How do you notice "foreign accents" ?

[CitySpeak]

Some times a foreign accent is nothing more than placing stress in places where it is unnatural.

That's true. For example, in the following sentence I've always stressed the word that is in bold letters.

Where are you?

But I've seen, mainly in movies, that they tend to pronounce it that way:

Where are you?

I should start paying more attention to this :wink:

ByE!

Exactly! I hear things like that every now and then. Pronouns don't normally get the stress. Verbs get the stress. If a pronoun, such as "you" in your example, is stressed, this is usually done so in order to alter the meaning of the sentence in some way. Any deviation from the normal stress and intonation patterns in English is usually done in order to alter the meaning. This would be a type of "paralanguage". If a change in stress and intonation is not done with a purpose, then the sentence will sound rather unnatural; it will sound like a foreign accent.

8) :) :)

[comexch]

When I read this I realized, as a native English speaker, that when I hear "you" stressed in your example, I might feel that someone is accusing me of not informing them of my whereabouts. So yes, stress is important as it can send unintended messages ...

For example, in the following sentence I've always stressed the word that is in bold letters.

Where are you?

But I've seen, mainly in movies, that they tend to pronounce it that way:

Where are you?

I should start paying more attention to this :wink:

ByE!

[comexch]

Hi Masfer you asked ...
[quote="Masfer"]

I don't know exactly what you mean. I don't think we over-nasalize (new word I've just made up ) when speaking. Can you give an example of this or explain it again ? :wink:

The rules for pronouncing Spanish includes one that says in essence ... when an n/m/ng is in a word SPREAD nasality over surrounding sounds, especially vowels. English has some of this spreading, but it's kept much closer to the actual nasal sound (n/m/ng) than in Spanish.

Imagine what an American saying Spanish "manana" sounds like if they have a very think American accent. That's what less nasalization sounds like.

[charlotte]

One thing that is a bit problematic in pronunciation for Portuguese learners of ESl: the sound -th-, eg: think, thing, thief. We don't have that sound in our language and some people tend to mispronounce it and say "sink" when they mean "think", "sree" when they mean "three", etc.

We have a lot of sounds that don't exist in English. We say "filho", but English speakers mispronounce it and say "filio".
It may be a problem to learn a language with different sounds from your native one.

[Tdol]

One thing that is a bit problematic in pronunciation for Portuguese learners of ESl: the sound -th-, eg: think, thing, thief. We don't have that sound in our language and some people tend to mispronounce it and say "sink" when they mean "think", "sree" when they mean "three", etc.

We have a lot of sounds that don't exist in English. We say "filho", but English speakers mispronounce it and say "filio".
It may be a problem to learn a language with different sounds from your native one.

I didn'tfind the 'lh'sound difficult as we have the elements in EWnglish. There are sounds I found harder, like sistinguishing between 'bread' and 'stick'.