Not so! Louise Lombard convinced me she was an american actress, until I realised she was one of the sisters from the House of Elliot.Tillumadoguenirurm wrote:DaveBee wrote:Ingaræð wrote:Don't be too disheartened - if you care about pronunciation, it will take time, but you'll get there in the end. Just look at the trouble Americans have doing a British accent, and vice versa - and that's in the same language! If you can get the hang of 'alien' French sounds, you're doing well.
I always think Hugh Laurie's accent in House sounds silly, but americans seem to be OK with it.
All Brits sound weird when they try to do American.
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Re: Xenops Mostly Tackles French (and some other languages)
Tillumadoguenirurm wrote:All Brits sound weird when they try to do American.
I think that Brits sound better doing an American accent than Americans doing a British accent. I would love to find a course on how to do a British accent. To be specific, an Estuary or London accent.
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Re: Xenops Mostly Tackles French (and some other languages)
DaveBee wrote:Not so! Louise Lombard convinced me she was an american actress, until I realised she was one of the sisters from the House of Elliot.Tillumadoguenirurm wrote:DaveBee wrote:Ingaræð wrote:Don't be too disheartened - if you care about pronunciation, it will take time, but you'll get there in the end. Just look at the trouble Americans have doing a British accent, and vice versa - and that's in the same language! If you can get the hang of 'alien' French sounds, you're doing well.
I always think Hugh Laurie's accent in House sounds silly, but americans seem to be OK with it.
All Brits sound weird when they try to do American.
Ok, agreed. Everyone except for Louise Lombard.
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Re: Xenops Mostly Tackles French (and some other languages)
tomgosse wrote:Tillumadoguenirurm wrote:All Brits sound weird when they try to do American.
I think that Brits sound better doing an American accent than Americans doing a British accent. I would love to find a course on how to do a British accent. To be specific, an Estuary or London accent.
I think you would be better of doing what people around here call shadowing. I also think you'd be way better of just using your normal American accent if you ever go to England or wherever, people will always pick up that you're not from their area in a heartbeat no matter what you try anyway (personal experience).
Anyway..sorry for hijaking. Just wanted to say that Ingaræð has a point.
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Re: Xenops Mostly Tackles French (and some other languages)
tomgosse wrote:Tillumadoguenirurm wrote:All Brits sound weird when they try to do American.
I think that Brits sound better doing an American accent than Americans doing a British accent. I would love to find a course on how to do a British accent. To be specific, an Estuary or London accent.
You'd be surprised how many 'London' accents there are.
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Re: Xenops Mostly Tackles French (and some other languages)
Arnaud wrote:No, I'm not.Xenops wrote:Btw, are you the Arnaud that posts words on Forvo? Thank you.
You can watch that video to understand what I mean (I'm not a linguist, so I don't know all the terminology). What I hear when I listen to you, is the sound at 1:19 with too much air expelled (voiceless uvular fricative, as he says), and what you should aim for is at 2:13 (voiced uvular fricative->guttural R, as he says). You have to find a way to move from 1:19 to 2:13 by "voicing" and stopping expelling too much air. Once you have that "guttural R" you reduce it a little (because it's not that exagerated) and you have your french R. Hope it helps a little...
Thank you for the video: I'll check it out.
I confess it doesn't make sense to me to re-learn the rest of the French pronunciation. Out of all of the French speakers that have listened to my audio samples, they only comment on my R's. Now if they said "you need to improve all of your pronunciation", then I would look into working on each and every part. But since they have only commented on my R's, is it reasonable to guess that the rest of the pronunciation is fine?
I'm considering getting in contact with a French instructor at my university: even though the main campus is 40-50 minutes away, I need to fill out paperwork for a school rotation down there anyway, and it might only take one session to set me straight.
tomgosse wrote:Tillumadoguenirurm wrote:All Brits sound weird when they try to do American.
I think that Brits sound better doing an American accent than Americans doing a British accent. I would love to find a course on how to do a British accent. To be specific, an Estuary or London accent.
Me too! I love British accents. Though I'd want to learn one not so much to blend in with the English (though that would be wonderful), as to not be too obviously an American. I can imagine dialogues like so:
American: Wow, you have an accent! Where are you from?
Me: Washington.
American:
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Re: Xenops Mostly Tackles French (and some other languages)
People usually only correct the errors that stand out the most. The r's are the biggest issue but it takes a long time to get something that sounds really accurate in all the facets. Obviously the effort you put in should correspond to your goals. I did the complete FSI phonology course a couple years ago and I didn't find it overwhelmingly valuable for the amount of work I put in. Right now, I'm running through the CLE Phonétique progressive du français right from the beginning. I'm finding all kinds of things to work on and I already felt my pronunciation was pretty good. It is a great series. Lots of work on prosody as well as accurate rendering of sounds and contrasting all the tricky French vowels that sound completely identical to English ears at first. I have such a hard time getting my lips to cooperate with /y/vs /œ/ (the vowels in lune vs deux) in rapid speech! But I don't think it makes you much less understandable to a French speaker if you don't have them perfect.
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Re: Xenops Mostly Tackles French (and some other languages)
Ani wrote:People usually only correct the errors that stand out the most. The r's are the biggest issue but it takes a long time to get something that sounds really accurate in all the facets. Obviously the effort you put in should correspond to your goals. I did the complete FSI phonology course a couple years ago and I didn't find it overwhelmingly valuable for the amount of work I put in. Right now, I'm running through the CLE Phonétique progressive du français right from the beginning. I'm finding all kinds of things to work on and I already felt my pronunciation was pretty good. It is a great series. Lots of work on prosody as well as accurate rendering of sounds and contrasting all the tricky French vowels that sound completely identical to English ears at first. I have such a hard time getting my lips to cooperate with /y/vs /œ/ (the vowels in lune vs deux) in rapid speech! But I don't think it makes you much less understandable to a French speaker if you don't have them perfect.
I found these videos from the University of Michigan most helpful. I need to go over them again.
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Re: Xenops Mostly Tackles French (and some other languages)
Ani wrote:People usually only correct the errors that stand out the most. The r's are the biggest issue but it takes a long time to get something that sounds really accurate in all the facets. Obviously the effort you put in should correspond to your goals. I did the complete FSI phonology course a couple years ago and I didn't find it overwhelmingly valuable for the amount of work I put in. Right now, I'm running through the CLE Phonétique progressive du français right from the beginning. I'm finding all kinds of things to work on and I already felt my pronunciation was pretty good. It is a great series. Lots of work on prosody as well as accurate rendering of sounds and contrasting all the tricky French vowels that sound completely identical to English ears at first. I have such a hard time getting my lips to cooperate with /y/vs /œ/ (the vowels in lune vs deux) in rapid speech! But I don't think it makes you much less understandable to a French speaker if you don't have them perfect.
I'm seeing the beginner, the intermediate and the advanced levels on Amazon: which are you using?
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Re: Xenops Mostly Tackles French (and some other languages)
I started right at the débutant book. Someone has posted it online on a wiki so it is rather easy to check out. I ordered the intermédiaire book but I have to wait on Amazon delivery, which takes close to a month to get to me usually (yay for "Prime".. not)
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