How bad or annoying is my accent?

[armani9]

Hello,

I am a newbie here...

Here's a bit about myself, I am 23rd year old female, living in London for the past 10 years. I am a med student and I really hate my accent.

Although I have lived in the UK for so many years, for some reason I still have a foreign accent (or at least I think so)... Some people think i'm Australian, whilst others say I have a british accent etc etc...

I would like to hear your thoughts and help me to improve my accent or even tell me what am I doing (saying) wrong.

It would be very much appreciated if you could give some feedback.

Here's a youtube video where you can listen to my accent :

http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mhum

Many thanks

 

[birdeen's call]

There's no video there... You linked to your videos, but every user will see the videos uploaded by them on that page. Could you fix the link?

 

[armani9]

There's no video there... You linked to your videos, but every user will see the videos uploaded by them on that page. Could you fix the link?

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, here's the URL that can be accessed by those with the link:

YouTube - Guess what country i'm from? What do you think of my accent?

 

[birdeen's call]

If I had listened to this video without any a priori knowledge, I would be sure you're a native Australian. Australian members may disagree.

I don't find you accent annoying at all. It's very nice in my opinion.

 

[5jj]

Although I have lived in the UK for so many years, for some reason I still have a foreign accent (or at least I think so)... Some people think i'm Australian, whilst others say I have a british accent etc etc...

I would like to hear your thoughts and help me to improve my accent or even tell me what am I doing (saying) wrong.

I am not an expert in this field, but here goes.

If you had not said that you had a foreign accent, implying that you are not a native speaker, I would have placed you as a native speaker from London or the or the south-east of England. I could not detect any Australian influence. If you are not a native speaker then I would hazard a guess that your parents were Indian. I would not be at all surprised to learn that I am completely wrong - I am not basing my guess on any trace of Indian intonation in your voice, but on the fact that I know a few people of Indian origin who speak with a similar accent. (I had assumed at least two of these to be native speakers of BrE until they told me that they were not.)

Your accent itself is very commonly heard these days in all walks of life, and I would not worry about 'improving' it. The only thing I would tentatively suggest, if you really dislike your accent, is to try to get a wider range of expression into your delivery. Your voice is a little flat and unexciting. Do not go mad and copy the near-hysterical delivery of some television presenters, but liven it up a little, especially if you are going to be working with the public.

 

[petit_minou]

Your accent is clear and understandable. It is clear that you have learned from British and Australian accents - it is a combination of both (I am Canadian).

 

[birdeen's call]

If you had not said that you had a foreign accent, implying that you are not a native speaker, I would have placed you as a native speaker from London or the or the south-east of England. I could not detect any Australian influence.

The Australian accents are similar to that spoken in the south-east of England

 

[birdeen's call]

Armani, if you really want to make changes in your accent (I wouldn't recommend it, but it's none of my business after all), you could work on your diphthongs, for example: "over", "hate". This is what seems most striking in your accent to me. It's only my opinion though and I'm not an expert.

 

[Coolfootluke]

I am not a teacher.

I hear London suburbs. You sound a little like Freema Agyeman in Law and Order UK.

 

[The Dude]

It was clear that you were reading, which means we cannot know what your accent is really like as you could easily have been forcing it. The only sure way to assess someone's accent is to listen to their relaxed conversation.

BUT, your accent is not important to anybody else, so why should it be to you? People might query it, trying to place your origin, but it really doesn't bother them. I suggest that you relax on this point and just be yourself. Ask your friends what they like about you and what they dislike - I doubt any of them will say they hate your accent!

I have always recommended to non-native English speakers that they do not try to speak as if they are. There is absolutely nothing wrong with either a foreign accent or a regional one. All that is important in the way you speak is that you do so clearly.

Cheer up!;-)

 

[5jj]

Well, Armani, are you going to tell us now?

I think enough people have said/implied that you sound like a native speaker to reassure you on that point.

When you do tell us, it would be interesting for us to have as much information as you care to share.

 

[Munch]

As an Australian, I thought you sounded like a native of south-east England. I don't know enough to be more specific than that. No trace of Australian-ness to me.

Before I read Coolfootluke's post, I also had Freema Agyeman in my mind (but to me, she is from Doctor Who).

I also agree with fivejedjon - your accent is familiar and easy to understand but your tone was very flat in that video. I suspect you speak with more expression in normal conversation, though.

In short: relax, you sound fine.

 

[5jj]

As an Australian, I thought you sounded like a native of south-east England. I don't know enough to be more specific than that. No trace of Australian-ness to me.

That's interesting.

I suspect that some features of the language of younger people, mainly from the south-east of England, are 'not really British' to older, conservative speakers of RP. It may be the flattening of some vowels that makes them think it sounds Australian.

I thought that perhaps Australians did not consider these features to be Australian, and you have confirmed this for me.

 

[JMurray]

I've been interested in people's comments on this so here's my two cents' worth. For me the first three or four phrases immediately place Armani in London and like Fivejj I also thought I detected a slight Indian influence, but less so as she continued talking. As a non-Australian who has lived in Sydney and Melbourne on and off, at no stage would I have thought her accent Australian. But if she told me she had spent some time in Oz when growing up I might hear it here and there ("stay away", "give", "isn't") but it certainly doesn't jump out. Things like "couldn't fight it" and "uninvited" sound 100% SE Eng to me. The other thing I wanted to say, as other folk here have, is that there is nothing bad or annoying about this accent.

 

[Tdol]

The recording sounds like a fairly standard London/SE England young speaker to me. I suppose the pronunciation of true at the beginning might be where the Australian idea comes from, but it's a pronunciation I hear in the UK.

 

[birdeen's call]

The recording sounds like a fairly standard London/SE England young speaker to me. I suppose the pronunciation of true at the beginning might be where the Australian idea comes from, but it's a pronunciation I hear in the UK.

Right, the pronunciation of "true" sounded Australian to me, as well as other words. For example I hear "over" pronounced as in the cultivated variety ([əʉ]), which is most similar to south-eastern British accents among the three main varieties of AusE.

Since even Munch and JMurray don't hear Australian-ness in the OP's speech, I will probably have to withdraw my opinion. I only want to ask one more question before I do that. By "no trace of Australian-ness" did you mean no trace of broad Australian accent (most "Australian") or the general accent (most used), or no trace of AusE at all?

 

[5jj]

By "no trace of Australian-ness" did you mean no trace of broad Australian accent (most "Australian") or the general accent (most used), or no trace of AusE at all?

Tdol will answer in due course, but I am adding my bit here as I wrote, " I could not detect any Australian influence". I meant, "No trace of AusE at all". Thirty years ago I might have answered differently, but I now consider such an accent to be completely British.

It could be that the popularity in Britain of Australian series such as 'Neighbours' a quarter of a century ago may have had some influence on the language of younger people (perhaps, for example, the High rising terminal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), but the accent we are talking about is now British. Any Australian influence there might be is historical.

At least, that's my opinion.

 

[Raymott]

The Australian accents are similar to that spoken in the south-east of England

Yes, there seem to be some Australian influences there, as in "yesterdie". But the vowels in "fight it", uninvited" are British. It wouldn't pass as a true Australian accent.
Still, it's quite nice. Also impressive for a native Portuguese.

PS: In fact the influence might not be Australian, since the Romance languages pronounce 'ai' as /aI/, where in English it's /eI/. That is, it might be L1 interference.

 

[Munch]

Tdol will answer in due course, but I am adding my bit here as I wrote, " I could not detect any Australian influence". I meant, "No trace of AusE at all". Thirty years ago I might have answered differently, but I now consider such an accent to be completely British.

It could be that the popularity in Britain of Australian series such as 'Neighbours' a quarter of a century ago may have had some influence on the language of younger people (perhaps, for example, the High rising terminal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), but the accent we are talking about is now British. Any Australian influence there might be is historical.

At least, that's my opinion.

I agree with Raymott that some sounds could be interpreted as Australian-influenced but I also think you might be on to something, fivejedjon. Over the last ten years or so, I have met a few young people from South-East England whose accents surprised me by having features I previously thought were Australian.

 

[birdeen's call]

Here's something that seems relevant:

Australian English (Aus.E.) is a "non-rhotic" (no syllable-final /r/) dialect of English and is very similar at a phonological level to South Eastern Urban British English. The main differences between these two dialects (at least as far as vowels are concerned) are in the areas of phoneme realisation and phoneme selection. In other words, the vowel phoneme repertoire is more or less identical but speakers of Australian English and British English pronounce them differently and sometimes choose to select different phonemes when pronouncing the same words. Australian English has traditionally been described (Mitchell, 1946; Mitchell & Delbridge, 1965) as consisting of a continuum of varieties: "Cultivated", "General", and "Broad". The Broad end of the continuum is the most marked Australian form whilst the Cultivated end of the continuum tends towards the British English Received Pronunciation (RP) form (although Bernard (1970) claims it is nevertheless quite distinctly Australian). About 2/3 of the Australian population speak the General variety. Like British English, Aus.E. consists of 11 monophthongs (ignoring schwa) and 5 closing diphthongs (see table 1, below). Both dialects, being non-rhotic, have a set of centring diphthongs (replacing /Vr/ sequences in rhotic dialects).

(Vowel Perception in Australian English)