30.
Foreign accents and national EFL dialects
(with links to audio file databases)
The
Speech accent archive of George Mason University
The
Speech accent archive of George
Mason University is a very impressive site that offers numerous examples
of 'national EFL dialects' from around the world in the form of online audio recordings
and transcriptions in IPA:
http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/
First
go to the main index and click on 'Taiwanese' and 'Mandarin' to link to their
examples of Taiwan and mainland Chinese-accented English; there are also Cantonese
and Taishan (where is this dialect spoken?) accents of English. The Taiwan examples
should be very familiar to you, and should exhibit the characteristics discussed
in the previous pages. Do they? Do you notice any different or additional ones?
How about the examples from various parts of mainland China and Hong Kong? What
are the similarities to Taiwan English, and the differences?
You might want to compare what you heard with
examples of Taiwan English from this animated English grammar site:
http://210.240.122.2/%E5%8B%95%E7%95%AB%E6%96%87%E6%B3%95.htm
Or listen to this 3/01/05 MPR interview with Chinese
pianist Lang Lang, who speaks English fluently and articulately. What similarities
to and differences from Taiwan English do you note?
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/02/28_ratnerm_langlang/
Direct
audio link
Next try another language, like Spanish, Czech,
Basque, Thai, Vietnamese or Japanese. Or you may want to listen to English accents
typical of speakers of some of the less familiar languages, like Agny, Dari,
Ebira, Frisian, Georgian, Kirghiz, and Sarua. Some language names you may remember
from our textbooks, e.g. Gujarati, Malayalam, Quechua, Twi, and Zulu. Look up
the ones you don't recognize in Ethnologue
to learn a little about the language and where it is spoken. Here are some languages
included in this database that you should a little learn about especially
if you are from East Asia: Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian, Tagalog, Indonesian,
and Khmer. But don't try to do too much at once or you will be overwhelmed,
and everything may start to mush together into an undifferentiated blur.
As a practical exercise, choose just one
of the types of accented English on this site, then try to describe its phonetic
characteristics. Is the speaker trying to speak with an American, or British,
or other standard English accent? Which one? Which sounds are commonly substituted
for which sounds? Can you generalize what you find into phonological rules,
as we did for Taiwan English? Try to place the speaker's vowels in a vowel space.
What differences of voicing, devoicing, or aspiration, if any, do you notice
in the sample, compared to standard English? Is the speaker's native language
a tone language, and if so, how is this reflected in his or her English accent,
if at all? Does the speaker stress the correct syllables? Does the speaker follow
English rules of intonation? The site offers help on the main characteristics
of some of the examples, but won't cover all of the patterns to be observed;
compare the 'help' files with your own findings. When you are ready, you may
want to try another language; or if you're suffering brain overload, you can
come back and continue another time.
The International
Dialects of English Archive
Here is another excellent site, produced by dialect
coach Paul Meier of the University
Of Kansas, that is quite similar to the George Mason University speech
accent archive. You can use it to compare your results from the first site,
if it happens to have an audio sample of the accent you chose, or you can try
out a new variety of accented English:
http://web.ku.edu/idea/index.htm
This site uses frames; look at the top of the
page for the menu and click on the region you are interested in. You will notice
that this site includes a variety of different accents of native English speakers
as well as non-natives. Take some time to explore the site, including its many
useful links.
This site is mainly for actors learning to imitate an accent for a stage or
film performance, but it is a treasure-trove of resources for anyone interested
in phonetics and linguistics.
EnglishContrasted,
English around the World,
New York City accents
Here
is a site called EnglishContrasted with
another fine collection of audio samples of English as it is spoken around the
world:
http://www.geocities.com/mafjrcall/index.html
And here is a link to the English
around the World page of the E.L. Easton
English online site; you may find other pages on this site that are
of interest as well:
http://eleaston.com/world-eng.html
Here
is an interesting site from amNewYork with authentic samples of New York City
accents:
http://www.amnyinteractive.com/project/2008/NYC-Accent/
Exercises
like these can help sharpen your perception of the sounds of language. Hearing
something done 'wrong' or just differently can help you better grasp what is
involved in getting it right in a particular dialect. After all, we often
don't even notice the existence of a thing unless something is wrong or unusual
about it! This kind of practice should be especially useful to future (and current)
teachers of English as a foreign language.
One of the many factors that identify an accent
as foreign is the rate of speech or reading. Ever wonder how fast you
read English? Go on to the next page, and you can find out!
Next: How
fast do you read English?
(with online WPM tests and timer)
on to next page back index I index II home