getting rid of Finnish accent

[tuulen]

But it’s a bit difficult to imagine how that four-syllable pronunciation came about.

That is only the beginning of a much longer story. It took me a few years before I could understand what she was saying (in English).

But it is true that she taught me how to pronounce Finnish language.

[onkko]

I did example how one who dont dont have experience on english would pronounce english, i admit that my experience could have altered that but i cannot be arsed to go and find real people and i dont have good enough portable record device so this has to be good enough. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/60636503/enklish.wma

[kalmisto]

kalmisto wrote :
30 minutes and 20 seconds into the clip an English guest comes in and Skavlan switches into English.

Karhunkoski wrote:
To save anyone else spending time spooling around that clip, trying to find the English language part, it happens at 38 minutes and 20 seconds.The card-guessing part is particularly good.

Sorry about the mistake and thanks for correcting me ! The card-guessing part was unbelievable !

[cors187]

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.

He still has a long way to go if he wants to learn to speak like an American. A private teacher and a lot of practice should make that possible. The Dutch actor Rutger Hauer hired the well-known dialogue coach Dr Robert Easton to rid him of his Dutch accent so that he could play Americans in American movies.

We Finns are the worst English speakers in the Nordic countries. ( There are of course exceptions but most of us sound very bad. )

Here is Matti Vanhanen speaking English:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyJgMujr ... re=related

Accents on the Wrong Syl-LA-ble: http://www.languagesuccesspress.com/our ... rticle.pdf

Just replying to the first post for information's sake.
I was in Russia doing some of the English schools there and i came across a guy who was a teacher also , he was Russian but spoke like an Englishman, after 5 minutes chatting to him he began to assimilate my aussie accent from the words i was speaking.Although in Russia i had to create an American accent just so many of the students could understand me better.

[kalmisto]

Although in Russia i had to create an American accent just so many of the students could understand me better.

Russians ( and Finns also ) are certainly much more familiar with American accent than Australian accent because Americans dominate the entertainment industry.

[kalmisto]

I was in Russia doing some of the English schools there and i came across a guy who was a teacher also , he was Russian but spoke like an Englishman, after 5 minutes chatting to him he began to assimilate my aussie accent from the words i was speaking.

He was probably just trying to create "rapport" with you :
http://michaelnoone.hubpages.com/hub/ho ... ld-rapport

"If you match the speed that they speak, the volume and the tone, you're going to go a long way towards creating rapport with them. If you also use similar language or words that will take you even further."

[interleukin]

"If you match the speed that they speak, the volume and the tone, you're going to go a long way towards creating rapport with them. If you also use similar language or words that will take you even further."

Possible. But this also happens sometimes without it being a concious effort.
This is a big problem for me when speaking Swedish, I quickly (and without meaning to) change into the dialect the other person is talking. And I´m always afraid people will get insulted that I´m copying them/making fun of their dialect.

[tuulen]

My mother-in-law pronounces "English" as a four syllable word: En-ge-lis-ha

That’s pretty strange even for a Finn...

My wife was born in Kemi but moved to the United States when she was very young and then learned English in school here, and because my wife and I lived far away from her parents I would see them only a few times a year. Again, her father was easy to understand, and, to be fair about it, most of what her mother said could be understood without difficulty, but a small percentage of her English words were like listening to a foreign language. She sounds like she learned English from a book, without hearing the language, as she speaks English words but pronounces them as Finnish words, including putting the stress on the first syllable of a word. And even after all these years, she still speaks that way.

[Karhunkoski]

The card-guessing part was unbelievable !

Absolutely, am now ordering some of his books! Thanks Kalmisto for the "side-effect" discovery!

[AldenG]

I don't have trouble understanding a four-syllable pronunciation of the word English.

The familiar-looking parts were "En" and "li" but then there was the "g/k" sound to inject and also the "h" sound to put on the end. Assuming she learned the language first from written sources, that is...

[tuulen]

I don't have trouble understanding a four-syllable pronunciation of the word English.

The familiar-looking parts were "En" and "li" but then there was the "g/k" sound to inject and also the "h" sound to put on the end. Assuming she learned the language first from written sources, that is...

My description is not the best. Her "g" is quite soft, not a hard "g", and is distinctly separated from the "l". The "h" is barely audible, just loud enough to hear that it is separated from the "s", as the sound "shhh" is not in her vocabulary. And that same pattern, of the separation of consonants, is an ordinary part of her pronunciation of English words.

En-g-lis-(h) might be a more accurate description.

[kalmisto]

Kalmisto wrote:
The card-guessing part was unbelievable !

Karhunkoski wrote:
Absolutely, am now ordering some of his books! Thanks Kalmisto for the "side-effect" discovery

You are welcome !

[kalmisto]

"If you match the speed that they speak, the volume and the tone, you're going to go a long way towards creating rapport with them. If you also use similar language or words that will take you even further."

interleukin wrote:
Possible. But this also happens sometimes without it being a concious effort.
This is a big problem for me when speaking Swedish, I quickly (and without meaning to) change into the dialect the other person is talking. And I´m always afraid people will get insulted that I´m copying them/making fun of their dialect.

I think that you are doing the rapport thing spontaneously. It comes so naturally to you that you are hardly aware of what you are doing. You start imitating the other person´s accent and speech patterns because you want them to feel relaxed and good in your company, you want to get along with them and you want to be friends with them. In other words you want them to like you and that is of course a perfectly normal wish which you share with every normal human being.

If you talk to a person whom you already know well and who you think is a schmuck you do not start imitating their accent or speech patterns because you are not interested in their friendship.

The fact that creating rapport comes so naturally to you probably means that you have very good social skills.

[LadyInTheSky]

I do unconsciously conform to the accent, speech patterns and vocab of the person I'm talking with. Even when I try not to, I do. My mom did it too, and that always drove me nuts. Now I get to drive myself crazy. It only works for discussions in my own language, sadly. Otherwise this habit should in theory make learning languages like magic.

[interleukin]

The fact that creating rapport comes so naturally to you probably means that you have very good social skills.

That´s the first time I get told that But I´ll buy your explanation

I think also that the reason I notice this so strongly in Swedish is that I don´t have a Swedish dialect of my own (it´s not my native language), so no dialect/accent is more right than the other.