFZMiE

This is an RP, British accent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqCPfr5OiOE

Though, you will want to be careful of using the melodic tones in each of these, as they are poems, and people will think you are odd if you maintain something similar in your common speach.
Wintereis   Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:18 am GMT
Here is the (v) and (w) in General American:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C_uw2PaA2w&feature=related
Wintereis   Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:21 am GMT
damn, sorry for the spelling. I need to stop checking antimoon on Friday nights.
Blanc   Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:26 am GMT
Dang, another mistake. This is what I meant to use for the RP accented reading (the other is a New York accent):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUYLUKibb3k&feature=channel

Forgive my drunken impediment.
Puzzled   Sat Jan 16, 2010 3:23 pm GMT
Why I only see "invalid download link" when clicking the "download file" button?
videogamer   Sat Jan 16, 2010 8:15 pm GMT
Thank You SO MUCH for your great recommendations.

Could you please be so kind to advice me if I did a step in the right direction with this one in wesker-style accent:

http://www.roundshare.com/594re2.mp3
Uriel   Sat Jan 16, 2010 8:24 pm GMT
Wesker?

You sounded....kind of Russian?
videogamer   Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:41 pm GMT
I had some artificial feeling while reading, but if it sounded like Russian it was really cool then.
Timothy   Sun Jan 17, 2010 10:31 am GMT
AH! Your first one sounded bad -- I could hardly understand it.
But with your second one, you slowed down, you put spaces in between the words, and it was a great improvement!

Like others said, you need work on your "v" and "w", and you still need to clearly pronounce EACH PART of EVERY word. Other than that, it sounded good for the level you're at.
Wintereis   Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:57 am GMT
I listened to your second sample. It is much, much better and far more understandable than your first.

There are a couple of things, though. You still want to work on the pronunciation of “v” and “w”. Just practice them as those women show in the videos from YouTube. Also, the “a” in international should be pronounced as the “a” in cat and not as the “a” in ace. Though, be careful with this word and its close relatives, as nation has the "a" sound of ace while national and international have the "a" sound of cat.

Here is the correct sound for "international":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYiRv6CJCDY&feature=related

Also, I’m not entirely sure, as I couldn’t understand the word, but I think it was supposed to be “terrorists”. Your pronunciation made it sound like tea-wire-ists. You can hear the correct pronunciation of the word terrorists at .24 to .26 on this video and also at 1.05 on the same video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nRoBJY0_xU