since I'm learning American English, I wanted to know why that standard American Accent was awful First of all, I didn't think it was awful. (I mostly listened, not watching.) The following are some observations. 1. The stress pattern is

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

Wow, what a lot of nonesense. Is American English simply lazy English with disregard for the fundamentals of the language, or is it a valid simplification of an overly complex and irregular language? Huh? What are you talking about? I was

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

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

Hi Yankee, That's a very good question. To be quite honest with you, /tu'deI/ is a General American pronunciation according to the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary . I suppose corpora containing spoken American English have been used in

Thank you for your replies. these days I'm trying to improve my pronunciation a little (I'm reading "American Accent Training" by Ann Cook, I also have the audio files) CalifJim wrote: As for the second component, it is often some

Raf, your question is kind of strange, given the fact that many educated Britons do not even pronounce the "r" in "world." However, I've heard a lot of people ask the same question. The biggest problem is that the /r/ sound

Hello there! I just discovered the forum and thought I'd join the discussion thread. One of my big pasttimes is imitating accents (other than my own of course). I'm just an American from Central NJ with a good ear. I think the American

LanguageLover, I quite agree that it's easier for a foreiner to understand an American accent. I've heard the same comment from others, and also that it's easier for a foreigner to pronounce American English. I suspect that's because the