Korean English Accents.

Question

Greetings!!I am Andre from Republic of Korea. I am hoping to hear from people who knows well about English pronunciations. I hope to adjust my English pronunciation to give good and friendly impressions to foreigners in my country, and to give intellectual and professional(formal) presentations to introduce my country and its history, culture and modern IT technology to them from time to time. Also, I thought I could provide teachers how Korean accents could be improved by certain suggestions: as an experiment. If my intention does not match with the characteristics of this forum, I will certainly take this posting, but please do me a favor of recommending a forum where I can get help. Thanks!First, below is my audio file reading the description of one of my dictionaries.http://audio.xanga.com/withjack11/82d7a90884/audio.html Any comments would be very helpful for my experiment. Such as my 'V' pronunciation is not stressed enough, or the tone of the voice is too constant.Respectfully,

Nona the brit · Accepted Answer

Hi,

You are clearly working on an American accent and it is going quite well, but it is not quite the same as a native speaker.

I did have a problem understanding one word. You were giving examples and I think the first was 'joking'? (Joking, anger and sarcasm) but I am not sure because the 'j' sound was not correct.

Other than that your speech is clear and easy to understand. One thing that made it stand out as non-native sometimes was the syllable emphasis of some words. Several words had you emphasising the wrong syllable. That is one of the most difficult aspects of language learning I think, so don't be too hard on yourself.

Andreblue · Answer

Hi! Thank you very much for the quick reply!

Your correction gave me very valuable discovery. I had expected that the corrections would be mainly 'R' or 'F' from 'of' because they are two of things that many of Koreans often make mistakes, but I did not think my 'J' sound is hard to understand. I must now practice on that one. ; )

And I agree with your second correction because it has been actually my biggest concern how I can correct my syllable emphasis. Even if I pronounce it right, people sometimes ask me back to repeat it, which is the case I get baffled and start to stutter: disappointing because I have no idea what's wrong with my English at that moment. I had been trying to deal with it by looking up the accents of each word. However, I do not feel that the way I am practicing is right one to correct it. I am pretty sure there are some fundamental formula which applies to not all but most of cases. [To all: Does anyone know any method of getting used to right syllable emphasis? Any help will be appreciated.]

Again, thanks for the corrections 'nona the brit' By the way, your photo is awesome. Do you like sky-diving? It looks scary, but I want to try someday.

Regards,

Andreblue · Answer

AndreblueHi! Thank you very much for the quick reply!

Your correction gave me very valuable discovery. I had expected that the corrections would be mainly 'R' or 'F' from 'of' because they are two of things that many of Koreans often make mistakes, but I did not think my 'J' sound is hard to understand. I must now practice on that one. ; )

And I agree with your second correction because it has been actually my biggest concern how I can correct my syllable emphasis. Even if I pronounce it right, people sometimes ask me back to repeat it, which is the case I get baffled and start to stutter: disappointing because I have no idea what's wrong with my English at that moment. I had been trying to deal with it by looking up the accents of each word. However, I do not feel that the way I am practicing is right one to correct it. I am pretty sure there are some fundamental formula which applies to not all but most of cases. [To all: Does anyone know any method of getting used to right syllable emphasis? Any help will be appreciated.]

Again, thanks for the corrections 'nona the brit' By the way, your photo is awesome. Do you like sky-diving? It looks scary, but I want to try someday.

Regards,

P.S. Could you tell me which syllable is the most ambiguous from my audio?

Nona the brit · Answer

The F's are pretty good. Most of the Rs are ok, one or two a bit wobbly, but no more than some native speakers (did you know that some native speakers have a problem with this sound too?).

I'd say 'illustrations' (the first time) is the word with the most obvious emphasis problem. You are getting the majority of emphasis right.

I'm a bit reluctant to go into too much detail as I don't speak American English, and my answers might be 'contaminated' by my British English thinking, but welcome to the forum.

This: is a thread you might find useful.

Andreblue · Answer

I actually find British accent more familiar and sound fun, but I am also reluctant to change at this point, which could confuse me at this state. I definitely want to learn sometime later if I get to have a chance to meet British friend in the future.

Thank you very much for your help! I came to the conclusion that I need to keep on looking up in the dictionary to learn the emphasis of each word.

Anonymous · Answer

Hi Andre,

Although the audio file evidently proves that you are not a native speaker and have asubtle but unmissable Korean accent, your accent is pretty clear and easy to understand.
I suggest that you work on your "l", "j" and "z" as well as vowels such as "talk" or "book" "full". The words like "language", "not only", "repeatedly", "illustrated", "usually", "occurs" and such also needs work. You seem to have a hard time pronouncing /gwi/ or /kwi/ as in "language" and "colloquial".

Hope it helps!

Yana

Anonymous · Answer

Hello!    I'm an American with many friends and teachers originally from Korea. You pronunciation of Rs and Ls are excellent, which is something that many of my friends seem to have trouble with. It's really very impressive, overall. You may want to be careful with the syllables you're stressing in each word- for example, your pronunciation of "sarcasm", which is SARcasm instead of sarCASm. While I understood what you meant and wouldn't mind a bit, some Americans (who can be somewhat closed-minded as far as stressing syllables is concerned) might spend too much time thinking about that one word and how it wasn't pronounced perfectly. They would have to be something of a jerk, though. Also, try and perfect your "qu" sound. It's the same pronunciation as the "kw" in "kwon", it's just written weirdly, and so people who aren't native English speakers (and some native speakers, even) will mispronounce it a bit when reading. Overall, this was very impressive. You certainly could present professionally now- it's just small fixes that would make it even better. Great work, Andre!

Anonymous · Answer

I've recently met some Korean people who are representing your country in the United States. Your English pronunciation is great! But I don't know how to let my new friends know that I can only understand them about 40% of the time. You were really easy to understand and your pronunciation was just fine.

I don't want to hurt their feelings. I wish you were here to help them. They are clearly fluent in reading and writing at the highest level, but they have great difficulty with pronunciation. I need to look directly at their faces when they are speaking in order to understand them. I have the feeling that this might be rude.

It's clear that you have worked very hard and, believe me, it shows. When I was learning French, I spent a great deal of time working with phonetic tapes. It was incredibly boring, but really paid off. I don't think you have to be worried about your conversational skills. The general rhythm of your speech is excellent. You've made a number of errors in the above post, but it's not a big deal. Remember that Americans don't care very much about how their language is spoken. If you talk to them in a lively and interesting way, they won't even notice a few minor mistakes.

I'd be happy to correct your writing, (above), in exchange for advice about how to help my Korean friends.

Korean English Accents.

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