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TalnSG (Offline)
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02-28-2011, 09:02 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by dogsbody70 View Post
YouTube - American Accent for Japanese Speakers

this is a website for japanese to speak in American English.

Its quite interesting.
She does make some very good points. However, I would not entirely agree with some of the examples she gave. Her pronunciation of "contain" is actually no more acceptable than the version she considered incorrect. Just because lazy speech is common, does not mean it is correct. The "con" is not pronounced as a schwa sound; but as a fully pronounce short O with less accentuation, which her own speech pattern does not replicate well.

For the most part though, her own AmE is a general, homogenized version of American accents, as is mine -depending on who I am speaking with and how tired I am. I truly have to concentrate to kill copying accents if I am in conversation with someone who has a strong one (southern U.S., various Brit or Scot, Brooklyn, etc.) If I am tired, the Texas Twang slides in a bit.


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