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Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

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Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#331

Post by bafe »

ehnto wrote: post #164
bafe wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something slightly irritating about German or Dutch people trying very hard to have that perfect British accent. I can't really tell why, but it always seems affected and pretentious. I much prefer the "wooden" (Holzern in German) accent of the Swiss

Your opinion is common in language learning it seems, as most people praise a perfect accent but some get very offended by it. I couldn't tell you why, maybe it's a feeling of lack of authenticity? I find it impressive when someone has acquired a good accent personally since it's quite difficult to do.

It sounds too studied, almost a mockery of real native speakers, there's always too much of perfection in the way these learners speak that makes it sound uncanny

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#332

Post by Minor49er »

jcparkyn wrote: post #127
Minor49er wrote: post #116

Just for fun, I looked at how 20 different people pronounced MySQL. The results: "My Sequel": 12 "My Ess Kyoo El": 8 "My Squirrel": 0 I thought "My Sequel" would have something closer to 2/3rds of results rather than 1/2

To be fair, 12/20 _is_ closer to 2/3 than 1/2.

D'oh, nice catch

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#333

Post by ozzmotik »

kwk1 wrote: post #179
ozzmotik wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't forget the manchaca (now menchaca as it should have been the whole time!) being said as "man-CHAK". that or the one from the other major city, good ol kuykendahl aka "kir-KEN-doll"

The Pedernales River: PUR-də-NAL-iss

i've always heard it said as PED-er-NAL-iss

other honorable mentions: puyallup, washington (PYOO-al-ip) koenig ln, austin, tx (KAY-nig) - though admittedly this one is likely originally german König, and what texan is going to pronounce German words like Germans? aqui bleiben wir with Stolz, y'all

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#334

Post by Tyrannosaur »

SamFold wrote: post #222
lynguist wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not grammatical accuracy on their part, it’s the opposite, it’s a calque, a word by word translation from their native tongue. If it was actually perfect grammatical accuracy on their part they’d be saying “Who were you talking to” or “Who were you speaking to”. Correct is what the people say, not the opinion of literal singular English language teachers.

“With whom were you speaking” IS grammatically correct though. “Whom” is the object of the preposition “with”.

Even if you want to differentiate "who" and "whom", "Whom were you speaking with?" is more natural.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#335

Post by radicalbyte »

jdhzzz wrote: post #269
radicalbyte wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> word like "color" has two "o" letters but neither of them makes an "ou" sound That it why we spell it as "colour" in English. Americans removed the "u" from their dialect which makes a needlessly complicated language even more so. Learning Dutch really opened my eyes as to how terrible English is as a written language. The funny thing is that it's mirrored in our law - English law is all about case law and presiden…

It's explained in this SNL sketch "Washington's dream": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk&t=1s

Amazing sketch

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#336

Post by lwansbrough »

whelp_24 wrote: post #330
lwansbrough wrote: post #172

Sometimes grammar can give away a non-native speaker, particularly: “Show me how it looks like.” The use of how here is hard to explain, but it’s wrong. It should be “what it looks like”. This is an instant giveaway usually. But even native English speakers have weird ways of saying things. One grammatical error I hear a lot in people from the Appalachia region is the “needs done” construction. Always sounds bizarre.…

Are you sure it wasn't something more like "get the work that needs done, done by tomorrow."?

“needs done” is “incorrect” grammar here.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#337

Post by lwansbrough »

Name_Chawps wrote: post #188
lwansbrough wrote: post #172

Sometimes grammar can give away a non-native speaker, particularly: “Show me how it looks like.” The use of how here is hard to explain, but it’s wrong. It should be “what it looks like”. This is an instant giveaway usually. But even native English speakers have weird ways of saying things. One grammatical error I hear a lot in people from the Appalachia region is the “needs done” construction. Always sounds bizarre.…

If people from a region are all doing it, it's not an error, it's a dialect.

On the other hand, if most people aren’t doing it, you could also say it’s both an error and a dialect.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#338

Post by ehnto »

bafe wrote: post #331
ehnto wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your opinion is common in language learning it seems, as most people praise a perfect accent but some get very offended by it. I couldn't tell you why, maybe it's a feeling of lack of authenticity? I find it impressive when someone has acquired a good accent personally since it's quite difficult to do.

It sounds too studied, almost a mockery of real native speakers, there's always too much of perfection in the way these learners speak that makes it sound uncanny

Interesting, yeah I can see that. A lot of modern language learning tries to get you to sound natural, but the question becomes, natural where? You start to delve into dialects, when I meet people who learned English naturally from TV and media, they often have a weird blend of dialects that constantly switches, it's kinda fun actually. One minute they have American inflections, next they're Australian etc.

When learning Japanese I was encouraged to pick a person with a dialect I prefer and listen to them a lot, as I'll likely pick up their accent and mannerisms.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#339

Post by kwk1 »

ozzmotik wrote: post #333
kwk1 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pedernales River: PUR-də-NAL-iss

i've always heard it said as PED-er-NAL-iss other honorable mentions: puyallup, washington (PYOO-al-ip) koenig ln, austin, tx (KAY-nig) - though admittedly this one is likely originally german König, and what texan is going to pronounce German words like Germans? aqui bleiben wir with Stolz, y'all

I've heard it that way too, but the pronunciation I posted is "canonical", or at least copy-pasted from Wikipedia.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#340

Post by filereaper »

mathieuh wrote: post #225
filereaper wrote: post #36

This is a very interesting site. I took the name "Regina" as an example as its pronounced very differently between Canada/UK and US. If you toggle through the site's region selectors it does indeed produce videos with the regionally correct pronouciation. (Admittedly I had a sample size of N=1 video each) So yeah, its a great start!

I assume in Canada/UK it rhymes with vagina? That's probably because the royal cipher of Elizabeth II was ER, with the 'R' being for Regina (Latin for 'queen'). So I would imagine that people have heard it in that context before. Just looking at it it looks like it should be pronounced "redgEEnuh".

Yeah that's exactly right.

I was only aware of the Canada/UK version and was caught off guard when used on a colleague that used "redgEEnuh" for their name.

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