Disclaimer: If you are easily offended, do not read this article.
Not everyone find funny what I find funny.
Pron"u"nciation - or Pron"ou"nciation?
How do u pronounce it
?
Why are there so many dialects? And why do some sound more sophisticated than others?
Why
does the rural American-English always sound so, i don't really know
how to describe it and not sound racist at the same time, redneckish? I
think that films, documentaries, video games and stereotypes reinforce
the presumption, that the dialect portrays the average IQ.
Personally
I love making fun of every kind of dialect, be it the British English,
which is mainly used while talking to my old chap Martin to persuade him
to drink a pint or a cup of Earl Grey with some lemon. Just kidding. I
hate Earl Grey. But you get the point. I picture myself a little bit
like this every time I try to sound like a Brit.
You just have to love Hugh Laurie for this.
Nevertheless,
if I try to make my point in Redneckish Hillbilly English, I always get
the feeling of sounding a little bit funny. I cannot help to think
about this picture everytime i use my Southern State voice.
Please
try to pronounce the text in the picture with the most southern accent
you can do! I don't know why, but it always cracks me up!
And then there are the dialects which I love the most.
I will try to get some people to send me a short mp3 file to add it lateron.
I
am talking about Germans, who have no idea how to speak English,
Italians, who try to do it, but have to deal with the completely
different location of stress in a word, and last but no least my own
accent(s).
I worked for about a month in Paris, where i
had some translation and interpreting to do, and by far the most fun I
had while working was a German representative, who spoke on the voice
mail. He really tried to hide his ignorance, but unfortunately he had to
tell the guys in France, that a bill hadn't been paid. The problem was
that he had no idea how to use the past tense. And I don't mean in the
sense, that he got a little confused by past progressive and other forms
of the pas tense. No! It seemed that he had no clue there was a past
tense... I had to listen to the message a couple of times to really get
what he was trying to tell us.
That's often the problem. If people
have no idea of English and are forced to speak in front of an audience
which expects you to know English.
CLICKY CLICKY: →
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9chyDy2quk
My other example is Italian English. I don't really know what to say, but the stresses in Italian are so much different than in English. And that's why Italian English is always fun to listen to.
I
can relate to that, because I have relatives in Italy, and whenever
they try to speak English it sounds like in the old mafia films. - I
will try to get some of my relatives to say something in English to your
auditory pleasure.
It's a me Mario!
And
last my own accents. I am fortunate to be capable to distinguish
between several accents, but unfortunately I cannot settle on one single
accent. Sometimes I switch from average American English to high
register British English in a matter of seconds. And that's what bugs me
the most... I hope to be able to change that in the future, but I am
not really sure how to do it.
Well that's my post about pron"u"nciation.
That's it folks!
Ciao!
