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What accent should I emulate?

 

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  #11  
Old September 04, 2013, 02:40 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Zarnium View Post
I got your messages, thanks.

I find it strange how many different accents there are in other countries in such a relatively small geographical area; compare, say, England to the American midwest. They're a roughly equal area, but the midwest doesn't have much accent variation, while English accents can change significantly just because of what side of a single city you're from. So I'm told, anyway.
When I was in the Army we had people from all over the U.S. from just about every state. I learned a lot about dialects/accents in the U.S. then. I had four black room mates and other black friends and learned about black
ebonics which is very similar to the dialect my mother spoke from Arkansas. When I go to Mexico I have less
cultural shock than when I go to Arkansas. I never knew my mother and father had a southern accent until I
was older and people started pointing out to me. In school I would speak one dialect and at home and when I
went to Arkansas I would speak another dialect/accent. The dialect/accent of California is as different as night
and day compared to the Arkansas accent. Add to this the rural accents of Arkansas and you really see a difference.
Mississippi and Alabama even more so especially in the rural/small town areas. Have a friend from Mississippi
and I love to hear her talk. There are people from Louisiana that speak English with a southern French accent.
And Zarnium, have you ever seen the movie Fargo?

The most thorough and systematically-defined classification of American dialects we have to date can be found in the Atlas of North American English by Labov et al. Even though the overarching geographic classifications ignore some important regional dialects due to insufficient data in the survey (e.g. New Orleans & Cajun), each region can be demarcated by a bundle of linguistic isoglosses. The boundaries shown below are not precise because of the ambitious undertaking it would require to collect and analyze enough geographic data (the project that led to this atlas lasted over a decade). Hopefully, collaboration between dialectologists working in various regions of America will eventually yield more exact dialect definitions.


Last edited by Villa; September 04, 2013 at 02:52 PM.
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  #12  
Old September 04, 2013, 03:08 PM
Liquinn3 Liquinn3 is offline
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There's a guy that I've spoke to that works at this restaurant about 20 minutes away from here. He speaks so clearly, he's from Argentina. Yet someone I spoke to Monday dislikes the Argentina accent.

I do like the Spain accent very much too. I've not yet spoke to anyone from Mexico. I guess it depends on your preference.
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  #13  
Old September 04, 2013, 04:09 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Liquinn3 View Post
There's a guy that I've spoke to that works at this restaurant about 20 minutes away from here. He speaks so clearly, he's from Argentina. Yet someone I spoke to Monday dislikes the Argentina accent.

I do like the Spain accent very much too. I've not yet spoke to anyone from Mexico. Do you have channels
in Spanish in England/Britain? We have many in California. Channel 22, 34, 46, 52, 54, 56.2, 62, 28.2 28.4
y hay más. Y estos son solo los canales gratis en español. Lo siento mucho por ti amigo mio.
I guess it depends on your preference.
El nuevo Papa habla con acento argentino.
Pues, él es de Argentina.

Last edited by AngelicaDeAlquezar; September 04, 2013 at 04:34 PM. Reason: Removed off-topic
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  #14  
Old September 08, 2013, 10:51 AM
Zarnium Zarnium is offline
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Question: Is there a significant difference in how "j" is pronounced in different accents? My teacher pronounces it pretty strongly, but I saw a video of someone from Mexico say it with much less force, more like an English h.
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Old September 08, 2013, 11:26 AM
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This is apparently the case, yes. I've heard it pronounced both of the ways you have and in between. You can adopt the one you like best, but if you want to fit in, you'll pronounce it the way everyone around you does.
In Central America, it is pronounced forcefully. The 'g', when followed by 'e' or 'i', is also pronounced the same way.
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Old September 08, 2013, 11:51 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Zarnium View Post
Question: Is there a significant difference in how "j" is pronounced in different accents? My teacher pronounces it pretty strongly, but I saw a video of someone from Mexico say it with much less force, more like an English h.
Primium one of our forum members just posted a thread in the
General Chat section near the bottom of the forum. It's called
the Pronunciation of the "S" and it's a video of a man from Spain
explaining in Spanish how they pronounce the letter "S" but he also
explains very well how they pronounce the letter "J" and "G". It's very
harsh like rolling the letter "J" and the "G" in the throat. In the U.S. the
native speakers of Spanish from New Mexico speak with this harsh "J".
New Mexico has people that are descendants from the original Spanish
settlers from Spain. New Mexico did not become a state of the U.S. until
1912. My girlfriend from New Mexico spoke with that harsh "J" sound.

Last edited by Villa; September 08, 2013 at 11:55 AM.
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  #17  
Old September 08, 2013, 02:14 PM
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People from Madrid tend to exagurate the "J" sound. I found an article where the person explains the differences between the accent from Madrid and let's say "standard American accent", even the little ones such as choice of words. I"ll add it later on.

EDIT: http://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diale..._septentrional

It isn't the article I was looking for but this should be useful too.
I'll keep looking for you tomorrow.
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I'd be very thankful, if you'd correct my mistakes in English/Spanish.

Last edited by Premium; September 08, 2013 at 02:33 PM.
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Old September 09, 2013, 11:42 PM
tetsuo tetsuo is offline
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I need to get used to this accent used by the guy Raúl in this video:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/ep17/
Especially when they are going to the station to drive with el guagua. Some of the letters are very silently spoken and hard to understand when you are not used to it.
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Old September 10, 2013, 09:09 PM
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Originally Posted by Rusty View Post
You can adopt the one you like best, but if you want to fit in, you'll pronounce it the way everyone around you does.
Eh... not quite that simple for me, because there are so few Spanish-speaking people where I live. I'm trying to copy my teacher's east-central Spain accent because I hear it the most often, and because I don't want to spend time thinking about "standard" pronunciations during lessons. If she says "atenthión," I'd rather just copy her instead of mentally replacing the th with an s. Plus, I want to at least attempt to sound like a native speaker of some kind rather than having a generic American accent.

It's not the way the students in the Spanish club talk, though, and I get the feeling they think my way of speaking is a bit ridiculous. They're way more into Latin America. However, I don't want to try to copy the pronunciation of anyone who's not a native speaker. (And really, they're not mean or standoffish or anything. I'm just a little concerned that picking up a funny accent will be a barrier, they all sort of chuckle when I say something like "grathias.")

What exactly are the big no-nos for English speakers as far as pronunciation goes? From observing the other students and comparing them to my teacher, beyond the ceceo difference, they seem to:

-pronounce d's very sharply, without much or any of a the sound.
-pronounce vowels as distinct syllables instead of running them together. (Together with the previous one, they tend to say "ah-dee-os" instead of "athyos" like my teacher says, and like my textbook says to.)
-Pronounce j's exactly like an English h. (A guy from Guatemala, the only native speaker in the group did this too, so I'm thinking that that the strength of the j sound isn't that consistent across accents.)
-Pronounce v's and b's exactly like an English b.

Not that I'm knocking them; their vocabulary and word choice appears to be excellent, and native Spanish-speaking people are obviously able to understand them just fine. I know there's a very wide range of native pronunciation too.
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Old September 10, 2013, 09:44 PM
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You should mimic the pronunciation you hear the most.

Very few Spanish consonants are pronounced like the English consonants. The consonants 'b' and 'v' are indistinguishable in most regions. However, there are two different sounds made for these consonants depending on where they appear in a word.
Blending vowel sounds is done all the time. You correctly pronounce adiós, according to what I can tell from what you scripted.
The consonant 'j' has varying pronunciation. You should mimic your teacher's pronunciation, since you have chosen to do that with other consonants. In Central America, the 'j' is raspy, almost guttural. The 'g', when followed by the vowels 'e' or 'i' is pronounced exactly the same as the 'j'.
You've noted the softening of the 'd' when it appears between vowels. This also occurs with 'b' and 'v'. Say a 'b' sound, but don't close your lips completely.
The 'r' is nothing like the American English 'r'. Mimic your teacher.
The 'p' and the 't' are not plosive in Spanish. Neither is the 'q' (the 'k' sound).
There are other differences, too. As I said, there are only a couple of Spanish consonants that are pronounced like our English consonants.
You've noticed the major no-nos. Keep listening. Keep mimicking.
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