In American accents^x, Vowels^x

Well this conversation is ancient, but maybe you get a tickler when someone replies adn will find this. The guy's accent is crap. I'm Canadian but I'm from Toronto where our accent is *almost* standard American (or what we called in the film business Mid-west Flat) and I can tell you a few...

So what's your definition of American English (or North American English, as some prefer)? I would probably define it mostly by its phonology. It would be pretty hard to define. Or why not just say, any dialect of English spoken in North America? Is there a standard for American English? Not...

Do any of you have some or all of these features as well, or are they peculiar to my dialect? Here's how I pronounce some words compared to a General American accent: when and win sound identical; pin and pen do not Windy and wendy sound the same; wind and wend do not I pronounce 'set' as 'sat'...

Chameleon wrote: I would group the major english American accents thusly: SOUTHWESTERN: Texas, Arizona, New Mexico Hmm. Texas has several distinct accents: the Southern dialect; a cot-caught merged dialect with the Southern vowel shift; the Northern accent found in the large cities, and the...

>> There might be dialects that you're not aware of that use and thus he started hypercorrecting himself. A North American often hypercorrects himself when putting on a British accent.

Hi, this is interesting, it reminds me of something I read in a book for improving pronunciation (the famous "American Accent Training"). The title of the paragraph is "Spoon or Sboon?" She (the author) say: "Say spoon. Now say sboon. Hear how they sound the same?" This is similar to your p/b...

To tell you the truth, I've never heard any foreigner (unless they learned English when they were very young, or had lived in an English speaking country for at least a decade, and had extensive, and personalized accent coaching) ever be able to pull off either an American or British accent....

Hi The Golden Man, You wrote: His pronunciation of 'today' for instance, places too much stress on the first syllable. He says "too-day," when that first vowel should be a schwa. Of course, some people pronounce 'today' /tu'deI/. Englishuser

I think the problem with his Standard American Accent is two fold- one, his native accent sneaks through a few times in the consonants as a few have pointed out. Secondly, and I think this is the deal breaker, he has some problems with stress and intonation. Part of the problem is he's...

Yeah, but what is he pronouncing wrong? I mean, is it the Rs, the Ts, some vowels... that's what I can't figure out, or at least what I'm not sure of.