5. Intonation: intonation is “melody” of speech. In comparison with the lively British intonation, the American intonation seems to be somehow monotonous. The melody of the speech is simpler as there are not rises and falls of the speech and that is why American English is easier to understand than British English.
We must not begin to mix the two, but to concentrate on learning either British or American English.
Once you have thoroughly studied intonation and word connections, you can begin to address pronunciation.
The three most important vowels are [?], [a], and [ ].
This last symbol, called the schwa, is represented with an upside down e, and is the most common sound in the English language. These are the vowels found in cat, caught and cut.
When people in NYC meet, they always ask where the other is from. Actual New Yorkers are something of a rarity here. But when I tell them I'm from Georgia, people are quick to point out that I really don't have much of a southern accent.
Point of fact, I make an effort not to have much of an accent. Last night, my roommate's boyfriend excoriated me for this.
His argument is that I should just be myself and I shouldn't pander to ignorant people who would judge me based on something so superfluous as my accent. He also says that by accepting and embracing the "cultural marker" that is the way I speak, I am doing more to effect social change and eradicate that same ignorance.
He went so far as to say that intentionally masking one's accent or affecting another is fraudulent.
My argument is that I don't care about society. I have to deal with individuals and even ignorant ones may have something that I want. I adopt a neutral American accent to avoid distracting people from the more important items on the agenda.
Southerners in particular regard their accents as charming and enjoy the attention it gets them. They object vehemently to those who would assume that they are uneducated based on the fact that they have an accent.
But they like to ignore the fact that the South is a region whose population is afflicted with a few types of rather pernicious stupidity, namely racism, homophobia, sexism, and religion.
The NIL/NALS report confirms once again that Southern US states continue to have the most deplorable social conditions in the country, including the highest rates of adult illiteracy. Mississippi ranked worst among the 50 states, with every third adult in the state, 30 percent of its adult population, placed in Level I. Louisiana has the second highest illiteracy rate with 28 percent of its adult population in Level I, followed by Alabama, Florida and South Carolina, each with 25 percent. In these states the combined Level I and Level II literacy rates would push the level of illiteracy and near-illiteracy to nearly 70 percent of the adult population.
III. Conclusion
3.1 Illiteracy on the rise in America
So, the southern reputation for ignorance and stupidity is not unwarranted.
I also contend that an accent is not like skin color in that you aren't born with it and you can change it. I don't disagree that it's difficult to get rid of an accent because so often one can't hear it, but that is beside the point. You can be rid of it.
And most fundamentally, being rid of an accent aids clarity and understanding when communicating verbally.
I have a friend named Brian. The name "Brian" has two syllables, Bri-an, in standard American pronunciation. My friend pronounces it with one syllable, "Braan." Last night, we went out to a bar and every single person we met could not get his name right until I repeated his name for them.
Southerners also add syllables where none are in standard American pronunciation. Take the word "pet." Now, that is a simple, one-syllable word. Pet. But a southerner with a particular type of accent will turn it into two syllables, "pay-et." To many, this pronunciation mangles the word to the point of unintelligibility.
In business school, we were encouraged to rid ourselves of our accents. The point was that even though it might be cute and help you with the ladies (or gentlemen), in business it is a distraction and may cost you business with people who find it difficult to take you seriously when you speak like Scarlet O'Hara or Foghorn Leghorn.
To the argument that it is dishonest to change one's accent, I think this contradicts the premise behind the other arguments. If accents shouldn't matter, then what difference should it make if one changes them? But I regard changing one's accent as similar to changing one's shirt.
If you are American and you put on a British accent, I may not notice that you're a faker, but if I find out you're a faker, I will think of you as I do those 50 year-old men who wear clingy, ripped up Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts, as a person with pretentions.
If you adopt a neutral American accent, which originates in the Midwest, by the way, there's nothing to think of you by the way you speak. You could say you're from wherever you please and the worst that people will say is, "Where's your accent?" And you can simply say, "I don't have one."
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Contents
I. Introduction.
1.1 General American
II. Main Part.
2.1 Pronunciation symbols
2.2 Pronunciation challenges
2.2.1 Use of the present perfect
2.2.2 Possession
2.2.3 The verb “get”
2.2.4 Vocabulary
2.2.5 Prepositions
2.2.6 Past Simple
2.2.7 Spelling
2.3 Differences between American English and British English
3.2.1 Lexical differences
3.2.2 Grammatical differences
3.2.3 Punctuation
4.2 Sound system
4.2.1 Voiced and unvoiced consonants
4.2.2 The American R.
5.2 Another set of “Ears”
5.2.1 Spectrography
5.2.2 The low-back merger
5.2.3 The Northern cities shift
5.2.4 The southern shift
5.2.5 The California shift
6.2 Americans are Ruining English
6.2.1 American English is very corrupting
6.2.2 A language that doesn't change is dead
Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
