Quote:
Originally Posted by RealJames
Is she the one teaching you all this incorrect English you've been using?
Is she the one preventing you from sounding like your "ideal American accent" ?
Is she the one filling your head with insane notions of the rest of the world?
Learning a language is just as much about learning the words and grammar as it is about learning culture and about new places.
You're just putting words together, sometimes in the right order, can you make a TH sound?
|
Well, she studied the English language in London for several years.
Like I said before, she hands out great marks to me.
Oh we just went through Australia and NewZealand. In a couple of week we will start with Great-Britian and then in the end with America.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheLastFortnight
It's the first time I see someone complaining so much about British accents, I think British accents are much cooler. It's true General American sounds more clear than certain British accents such as Cockney, but this variety of accents is much better to train the ears when you're a non-native speaker. If you can understand English even when it's not spoken so clearly this makes things a lot easier in most situations. American accents usually sound boring to me, especially because the majority of people who study English in my country tend to pick the American variety.
I always had a preference towards British English and Received Pronunciation sounds to me almost as clear and understandable as General American is, also most dictionaries seems to give the phonetic transcription of RP and I always thought this was the most ideal pronunciation to a foreigner speaker to learn.
If you take a dictionary with phonetic transcription of General American and compare this with RP transcription you'll see they're quite similar, so if you understand one you'll understand the other most certainly. It's true however, that only a few people use RP in England.
Also, any form of pronunciation is itself an accent so there's no such a thing as "hiding" your accent, if you're going to speak then you'll be using an accent anyway. Foreigner speakers usually learn those accents that are considered standard such as General American and RP instead of a regional like Cockney, Estuary or Scouse, but it doesn't mean there is a "correct" or "number one" accent for any given language, there are just forms that are considered more neutral and understandable.
|
Their is no ideal accent in the English language. The pronunciation, students all over the world are learning is written behind every letter in your English dictionary. This is how we learned to speak the language!