getting rid of Finnish accent

[Upphew]

[Aside: thanks for the practice with puhukieli...it was a bit tough, but I think I figured it out properly.... ]

[Edit: So what does naamavetskari actually mean?...I kind of guessed a little bit what it might mean]

Naama = face
Vetskari = vetoketju = zip
So even his face was covered initially and face could be seen after he unzipped the facial zip.

[Kutittaa]

Samuli Edelmann´s pronunciation of English words is much better that I thought it would be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wibNEdKwt_A

Edelmann´s pronunciation of "villain" is peculiar.

Sounded pretty good to me.. though most Finns pronounce the 'v' as a 'w' and vice-versa.

He still has a long way to go if he wants to learn to speak like an American.

Who on earth would want to speak like an American? I doubt the man wants to do that...
His English is fine. Just the normal mistakes. Forgetting to say things like 'He's a machine' etc.
Say something the 'right' way enough for a movie and you can recite it like a native.

We Finns are the worst English speakers in the Nordic countries.

Because your language is the hardest... and doesn't really allow for any sort of 'friendship making' amongst other languages.

[kalmisto]

>> Who on earth would want to speak like an American? I doubt the man wants to do that... :roll

He applied for a role in "Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol" ( and got it ) so I think that it is quite obvious that he is interested in acting in American movies. Without perfect American English his work opportunities in America are very limited.

The way he prounounced "villain" sounded like "vill-lane" to me. Maybe I should listen to it one more time.

[Cory]

Accent reduction is a popular goal for many people emigrating to the US (and Canada). Loads of companies selling the service of "accent reduction" courses, books, etc. As many of us who've been immigrants for decades can attest, the question of "so..where are you from?" is grating at times. If we look like we could have been born in the country to which we've emigrated, the accent is the one thing that keeps new acquaintances focused on where we've come from rather than on the more relevant work or every-day "stuff" discussed.

I'm not suggesting that "where are you from?" isn't a relevant question. It doesn't bother me (most days) but I move on quickly from that. I think living here makes it easier because generally people aren't overly inquisitive. People in English speaking countries, though, are generally a bit more chatty and want to strike up conversations and focusing on the accent is a good place to begin a conversation. Professional people would like that not to be the first place the getting-to-know-you phase begins. They'd like to start on an even playing field so spend time on reducing their accent.

[kalmisto]

Alexander Skarsgård has learned to speak - as far as I can tell - perfect American English :
http://www.trueblood-news.com/video-ale ... mmy-fallon

[AldenG]

Alexander Skarsgård has learned to speak - as far as I can tell - perfect American English :
http://www.trueblood-news.com/video-ale ... mmy-fallon

Yep.

Even listening closely for telltale signs (which one normally wouldn't do) the closest I ever got was asking myself if maybe he had just a shade too much "r" in a couple of word-ending r's, a common kind of hypercorrection. I didn't go back to check those particular spots again, but as I continued listening I decided I was just imagining something that wasn't there.

[Jukka Aho]

I was just channel-surfing the other day and caught an example of the reverse: someone who is not a native speaker but has mastered spoken Finnish pretty darn well, down to the accent. It was the locally well-known media personality Roman Schatz. His mother tongue is German.

I think it might have been in Arvostele mun illallinen (the Finnish edition of Channel 4’s Come Dine with Me format). I only watched the show for about 10 minutes or so, so might have missed a thing or two, but he did sound pretty convincing.

[Upphew]

I was just channel-surfing the other day and caught an example of the reverse: someone who is not a native speaker but has mastered spoken Finnish pretty darn well, down to the accent. It was the locally well-known media personality Roman Schatz. His mother tongue is German.

He got citizenship recently too.

[kalmisto]

I have a short ( and perhaps stupid ) question on this short comedy film :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMUASYNH ... re=related

Do the words "Finnish" and "finished" really sound so similar that a native speaker of English does not hear the difference between them ? I can of course understand that something like that could happen in a crowded restaurant when there is a lot of noise in the background.

[AldenG]

I have a short ( and perhaps stupid ) question on this short comedy film :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMUASYNH ... re=related

Do the words "Finnish" and "finished" really sound so similar that a native speaker of English does not hear the difference between them ? I can of course understand that something like that could happen in a crowded restaurant when there is a lot of noise in the background.

At the end of a sentence, it's a perfectly realistic scenario. The only difference between Finnish (or finish) and finished is the microscopic unvoiced 't' sound at the end. And it can be really microscopic in that context. All you really feel bound to do is to touch your tongue to the palate, which ends the sh-sound but isn't necessarily noticeable. It only becomes audible if send that little extra chiff where your tongue comes off the palate.

Where it breaks down is "Are you finished or not?" Because there's a vowel after the ending t/d, there is a reflex to move more toward a 'd' sound and to give it some extra oomph (together or separately). However you do it, it becomes hard to miss the t/d chiff unless there is ambient noise or you have some hearing impairment.

When the waitress repeats "Are you finish or not" it sounds not quite like a speech impediment but like a low-education cultural variant that most people consider a "lazy" and substandard kind of speaking.

[Rob A.]

I have a short ( and perhaps stupid ) question on this short comedy film :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMUASYNH ... re=related

Do the words "Finnish" and "finished" really sound so similar that a native speaker of English does not hear the difference between them ? I can of course understand that something like that could happen in a crowded restaurant when there is a lot of noise in the background.

Spoken like a true Finn...The simple answer is a resounding..."YES!!"...I know it is difficult for a rational "Finish"* speaker to grasp but the two words are pronounced exactly the same way in English....they are homonyms.

Nothing unusual for English...the language is full of words that look different but are pronounced the same way... Or look the same , but pronounced differently.... I suppose if a person has enough interest in all of this they can probably work out patterns....but most native speakers just remember the differences....

Since I started actively learning Finnish, I find I now often mispell the English word, "finnish"....and sometimes I even miss it on proof-reading.... Just the way it is....

[kalmisto]

Here is Irina Björklund ( a Finnish actress ) talking about her role in the American movie The Butcher :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExAlCAHL ... re=related

Any comments on her American accent ? To me her accent sounds a bit exaggerated but I am no expert, of course. Björklund has spent a lot of time in Los Angeles. What are the main differences between a Los Angeles accent and a New York accent ?

Irina Björklund was in Rukajärven tie ( Ambush ). Trailer here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEQJwlQ1DGM

[AldenG]

Any comments on her American accent ? To me her accent sounds a bit exaggerated but I am no expert, of course.

You're right there are elements that are sometimes off a bit, mostly some 'r's that are occasionally overdone and some diphthongs that either shouldn't be there are aren't quite right.

It's hard to say whether I'd have been distracted if I were only watching the film. Without knowing her name, I might have wondered if there were tiniest vestiges of a Slavic accent. Not that it sounds Slavic per se but the off-notes are often those that give away a Slav who has almost eradicated the accent.

The first clue is the over-Americanized 'r' in Björklund.

The second clue is but-tcher, which is said with three beats (the middle one a pause) instead of the usual two.

Then there is witeress instead of waitress.

...sleazy diner plice...

...things don't always geoh exactly as you wanted in life... The Maryland-to-New-Jersey area has a similarly spelled pronunciation of the 'oh' sound (think Kevin Bacon), supposedly (I'm skeptical) a 200-plus year old vestige of British colonial pronunciation, but her 'go' sounded like she was suppressing a modern British pronunciation.

...and she tikes the opportunity...

...a little bit mower [more]

...she's off for an advänture... But this is more youth/LA than Finnish, I think. There is this thing that has become almost universal across the country with American females under 30 today which probably originated from LA or Valleyspeak, where every vowel shifts markedly toward 'äh', especially vowels close to 'eh'. I think they must be copying it off TV, whether deliberately or unconsciously. Christina has several of these, including an 'as wäll'. So maybe they're actually examples of how well she's doing, but it will start to sound silly as she gets older.

...Mur-rel [should be just Murl], Eric's character, he gets greedy... (actually spelled Merle, of course)

...I thäink she knows already at that point...

At least once she says Merle unobjectionably but on another occasion she gives it two syllables.

Then again, is it more obvious than Eric Roberts' accent coaching? Hard to say -- he has fewer lines in this clip, but he has apparently worked on losing his Georgia accent and I've thought on other occasions, too, that he overcorrects.

If you paid any attention to how she talks, you'd have to know something odd is going on, but it's not highly intrusive. There are British accents that put a pause in but'cher or wait'tress, so that wouldn't necessarily make me think Finnish. In fact there's nothing offhand that suggests to me that she would be Finnish, only that she is not a native speaker of American English. I don't know that most people who go to a movie like this will necessarily notice anything, though.

LA versus New York? Never the twain shall meet. All the New York and New Jersey accents are quite distinctive. No matter how bland, standard, and televisionized a New Yorker's English becomes, I still doubt that if you knew beforehand that one person was from LA and the other from New York, there could be any difficulty correctly distinguishing them no matter how standard they sounded in isolation.

Law & Order clips on Youtube or elsewhere (standard, Special Victims, or Criminal Intent) have lots of examples of various New York regional accents, including people with virtually "no accent." Even the youngsters would never say 'Yäh' instead of Yeah. If anything they tend towards Yuh.

[Karhunkoski]

The only difference between Finnish (or finish) and finished is the microscopic unvoiced 't' sound at the end.

We're all different. At least for my spoken sounds, the difference between:

"Are you Finnish"

and

"Are you finished"

is quite clear. Not only is there the "t" sound at the end, but the "shh" ending of "Finnish" is longer than that in the word "finished".

[onkko]

The only difference between Finnish (or finish) and finished is the microscopic unvoiced 't' sound at the end.

We're all different. At least for my spoken sounds, the difference between:

"Are you Finnish"

and

"Are you finished"

is quite clear. Not only is there the "t" sound at the end, but the "shh" ending of "Finnish" is longer than that in the word "finished".

That could be because you know there is word "finnish" and probably most/many of english speakers dont, thats something what came in mind.