I saw a tv show on NHk the other day narrated by two Japanese teens who had learned English via the watch Tv method, as they sounded "californian" in some of the stuff they said. I hate the accent used by English speakers enough as it sounds so fake and put on, but to hear from Japanese who had unfortunatly learned this as the way to speak English, saddened me greatly... it was like sooo whatever /vomit

Imitating someone from California when learning English actually sounds like a great idea. Every time I've visited there, the people always make fun of my Wisconsin accent and slurring my words. Californians seem to have very clear pronunciation.

Might find this interesting: Free searchable English usage corpora - http://corpus.byu.edu/

I imagine soon Twitter will be the accepted realtime corpus. Meanwhile we're busy constructing our multimedia 日本語 Anki-corpora....

Gingerninja Wrote:I saw a tv show on NHk the other day narrated by two Japanese teens who had learned English via the watch Tv method, as they sounded "californian" in some of the stuff they said. I hate the accent used by English speakers enough as it sounds so fake and put on, but to hear from Japanese who had unfortunatly learned this as the way to speak English, saddened me greatly... it was like sooo whatever /vomit

Random: I love it when Japanese comedy does fake sounding versions of Japanese--like that old conductor from the Nodame Cantabile jdorama. I think a 外人 character from Samurai Champloo did it too.

mezbup Wrote:

armando_amaya Wrote:If you're looking for pronuciation you should try Wordweb. A Japanese people will find the phonetic system used in this dictionary very easy to use.

About the English accent...Almost everybody in my school speaks English with US American accent, I really don't like the British, I don't find it annoying, I just don't like it. Besides it's much more common to find US American movies, radio, news, etc.

Californian American would be the safest bet because every english speaking country around the world watches movies made in hollywood california

Two professors, one from El Paso, in Texas, and the another from NY came to my school the last semester and gave us a conference about their working papers. I really didn't find many differences on their accents (of course the Texan professor wasn't a native Texan, so she didn't sound that weird). The NY professor told us that he didn't speak English that he spoke "Newyorkino", so taking that as a reference I guess there should be noticeable difference between the accent of one place like NY and another like California.

Maybe I'm used to listening the two accents (Californian and NYorker) because many shows also take place in NY, and I also listen NPR. But I have to admit that I face some trouble following the British and the Hawaiian accent.

I live in New Zealand and watch TV programs from around the world so I have no problem whatsoever following the most intense hardcore difficult to understand accent. It's just so multi-cultural here.

Tsss, how about talking like a pirate, huh?
If you'll have a fake accent anyway or another, at least chose a cool one.

I think deliberately practicing pronunciation of basic phonemes is a must. The distinctions between the words like coal and call, heard and hard, hat and hut, etc. will only come from listening and pronouncing them very slowly and consciously. Most normal adult speeches are too fast for this purpose, and these words would only register to Japanese natives' brains with カタカナ like コール　ハード　ハット, so they would probably have little effect in improving their ability to distinguish different English sounds until they get to a certain stage. I'm not sure how best it should be practiced though. I started with Teletubbies　

I would love to listen to the author of 英語は絶対勉強するな speaking English, but I can't find anything...

For learning accents and being able to understand them I'd recommend getting a season or two of a show made for/in that region. For a while I had a little bit of a tough time understanding a couple of the thicker british accents, but after watching a lot of the office and the mighty boosh, it's no more difficult to understand than standard US english for me.

And as for learning how to talk with a certain accent, just do the same thing. After watching Flight of the Conchords enough I used to accidentally talk in a New Zealand accent when I would say things from the show haha.

masaman Wrote:I started with Teletubbies　

eh oh !

Has anyone ever read up on their own accent? as a matter of interest.

I read a bunch of stuff on wikipedia (lol.. ok bear with me) about my accent, being the non standard, Half Scottish / half Geordie English that my little town has culitvated being slap bang in the middle of the 2 regions.
Little things you don't even notice about the things you say, example, people from my area when meaning to say "Why?" will sometimes use "How?" which no doubts will mess up foreigners no end trying to figure what we mean. I'd never even thought about it until i read it.

*edit* hmm my anecdote had nothing to do with accent.. nevermind though

Although trying to follow instructions on how to replicate accents evades me, i don't even understand some of the terms let alone try them..

Thermal, how's the translation going?
The Japanese seriously need some help when it comes to learning languages, they're probably the worst in the world when it comes to teaching/learning methods, so I'm glad you're doing this. 大体さ、外国語の学習には、世界中の人達は未だ悪い方法を使ってるけど、日本はとくに悪いと思うね。僕にとってAJATTは凄い結果があり、もうクラス等の方法に戻るって想像出来ない。本当に駄目だ。翻訳は頑張ってね。凄くなると思う。

nest0r Wrote:Random: I love it when Japanese comedy does fake sounding versions of Japanese--like that old conductor from the Nodame Cantabile jdorama. I think a 外人 character from Samurai Champloo did it too.

YES! It's hilarious isn't it!? ...the red hair sailor type guy from Samurai Champloo right? Wahaha... Do you think that it sounds like a gaijin to japanese people though? Because to me it doesn't at all... rather, it sound exactly like a Japanese person speaking with weird pauses, strange emphasis and too much tonal variation -- but a japanese person none the less.