To speak English with native accents, is it hard?

Do you think you have a good English accent? Do you love to speak English with a native accent? How do you think about Vietnamese people speaking English, do they Vietnamize it? Do you have any experience of acquiring a good (American/British) accent? Let us have a lot of fun talking about it.

All the best,

In fact no many VNese people can speak English with an English or an American accent, just because we''re not English or American
So if you feel like training to do so, it''s OK; but as I know, the English or American don''t require people from other countries to speak in exactly their accent - it''s in some way impossible.
Therefore, the important point here is that you should practice more, but in your pronunciation, not the accent. If you pronounce well, they can hear you. If you have an American accent but your pronunciation is bad, they cannot. There are many "kinds" of English, like in Singapore they have Singlish, and they consider it their English. It''s OK, isn''t it?
I myself used to read the article from English magazines loudly cuz I hoped that would make my accent become more " English", but the advantage I got may not the accent but the writing style and some new words ^_^
Dunno why but I think VNese in the South find it easier to speak English in a better accent than VNese in the North or some other regions. So sorry if you don''t think like that. If you listen to a person from Hue speaking English, you''ll see they cannot hide their Hue accent.. .And it''s OK too - how can you change it when you were born with it?
This is interesting - speaking is one of my most favorite English skill, maybe because I''m talkative.... Though sometimes people can''t hear my saying, I still love to speak If you have any experience or suggestion, please share with me and others too
Have fun! ^_^
 

Firstly, I must confess that my english speaking is so sucked that whatever I talk about ''how to'' are unreliable or unbelievable. One more obtacle preventing me from advising a mothod (if any) to acquire an native english speaking skill is this statement I heard some years ago '' It is (almost) impossible to speak a foreign language natively after 5 years old''. Of course there are some experiments on phonetics *****pport that conclusion. However I think it ''s unnecessary to show here. To quote it is to mean what you ask and want to achieve is very difficult.
From my learning experience (if any) in how to pronounce english, there are some levels based on 3 keywords of questioning ''what, how, and why'' (I must add that I just know how to but I never practice).
1) What:
We need to know and pronounce correctly all the sounds in english. That ''s really important. When I studied english for 10 years and moved to english using university, I found that most of my pronunciation of sounds were wrong. For example, very simple word :the verb GO. How to pronouce? Is it pronouced as ''GÔ'', or ''GÂU'', or any equivalent sounds in Vietnamese?
2) How
Not at all. It ''s /gou/ (not that u but I have no suitable key). When I firstly studied this word (maybe 13 years ago) , I just imagined that word pronounced as ''Gâu'' and never cared about phonetic script system. That was why I kept pronouncing it wrongly.
It ''s corrected until I learnt about phonetics and phonology to know about diphthongs in english (ou is a diphthong). From that, I started from scratch to pronounce every english word.
3) Why
To climb up to higher level, we try to answer this kinds of questions why (phonology). Why we pronouce ''Go'' as /gou/. Why we write english (or Latin ) in abc (or is it enought to express all the sounds a man can produce?) etc.
About phonology I do not know much ( I am not a english disciple), but I think Miss Di is an expert in this subject. She can give us a lot of advices, guides.

Oh bravo! I thought my topic was rubbish! That"s why I felt a little bit unhappy and didn"t return to it for a few days . But now you friends see. It"s great!
So before I begin my new discussion, let me just say thank you to all of you those read and replied to this topic. I"m really happy because you are interested in it as well (at least, as far as I understand ). In fact, I"ve been searching for friends, who don"t necessary have a good accent, but do be interested in discussing. And I"m happy to read and to know more about it through your own opinions. Not to be polite, I must say that your discussions are very informative, constructive and also professional!!
Thank you very much again for this.
To: Satori:
Your nick sounds like an Italian one, doesn"t it? Parlo Italiano un po, perche õ?Ư.
Thank you, Satori. Well, I must emphasize that I totally agree with you about the following very good two points:

But unfortunately, I couldn"t agree with you less about this point:

Well, my point is different from yours. Let me explain it as follows.
If you read the book õ?oAmerican Accent Trainingõ? by Ann Cook for the first time, you will probably be surprised. I"ve learnt from that book that accent is a combination of three main components (including pronunciation):
1) Intonation (the speech music),
2) Liaisons (word connections),
3) and finally, pronunciations (the spoken sounds of vowels, consonants and combinations).
Intonation is what being translated approximately into Vietnamese as õ?oNgỏằ 'iỏằ?uõ?. It is what you hear first when you hear someone speaking, and the voice is too far away to be audible, but close enough for you to tell the nationality of the speaker.

Liaisons are word connections. For a simple example, you should read "forexample", instead of "for (and a little pause) example" and so on. It is this component of accent that our Vietnamese people find it extremely hard to practice and use. Because, just to get the point clear, our people almost never pronounce the final (consonant) of a word correctly, and then you will hear "night", "knife", "nice", and "nine" exactly the same!!! And there are many more examples that we can discuss.
And finally is the pronunciation(s) (the spoken sounds of vowels, consonants and combinations). At first, I did not know why pronunciation is the least important among the three components just mentioned. Because, as we normally think, everyone should acquire a good pronunciation before having a reasonable intonation, namely you should practice sounding exactly all the letters in the alphabet and combinations of them before knowing how to control you intonation! But it is not so true. It has been shown that, intonation is the most important thing to acquire. If you have a good intonation, you will be understood more easily by the native and nonnative people, and vice versa, you will understand people speaking English more easilyõ?Ư.
The second point that I should discuss with you is the following.
I myself love to talk English with a native accent. At first, I talked with a British accent, but then I gradually realized that I preferred American one. It is just a matter of taste, you know. Some people like British accent, some others like American one. It is also because that I had to practice the TOEFL such a lot that Iõ?ve finally acquired a fairly good one. Am I too proud or do I have too high opinions of myself? You may think yes . But I just mention this to mean that, when you love to do something by you heart, you will do it very well. When I first leant English, I was urged with a thought that speaking well a foreign language was fantastic so I studied it with passion and felt happy with every little progress that I madeõ?Ư So my key point is that, not to practice very hard, but one should pay attention to it, only just little by little, and also to people, friends around him/her speaking English; and gradually, s/he will make his/her accent better and better.
"Every healthy civilian makes the nation healthyõ?Ư" If you speak English with a better and better accent, your friends will appreciate this and be inspired by you, and vice versaõ?Ư

Yes, once again I should say it loudly that I couldn"t agree with you more!!! I too love the sounds of the people from the South. It is not because I have a bias against some particular region (I don"t at all!!), but it is true that the "South sounds" are softer and more flexible. Just a matter of taste again, I usually make this comparison: the British English versus the American English is just like the North sounds in comparison with the South sounds. It"s up to you to like this and not that. There is nothing wrong. But one more point I should make clear is that, every person from the North, the South or from the Central provinces has equal ability to speak well English. So it is not true that one from Hue can"t acquire a good accent just because s/he can"t hide her/his Hue accent. Yes s/he can, you can and I can! If Yan can cook, so can you!
Last thing I just want to say is the following question: can any one kindly show me how to make the apotrophe appear, instead of a series of its copies or a quotation mark? It is kind of stupid huh?
Thank you very much.

Hi,
Unless you settle in an English-speaking country before the age of ten, you''ll undoubtedly have an accent . The key point is how to pronounce it correctly so your words are understandable and flowing . Having an accent is not a bad thing . Speaking English (in America) with a French or Italian accent is considered "***y" and cute .
So, lovely SEC ladies, don''t be embarrassed by your accent, your prince charming will find it very attractive . . It is a forte not a weakness .

Bro Hung,
I agree with you that there is a limited age after which people are difficul to have a native accent. However, in reality, there are some people who never live in an english speaking country but speaking it natively (or almost?). How can they practice? (I do not know and curiously want to know ,of course). One example is Prof Cao Xuân Hạo, I heard from my friends, who can speak French, English, Russian almost natively. Any hints from you, Bro?
Roman_king:
As my knowledge, to practive speaking skills, we should go from ''small units'' to ''big units'':syllable--->word--->phrase--->sentence. Therefore, we start with pronuciation (syllable), word stress ( word), then intonation (phrase, sentence).
Most of these can be learnt in a subject Phonetics (corresponding to ''what and how type questions'' I mentioned above).

Hi Tao_Lao,
You wrote : One example is Prof Cao Xuân Hạo, I heard from my friends, who can speak French, English, Russian almost natively
I have not met Prof Hạo to confirm that but, if that is true then he is a rare exception . To really know whether a person can speak a foreign language like a native , ask kids who are born and raised there . They will give you a frank and honest assessment . Why do I say that ? One time, we were watching a Paris By Night tape and there was that one Viet female singer (who had been in the US for quite a while) performing, singing some English song, quite well by my standard , I overheard my two 10-years-old niece and nephew commenting "Gosh, she does not know how bad she sings" . I bursted out laughing and asked them what''s wrong . They replied, in unison, "Bad accent"

I have not met him either, Bro. I agree with you that with different standards we shall end up with different outcomes on how natively a person speaks a language. Perhaps our Chief, Miss Di, studied with Prof Cao and she could give us some ideas about that.
Được tao_lao sửa chữa / chuyển vào 16:09 ngày 05/08/2004