Topic awaiting preservation: Name that accent - for you language freaks (Page 1 of 1)

Listen to people from all over the world reading the exact same english paragraph.
Native languages span from Afrikaans to Zulu, and all english readings come with a phonetic transcription as well. (except for the synthesized ones)
http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/

Quite interesting, and hard to let go. I guess I've gone through at least 25 by now (out of 287)....

Very interesting. I studied 'articulation' for a few years, many years back. "Articulation" when it comes to speech is best defined as; 'The mechanical formation of speech sounds.' A simple example would be... Put your upper teeth on your lower lip and add 'air'..the result is the "F" sound. Try several short blasts of air. fuh fuh fuh. Now again.... upper teeth on lower lip add the 'air' and now add 'voice'..the result is the "V" sound. Try several short blasts of both 'air & voice' Vuh vuh vuh. Get the idea? Say 'fairy' then 'very' back to back several times and you'll really notice (or should notice) =) what's going on with the 'mechanical formation' of each sound.
Different languages, accents etc are the result of different 'mechanical formations'and some sounds.. "L" luh luh luh... doesn't exist in chinese for example and that's why most asians have a very difficult time with that sound because nowhere in their speech does the tongue curl up and go to the upper back of the mouth and roll off the top of the mouth finally rolling down behind the upper front teeth. Teach them how to do that and with practice they will master the sound.

Impersonators, especially the good ones, whether they know it or not master these various 'mechanical formations.'

Could go on at some length... but for most it would get boring. =)

Actually, I think that was pretty interesting, NJ...


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I was talking to security lady on the phone last week. Her accent sounded like a mix of King's English and loose Jamacian. When we were done with our business, I asked her where she was from. South Africa. I could have kicked myself for not figuring it out.

I still have a pretty good ear when it comes to detecting accents. Some people give me funny looks when I say something like...'so how long ago did you leave xxx? How did you know? Well I could hear a bit of an accent. I left 40 years ago.

I also believe accents play a huge in roll in racial prejudice. Put a turban on somebody's head and you've pretty much made up your mind what that voice will sound like before a word is spoken. But if a texas twang came outta that mouth bubba would be a bit perplexed. Whadaw we do now billy-bob? He sho' don't look like us... but he sho' do sound like us. Maybe he ainso bad after-all. =)

you're right it's quite interesting.

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