Well, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t really been
giving my English pronunciation much thought or effort, probably because I
always thought it would come in “naturally” with time, and especially after
spending an extended period of time in an English-speaking country. Or maybe it
doesn’t seem to be that big of an issue now, because we are always very busy
with the never-ending writing tasks we have to focus on, which seem to be more
important than ever. However, since good pronunciation is not only a big part
of my English course this semester but also essential for people to understand me
(and not make fun of me), I have decided to start working actively on my
English during Christmas break, using some links from the Pronunciation
Practice Page but also by reading some blogs on HOW to improve it.
Definitely American, however…
But first I would like to mention that even though I chose
to sound more like an American, which I am trying to do by imitating native
speakers I see on television or the Internet, I absolutely loooove British
accents!! There is something about these accents that makes you melt and
wanting just to be able to talk like these people. Of course, not all of them
have this beautifully British accent…but check this guy out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqyi-165QR4
; couldn’t you just listen to him all day long *sigh*? Anyways, what I am
trying to say is that I would have very much loved to acquire such an accent,
but I feel that it is not such a good idea to imitate British accents if you’re
not a native speaker, as it will come out rather forced and “fake”.
What I have been doing so far
So, as already mentioned, pretty much all I have been
doing for my pronunciation is simply imitating the way some of my favorite
Americans (mostly actors/actresses and people on YouTube) speak. Also, when I come
across a rather difficult word, I immediately look it up to see how it is
pronounced correctly so that I don’t end up getting used to pronouncing it
wrong for a longer time and not being able to “recover” from it. I have been
using sites like howjsay.com, macmillandictionary.com, or sometimes just typing
in the word into YouTube to actually SEE how natives pronounce it. Apart from
that, I guess I can say I am quite lucky to have an American friend who lives
in Vienna and who hates speaking German so that we usually end up talking a lot
in English, which he enjoys, of course, as he gets to correct me.
Let’s get this started!
However, something I have definitely been lacking is practice, practice, practice! There is surely no way around it, so I might as well start now:
- I started with practicing the voiced and unvoiced TH sounds (three/thin/teeth vs. this/these/worthy) by going to Rachel Smith’s channel and also the BBC website. This woman really knows what she is doing! Even though I were familiar with these sounds, it was fun practicing them out loud and being aware of the position of the mouth. For me, these sounds are certainly no piece of cake as you sometimes tend to pronounce them incorrectly when being nervous or talking too fast. Also, when the word is unstressed like in “What’s in THE car?” you pronounce it only with your teeth closed…I have never really paid attention to that fact; very interesting, though!
- http://www.manythings.org/b/e/5078/ : This video on how the word “often” is pronounced was really interesting since I’ve always wondered whether to say it with “t” or not, and as it turned out: both ways are acceptable!! Unlike words like “soften” and “listen”, you can pronounce “often” with a t, but I have to say I will try to stick with the version without the “t” as it sound much more “American” to me.
- http://www.rachelsenglish.com/videos/sound-native-speaker : I really enjoyed this video with the Ben Franklin and especially the imitation exercise. When you break it down like this, you start to get a good handle on how the words are pronounced in connection to other words. I repeated it quite often (pronounced without the “t”) until my sister told me it’s getting ridiculous…
So, that’s it for today! I have to say it’s really
interesting and fun once you get started and try to find things interesting (cf.
Henry:)).
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