The second language I learned was Hindi, and I credit my experience with that language for teaching me phonetic awareness. Each vowel or consonant is given a different symbol and is classified according to how it is pronounced in the mouth. (tongue against back of teeth, tongue against roof of mouth, etc.). Having a phonetic (devanagari) script to see, along with native audio, made it easier to train my ear to and know what to do with my mouth to produce the correct sound. I suspect learning a tonal language or learning the IPA would do the same. Now I pay more attention to things like how long a vowel is pronounced, is it nasalized, etc.
Beginning in May of 2022, I will offer virtual options for working with me to improve your skills in reading French, German, Latin, or Spanish literatures, to engage in Great Books discussions, and to provide support for the self-study of foreign languages. If these might interest you, please fill out the application form on my website at alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ If this is not for you, but you know someone whom it might interest, please pass this information on to them.
Hello, professor! I have a question about the self-study support you will be offering. Basically, I'd mostly be interested in the chance to go over my long-term study plan with you one time in detail and see what you think. I have some practical, life-imposed language learning deadlines I'm worried about meeting, and I want to know if my current goals are realistic. Would this fit the sort of meetings you have in mind? I'd be worried about wasting other people's time by focusing so much on issues so specific to my own life. Would this work somehow? Thank you for your time!
@@fatherzosima9869 Hello and thank you for asking. No, from what you describe here, it sounds like you are more after a one-off in-depth consultation / review than the ongoing support group.
@@ProfASAr Yeah, a consultation would probably be more appropriate. If you're still considering that as an offering, count me as definitely interested. Thanks for the reply!
Hello Dr. Arguelles, Thank you for sharing this point. This is something I've definitely noticed in the short time I have studied Vietnamese. In the north, they have dầu hỏi which is a creaky tone, and they use English "/z/" sound like in "zebra". Some words are also different. Whereas in the South, they don't have dầu hỏi (they use a diffferent tone) and instead of "/z/", they will use "/r/" or "/y/" sounds in English like rat or yell ("rất; "giởi") My grandmother is from the North, but lived in the South for a long time. When she speaks Vietnamese, she speaks mostly with a northern accent, but sometimes says words like a Southerner. When I speak to her, she says that she doesn't understand me when I speak Northern Vietnamese and that "You don't sound pretty". I asked some other, younger native speakers and they helped me to find the difference. In the North, it is often (but not the rule) that people will speak more breathy and closer to English tone, but still slightly nasally, maybe because of French influence. I heard that French can be nasally. My friends described this as "proper, educated" Vietnamese. In the South, people will often speak extremely nasally, especially girls when they're trying to be cute. Also, the tones are quite different. My friends described this as "improper, but more common Vietnamese, especially for single girls in the South". So, when I speak to most people or to myself in Vietnamese, my fiance and siblings (who do not speak Vietnamese) think it sounds quite pleasant to an American ear. When I speak like how my grandmother prefers me to speak, quite nasally with exaggerated tones, it is a bit less pleasant and more foreign to the American ear (in the opinion of my fiance and siblings... and myself). I think it's the difference between how you speak compared to, maybe, a "valley girl" accent. So, it's not only a difference from language to language, but from accent to accent in one language.
First of all, I’m so glad I found your channel! Awesome material on UA-cam! Thank you for that 🙏🏼. I am Brazilian and, at the moment, I’m learning Polish and French in parallel. I have this problem of changing the accent when I’m speaking English or trying to speak Polish. One of the things I’ve noticed is that I am afraid of “sounding silly” or too exaggerated - as if I’d try to speak Polish like a Polish citizen, they would think I’m trying to mock them.
I also have stumbled on it and I think that neglecting is the best way to overpass it. I'm Ukrainian and recently moved to Poland so I have the same problem but I don't mind it's okay just a language the more you practice the better you get.
As a Scot, my locus of energy is far back and somewhat throaty. Working on my Italian accent, learning how to move the locus up and forwards has been the single most important step in pursuing that elusive clean vowel sound. The other is realising that the Italians move their mouths with greater energy and that English speakers need to feel that they are exaggerating their diction somewhat. Finding a good native model and simply watching how they move their lips and jaw as they speak has proven very worthwhile - this is an area where video can offer more than audio.
I do chorusing à la Olle Kjellin and I often get compliments for my accents. I am highly musical so I don't know if my success can be replicated by others but I really do recommend it.
You are the third or fourth person to mention Olle Kjellin, whom I had never heard of before, but who appears to have developed quite an excellent method that it is very good to know about.
I am a language teacher. I find that unless I work with students individually and grade them on pronunciation, 99% of them will have poor pronunciation. I start by having them mimic me. Just repeat after me. I read a word or phrase and they repeat it back. One-on-one, so I can hear them. For the first 2 months, they get graded on how well they can mimic me. So, they are learning and practicing mimicking someone. They learn to pay close attention and say it like I do instead of using an English sound that is similar. This carries over to the whole class choral responses in learning pronunciation of new vocabulary. And it helps so that when they read silently, they are less prone to mispronouncing words in their heads. After the first 2 months, they are still graded on pronunciation and we still work one-on-one. But they just read a dialogue aloud instead of mimicking me. It is an ongoing effort to keep trying to improve pronunciation. Not something we only do at the beginning. In classes, if you do not emphasize pronunciation, the students will generally have poor pronunciation. Because they do not have the feedback of a native speaker not understanding them. Poor pronunciation can become the norm in the classroom and poor pronunciation can be reinforced and repeated through paired speaking and silent reading activities. Listen and repeat activities such as Pimsleur or Glossika are good. But not enough. There needs to be one-on-one work with a teacher to get pronunciation correct. And many students are simply not motivated to use correct pronunciation unless it is part of their grade. Motivation is a huge factor in pronunciation. Listening to the language a lot also helps with pronunciation.
I’m a 15yr old trying to learn japanese and to be honest everyone around me had been saying that i will never be able to learn japanese because its a hard language, and im trying to watch all your videos for an advice to learn the language:)
Yeah don't let anyone tell you "it's hard and you can't do it" I waited until I was 27 to start learning Japanese because of it. 5 years in and I can speak it at a decent level. You can do it.
When I take up a new language the first thing I do is trying to familiarize myself with phonetics as best as I can given that I don't have a concrete idea of what a language sounds like. I'm trying to pronounce separate words and just combinations of sounds. It's a necessary stage for me to go through. Because I noticed that most of the time, in every language there are certain combinations of sounds that your mouth is reluctant to reproduce. For instance, one sound takes your tongue in a certain position and then it has to go real quick to a completely different position to make another sound. Without the ability to do it without thinking, it's impossible to start speaking a language. But I totally agree that making a perfect pronunciation is not necessary when you're just starting. If you dedicate yourself to a language, then over time you'll be making those sounds fairly good anyway.
What an important video, and I think you are so spot on bringing it up here. I have never thought of it as a center of concentration for a specific language, but will start thinking about that now too. I come from a German speaking background, so I do have a slight German accent when speaking English, but it is not a strong one. And yes, when I speak English, my mouth is in a different base position, than when I speak German, and if I artificially move my mouth into the 'German' position while speaking English, I will immediately have that thick German accent that I sometimes hear on other German speakers, but that for me is a mental exercise to imitate now, and totally does not feel natural any more. But you can use this concept to your advantage. If you for example learn French, then you can -just as an exercise - practice speaking English while trying to imitate a French accent. it will help you learn how to shift into a 'French-like' basic position and when you then start speaking French, it will give you a better starting base to work from. In general, I always think of German being spoken more in a 'crocodile' way. If you use your hands to imitate a crocodile's mouth, you are going to close your wrists and flap the fingers up and down, like a crocodile does. German tends to have these sounds like 'ch' and 'r' that anchor you in the back, but all the rest of the work is done in the front. English, is to me more like a bear's cave, where you create a hollow space in your mouth, the moment you start speaking. French sits more forward towards lips and nose, but at least for me, it is only occasionally closed in the back, not constantly, like in German, but I am not fluent in French, so I may not know enough myself. For Russian, I try to palatalize more, and try to soften most of my consonants, but I would not say that I have figured out yet, how to get it right on a continuous basis. it is still a bit all over the place, so I would be glad to hear from others, who may speak Russian as their base language.
Thank you so much for your great and detailed comment. I love your description of a crocodile's mouth vs. a bear's cave! If we could get a consensus of where the locus is, that would be of great help to learners!
Interesting that you've noticed that about your articulation and how you're tying it to the consonant inventory. I guess for Russian it's not just the presence of palatal consonants that causes the place of focus that you've described, but also the reduced mid or central vowels that contribute to that.
@@Yan_Alkovic My misrepresentation. Actually, I think that the vowels are very much key to being understood in a foreign language, If that did not come out in the text above, that is because I was too focused on certain consonants that could demonstrate the base positions. But that distorted the overall impression a bit. When a foreigner is difficult to understand, it is very often because they distort the vowels too much to be understood and not because there is some consonant that sounds a bit off. I.e. it is quite common for Americans to pronounce the cities 'Hamburg' and 'Hemberg' exactly alike. If you pronounce them the German way, they sound very different, so different in fact, that is hard to fathom how they could ever get mixed up. And that is all about the vowels. But the topic above had been this concept of a base position or a point of focus. Now I do admit that I can relate to that base position concept better than to the one of a specific focus. If I am speaking German and I say something like 'Mama und Papa', then my mouth is in a different base position than the one I would use to say 'Mom and Dad' , and that is true, even for the first word. Mama in German and Mom in English are pretty similar in sounds, the reason that the vowel in English Mom sounds like some mix between 'a' and 'o', is because I have opened up in the back, like a cave. In German, I don't do that. But in German, the chin goes forward a bit, in English it does not. Hope that explains things a bit better. Now to your comment, you mention the unstressed vowel sounds, or at least that is how I interpreted it, and that is interesting, because those have never been much of an influence of how I position things in my mouth when trying to speak Russian, they just slide in between the more dominant stressed vowels, especially, when these are soft vowels and therefore trigger a 'j' sound at the beginning. Could you give me some example please? TY
@@cailwi9 Well honestly I'm struggling to give examples cause Russian is my native language and trying to explain these habitual things about it is kinda difficult. I can explain the development and the history of the language but not this...
@@Yan_Alkovic no problem. I understand, it is hard to find ways to explain this somehow, and I suspect, we also have different ways of doing this sound formation, and so explanations from other speakers may at times be less helpful or even somewhat confusing, as we are all different in many ways. Take care.
I find listen and repeat activities very helpful for accent improvement, such as you get with, e.g., Pimsleur or Glossika). Maybe because it breaks down the task into separate steps, listening, then speaking. Not sure. In fact, I do not even attempt shadowing until I am very comfortable doing listen and repeat. For me, this is where I work on pronunciation - and I intentionally focus on that task. Shadowing, I find, is better for flow and stamina - getting my mouth around longer passages. So for a dialogue, e.g., I do lots of listen and repeat for each sentence - once I feel I have the pronunciation down, I then try to shadow the entire dialogue in one stretch and discontinue listen and repeat for that dialogue. Especially for those with accent problems, I would recommend a listen and repeat phase prior to shadowing.
I agree, esp on shadowing helping flow and muscle stamina in the language. But it's challenging until one is more comfortable with a dialogue. I also do it in that order.
That moment when you can't figure out if Professor A is purposefully mixing up his left and right hands because, from the perspective of the viewer, his left is on our right and his right is on our left.
Many years ago I attended my University's annual German theatre production, arranged and performed by a number of students. I remember that year it was "Die Feuerzangenbowle" by Heinrich Spoerl. While some of the students had clearly worked hard on the pronunciation of their respective lines, there were some who spoke with such a blatant New Zealand accent that they were all but unintelligible. Towards the middle of the play I had found myself completely lost as to what was going on, and being unable to follow it, I mistook the intermission for the end of the play! My friend, who had performed in the play, asked me the following day what I thought of it. I told him it was good, but it did end rather abruptly...
AGREED on Native Speaker thing...ok most FOLKS will be more impressed that you learned their language- means you speak at least 2 languages. And they usually feel flattered you tried that hard to learn their language. And they still will know you may not understand- dont' touch the vegetables- like in Italy for example. Dr. thanks for recommending the actor DAVID ALAN STERN, PhD who teaches accents- he has courses in individual accents- for less than $20!!!! there is a younger guy too who demonstrates various accents and teaches actors.
Hello there! Yes, David Alan Stern has a whole range of courses called "Acting with an Accent" where he will suggest a fulcrum for a range of speech forms. I can't recommend him highly enough!
@@ProfASAr I feel silly but I misunderstood what he does, he for example helps someone speaking English to have a good Italian accent as an actor, not how to make a better Italian accent in Italian. Hope that makes sense. Perhaps I'm not able to utilize what he's teaching and adapt it as you could.
Extremely helpful info. You had a previous video from perhaps 10 years or so ago about accent formation (as I recall) where you spent some time on this topic. My experience is much more limited than yours, but that video was the only one I'd ever heard mention of the idea of a point of articulation being the root source of pronunciation and accents. I've paid attention since and cannot recall another mention of this concept anywhere. The demo you did there was various types of English accents (American midwest, southern, etc.) which was an epiphany to me. I found that demo more helpful than variations in Russian or Korean because my American ear could immediately recognize clear differences and I could immediately start experimenting with how it felt (plus it gives great new voices to use when reading to kids). The only thing close to this anywhere I've seen was a Luca Lampierello video from ages ago on prosody and the importance of practicing entire phrases and sentences to acquire the phrasing, tonality, and influence of adjacent sounds on each other. After seeing your accent formation video years ago, I became conscious of this and kept it in mind a bit when studying Spanish though in hindsight I didn't make it a focal point of learning as I should have. Lacking technical jargon, I came to think of it as my "default mouth position" or "rest position". Subjectively speaking, I found it helpful to find the position and "tension" that my mouth (and other organs) relaxed to as I'd finish speaking a sentence or the position I'd start from when I started tensing my mouth to speak. Today's video added the idea of an axis of energy or motion which seems a nice description of the general movement toward and from the rest position which I'd not thought much about. I found that my Spanish rest position was definitely different from my English rest position. I found that Spanish sounding vowels and consonants felt natural to use in this position. I also found that developing this position enabled me to do "harder" sounds like the rolled R fairly easily. Indeed, I'd given up on the RR's all together and accidentally found I could easily do them after I was using a more Spanish like rest position and had exercised my mouth in that position for perhaps 2 to 3 weeks. FWIW, I do most of my focused pronunciation practice with a lot of looping of phrases of audio using Audacity. I found the first couple weeks of Assimil Spanish audio to be helpful at the beginning because of the slow and clear pronunciation. Being an experienced musician, I found that this repeated practice with looped phrases and sentences was enough feedback to adjust my rest position to something more Spanish like than English. My sense from a few native speakers is that they are pleasantly surprised by my accent compared to most Americans (who are likely using their default English pronunciation positions). Having done this once with Spanish, I think I will do better the next time I work on pronunciation of a new language since I have a much better idea of what it feels like to slowly adjust a rest position and movement axis (or axes) with listening feedback. I'd tentatively plan to initially focus more on finding a rest position that gives better vowels since vowels are easier to produce and can be slowed down more easily than many consonants and it would probably be the easiest first step in the right direction. Bottom line is that your introduction of this concept has put me into a much better position to learn pronunciation in the future. Instead of focusing all my effort on an IPA-like devotion to mastering particular sounds, most of my effort will be focused on finding a more native-like rest position that sets me up for success on making the "hard" sounds. Don't underestimate the importance of this discovery (observation?). I think it could lay a foundation for better methods for gaining better pronunciation skills. Right now, my sense is that having a more natural rest position and axis of motion (or whatever terms are best here) is a necessity for more natural speaking, and that this is best approached consciously rather than the more typical modern approach of working on one sound at a time as a variation from a similar sound in one's native language.
@@ProfASAr One other thing I'd forgotten about and just remembered. While I'm getting older and my hearing is not what it used to be, it is still probably above average (as I've tended to protect it against loud music and other such things). Years ago, I was visiting a company that made ultrasonic welders (20 KHz and 40 KHz). When they demoed the 20KHz model, I heard a loud horrible screeching something like fingernails on a chalkboard. As I recall, I did a combination of grimace, loud groan, and covered my ears. My colleagues wondered what was up. One of the guys working at the company said that every once in a while, there would be someone who had a similar reaction but that it was fairly rare. Most people couldn't hear anything associated with the welder operation.
I remember that the book by Robert A. Hall, Jr. that you discussed late last year had some interesting discussion of these issues. I think that in American English, vowels and most consonants are spoken near the back of the mouth. This includes the American R and the velar L. Even with F and V, much of the articulation is near the back of the mouth. Sounds that other languages make with the tip of the tongue behind the front teeth, such as d and t, are generally made in American English with the tongue near the alveolar ridge. The lack of rounded lip vowels may be a reason that native English speakers have difficultly hearing the difference between sounds like the French u and ou sounds. I have known people for whom making the sounds in foreign languages is effortless. There are people who have never studied a language but are able to say words in that language with what to me sounds like almost perfect pronunciation. Unfortunately, in my own case, even after studying a language for many years, my pronunciation is probably still worse than your right hand raised pronunciation.
I did add some notions of this kind when going over Hall's book, and so now I have given it this more thorough treatment. You say your pronunciation is even worse than my right hand's? Well then, you have the most to gain from experimenting with this to find a different point of articulation. Go for it!
We can observe these different loci of articulation even between different regional accents of English. If you try to imitate different accents, you'll feel that locus moving around your mouth. For instance, a Minnesota accent feels like it's pronounced with a tighter mouth while a Southern England accent feels more open and toward the back of the mouth.
Phonetic awareness is a helpful skill - I think this is the idea behind learning the IPA (International Phoenetic Alphabet). Glossika provides the IPA for each sentence in its program, for example. Probably would be helpful, though, I must admit, I have never taken the time to learn it. Good in theory though.
Haha I currently try to build a standard american english accent. I’ve never heard about that base of articulation, but it sounds logical. Thanks again for another interesting and useful video! :)
16:00 I have heard this before and I understand it, but I disagree. I was raised a monolingual Dutch-speaker in the Netherlands, never lived abroad and learned my more or less 10 foreign languages mostly through reading literature and listening to podcasts (barely doing any speaking) until last year I moved to Italy to study at an international university in Italian and English. When I speak English, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Swedish and German people usually think I am a native speaker. I think it is to a large extent a natural talent, people have said the same about my Arabic, Russian or Danish, in which I am still a beginner, and I am fairly good at copying regional accents or the sounds of languages I never studied. I find being taken for a native a lot more satisfying. I am usually quite embarrassed when people notice my foreign accent and I feel an outsider, whereas when people don’t notice your accent they treat you like one of them and you don’t have to explain once again how you learned the language in question (and what Assimil is).
Thank you for sharing your perspective and your experience. It does sound as if you have an extremely high degree of natural talent in this regard. Are you musically gifted as well?
I just tried observing this "focal point" with several of my languages (English, Japanese, Polish and German) and it does seem like there's a slight difference in my perception of the tongue, but it's really hard to describe and quantify. I guess I'll try to pay attention to it some more. Also I did check out Acting with an Accent, for Texan and Scottish, and I found that it either put to words things that I already knew about these accents from observation and learning about their phonetics (though sometimes it mentioned things that I already did intuitively but never noticed them), or it used very nebulous terminology that didn't make sense to me even with the audio. So it might be good for a beginner, a person setting out to learn a new accent, but not when one already knows that accent. Also I totally agree about shooting as close as possible to sounding like a native - it's good enough to be competent, but getting every single nitty-gritty detail down just takes far too much time.
@@nextstepelt5170 Fascinating! Strange how that works out for you and how the point of resonance is in front of the mouth…. I guess I’m also in the camp of being able to replicate things but not necessarily getting how exactly I’m doing it. Voices are so strange…
I did not see that other comment - UA-cam mysteriously blocks or removes some of them - and I am sorry, but I have never heard of Dr. Kjellin or his method. What can you tell us?
Maybe because I shared a link. Write in Google: "Accent addition" by Olle Kjellin. He wrote many academic papers, however there's a short nice summary in Reddit. You will see it in Google results.
Your video is very helpful and insightful. I also wanted to tell you how much I love your cute, furry cohost. Do you also speak Cat? 😂 Seeing your sweet kitty just made my day 😍 🐈⬛
Thanks for commenting. I know my Russian pronunciation is not good, but I have worked on it, and as you note, when I have spent time in Russia, I haven't had trouble communicating with people because of it.
Very informative! Is there any place where we could find hints about that "base energy point" in the mouth for different languages? I totally get the point - I can feel in my mouth how the base point is different when I speak German trying to pronounce the words correctly. It changes when I speak Spanish and it's different for Polish
As I said in the video, I have never seen or heard this written about or discussed when other aspects of phonetics are treated. The only person who works with this (and works very well) is an actor named David Allen Stern who has a whole series of courses for training in various accents called "Acting with an Accent." I highly recommend these!
Great video! Very well described. A guy named Chris Aruffo did a fantastic Ted-X talk where he talks about these "articulatory settings". I strongly recommend it in addition to this video! ua-cam.com/video/TDxFrwkiHIw/v-deo.html It's like each language has a set of phonemes and the individuals who speak that language find a kind of "average" point of focus from where all of the phonemes of that language are easiest to access. Like, if your vocal apparatus is always primed and ready to hit a guttural French "r", that's going to affect how all of the other sounds are articulated, even common ones like "D" or "K".
Thank you for sharing this. I am glad to hear of someone else who is on to this, and I am not surprised to learn that he is studying dialects and accents. When I discuss this topic, I give credit to David Alan Stern and other accent and dialect coaches - they know about it - but it has not made its way into general phonetics.
@@ProfASAr You're actually the only person besides him that I've ever seen touch on the subject as it applies to dialects and language learning. I'm surprised with how big the language learning community is on youtube that it doesn't get more attention.
I tend to think that having a cat is an extremely important thing to improve your accent :)
Absolutely essential, in fact, but if you don't have one, you can make use of my virtual one here: ua-cam.com/video/vI3eoYg3hXU/v-deo.html
The second language I learned was Hindi, and I credit my experience with that language for teaching me phonetic awareness. Each vowel or consonant is given a different symbol and is classified according to how it is pronounced in the mouth. (tongue against back of teeth, tongue against roof of mouth, etc.). Having a phonetic (devanagari) script to see, along with native audio, made it easier to train my ear to and know what to do with my mouth to produce the correct sound. I suspect learning a tonal language or learning the IPA would do the same. Now I pay more attention to things like how long a vowel is pronounced, is it nasalized, etc.
Thanks again for sharing your experience with Hindi.
Can i ask how good is your hindi?
Beginning in May of 2022, I will offer virtual options for working with me to improve your skills in reading French, German, Latin, or Spanish literatures, to engage in Great Books discussions, and to provide support for the self-study of foreign languages. If these might interest you, please fill out the application form on my website at alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ If this is not for you, but you know someone whom it might interest, please pass this information on to them.
Hello, professor! I have a question about the self-study support you will be offering. Basically, I'd mostly be interested in the chance to go over my long-term study plan with you one time in detail and see what you think. I have some practical, life-imposed language learning deadlines I'm worried about meeting, and I want to know if my current goals are realistic. Would this fit the sort of meetings you have in mind? I'd be worried about wasting other people's time by focusing so much on issues so specific to my own life. Would this work somehow?
Thank you for your time!
@@fatherzosima9869 Hello and thank you for asking. No, from what you describe here, it sounds like you are more after a one-off in-depth consultation / review than the ongoing support group.
@@ProfASAr Yeah, a consultation would probably be more appropriate. If you're still considering that as an offering, count me as definitely interested.
Thanks for the reply!
Hello Dr. Arguelles, Thank you for sharing this point. This is something I've definitely noticed in the short time I have studied Vietnamese. In the north, they have dầu hỏi which is a creaky tone, and they use English "/z/" sound like in "zebra". Some words are also different. Whereas in the South, they don't have dầu hỏi (they use a diffferent tone) and instead of "/z/", they will use "/r/" or "/y/" sounds in English like rat or yell ("rất; "giởi") My grandmother is from the North, but lived in the South for a long time. When she speaks Vietnamese, she speaks mostly with a northern accent, but sometimes says words like a Southerner. When I speak to her, she says that she doesn't understand me when I speak Northern Vietnamese and that "You don't sound pretty". I asked some other, younger native speakers and they helped me to find the difference. In the North, it is often (but not the rule) that people will speak more breathy and closer to English tone, but still slightly nasally, maybe because of French influence. I heard that French can be nasally. My friends described this as "proper, educated" Vietnamese. In the South, people will often speak extremely nasally, especially girls when they're trying to be cute. Also, the tones are quite different. My friends described this as "improper, but more common Vietnamese, especially for single girls in the South". So, when I speak to most people or to myself in Vietnamese, my fiance and siblings (who do not speak Vietnamese) think it sounds quite pleasant to an American ear. When I speak like how my grandmother prefers me to speak, quite nasally with exaggerated tones, it is a bit less pleasant and more foreign to the American ear (in the opinion of my fiance and siblings... and myself). I think it's the difference between how you speak compared to, maybe, a "valley girl" accent. So, it's not only a difference from language to language, but from accent to accent in one language.
Thank you for providing such a rich and juicy example from a language that is not commonly known!
First of all, I’m so glad I found your channel!
Awesome material on UA-cam! Thank you for that 🙏🏼.
I am Brazilian and, at the moment, I’m learning Polish and French in parallel.
I have this problem of changing the accent when I’m speaking English or trying to speak Polish. One of the things I’ve noticed is that I am afraid of “sounding silly” or too exaggerated - as if I’d try to speak Polish like a Polish citizen, they would think I’m trying to mock them.
I also have stumbled on it and I think that neglecting is the best way to overpass it. I'm Ukrainian and recently moved to Poland so I have the same problem but I don't mind it's okay just a language the more you practice the better you get.
Thank you both for commenting. Rafael, in answer to your issue, I agree with Juicer2006.
As a Scot, my locus of energy is far back and somewhat throaty. Working on my Italian accent, learning how to move the locus up and forwards has been the single most important step in pursuing that elusive clean vowel sound.
The other is realising that the Italians move their mouths with greater energy and that English speakers need to feel that they are exaggerating their diction somewhat. Finding a good native model and simply watching how they move their lips and jaw as they speak has proven very worthwhile - this is an area where video can offer more than audio.
Thanks for pointing out the value of video in this practice.
This has to be one of the best UA-cam pages I have encountered!
Thank you kindly. I am happy to provide useful information!
I do chorusing à la Olle Kjellin and I often get compliments for my accents. I am highly musical so I don't know if my success can be replicated by others but I really do recommend it.
You are the third or fourth person to mention Olle Kjellin, whom I had never heard of before, but who appears to have developed quite an excellent method that it is very good to know about.
I am a language teacher. I find that unless I work with students individually and grade them on pronunciation, 99% of them will have poor pronunciation. I start by having them mimic me. Just repeat after me. I read a word or phrase and they repeat it back. One-on-one, so I can hear them. For the first 2 months, they get graded on how well they can mimic me. So, they are learning and practicing mimicking someone. They learn to pay close attention and say it like I do instead of using an English sound that is similar. This carries over to the whole class choral responses in learning pronunciation of new vocabulary. And it helps so that when they read silently, they are less prone to mispronouncing words in their heads. After the first 2 months, they are still graded on pronunciation and we still work one-on-one. But they just read a dialogue aloud instead of mimicking me. It is an ongoing effort to keep trying to improve pronunciation. Not something we only do at the beginning. In classes, if you do not emphasize pronunciation, the students will generally have poor pronunciation. Because they do not have the feedback of a native speaker not understanding them. Poor pronunciation can become the norm in the classroom and poor pronunciation can be reinforced and repeated through paired speaking and silent reading activities. Listen and repeat activities such as Pimsleur or Glossika are good. But not enough. There needs to be one-on-one work with a teacher to get pronunciation correct. And many students are simply not motivated to use correct pronunciation unless it is part of their grade. Motivation is a huge factor in pronunciation. Listening to the language a lot also helps with pronunciation.
I concur completely, especially that if you really want to perfect your pronunciation, you need to work 1-on-1 with a trained phonetician.
@ProfASAr What do you think about AI or Chat GPT to work on pronunciation?
You sound like a wonderful teacher! I wish more language teachers took this same approach! ❤
I’m a 15yr old trying to learn japanese and to be honest everyone around me had been saying that i will never be able to learn japanese because its a hard language, and im trying to watch all your videos for an advice to learn the language:)
You can do it! The pronunciation is easy
Japanese is NOT too hard to learn. You may have to work long and hard at it, but many have succeeded in this, and you can, too!
Yeah don't let anyone tell you "it's hard and you can't do it" I waited until I was 27 to start learning Japanese because of it. 5 years in and I can speak it at a decent level. You can do it.
When I take up a new language the first thing I do is trying to familiarize myself with phonetics as best as I can given that I don't have a concrete idea of what a language sounds like. I'm trying to pronounce separate words and just combinations of sounds. It's a necessary stage for me to go through. Because I noticed that most of the time, in every language there are certain combinations of sounds that your mouth is reluctant to reproduce. For instance, one sound takes your tongue in a certain position and then it has to go real quick to a completely different position to make another sound. Without the ability to do it without thinking, it's impossible to start speaking a language. But I totally agree that making a perfect pronunciation is not necessary when you're just starting. If you dedicate yourself to a language, then over time you'll be making those sounds fairly good anyway.
Thank you for the substantive comment about your procedure.
Have been watching parts of your videos, forgetting to click ‘thumbs up’ thank you.
Thanks for that!
What an important video, and I think you are so spot on bringing it up here.
I have never thought of it as a center of concentration for a specific language, but will start thinking about that now too. I come from a German speaking background, so I do have a slight German accent when speaking English, but it is not a strong one. And yes, when I speak English, my mouth is in a different base position, than when I speak German, and if I artificially move my mouth into the 'German' position while speaking English, I will immediately have that thick German accent that I sometimes hear on other German speakers, but that for me is a mental exercise to imitate now, and totally does not feel natural any more.
But you can use this concept to your advantage. If you for example learn French, then you can -just as an exercise - practice speaking English while trying to imitate a French accent. it will help you learn how to shift into a 'French-like' basic position and when you then start speaking French, it will give you a better starting base to work from.
In general, I always think of German being spoken more in a 'crocodile' way. If you use your hands to imitate a crocodile's mouth, you are going to close your wrists and flap the fingers up and down, like a crocodile does. German tends to have these sounds like 'ch' and 'r' that anchor you in the back, but all the rest of the work is done in the front. English, is to me more like a bear's cave, where you create a hollow space in your mouth, the moment you start speaking. French sits more forward towards lips and nose, but at least for me, it is only occasionally closed in the back, not constantly, like in German, but I am not fluent in French, so I may not know enough myself. For Russian, I try to palatalize more, and try to soften most of my consonants, but I would not say that I have figured out yet, how to get it right on a continuous basis. it is still a bit all over the place, so I would be glad to hear from others, who may speak Russian as their base language.
Thank you so much for your great and detailed comment. I love your description of a crocodile's mouth vs. a bear's cave! If we could get a consensus of where the locus is, that would be of great help to learners!
Interesting that you've noticed that about your articulation and how you're tying it to the consonant inventory. I guess for Russian it's not just the presence of palatal consonants that causes the place of focus that you've described, but also the reduced mid or central vowels that contribute to that.
@@Yan_Alkovic My misrepresentation. Actually, I think that the vowels are very much key to being understood in a foreign language, If that did not come out in the text above, that is because I was too focused on certain consonants that could demonstrate the base positions. But that distorted the overall impression a bit.
When a foreigner is difficult to understand, it is very often because they distort the vowels too much to be understood and not because there is some consonant that sounds a bit off. I.e. it is quite common for Americans to pronounce the cities 'Hamburg' and 'Hemberg' exactly alike. If you pronounce them the German way, they sound very different, so different in fact, that is hard to fathom how they could ever get mixed up. And that is all about the vowels.
But the topic above had been this concept of a base position or a point of focus. Now I do admit that I can relate to that base position concept better than to the one of a specific focus. If I am speaking German and I say something like 'Mama und Papa', then my mouth is in a different base position than the one I would use to say 'Mom and Dad' , and that is true, even for the first word. Mama in German and Mom in English are pretty similar in sounds, the reason that the vowel in English Mom sounds like some mix between 'a' and 'o', is because I have opened up in the back, like a cave. In German, I don't do that. But in German, the chin goes forward a bit, in English it does not.
Hope that explains things a bit better. Now to your comment, you mention the unstressed vowel sounds, or at least that is how I interpreted it, and that is interesting, because those have never been much of an influence of how I position things in my mouth when trying to speak Russian, they just slide in between the more dominant stressed vowels, especially, when these are soft vowels and therefore trigger a 'j' sound at the beginning. Could you give me some example please? TY
@@cailwi9 Well honestly I'm struggling to give examples cause Russian is my native language and trying to explain these habitual things about it is kinda difficult. I can explain the development and the history of the language but not this...
@@Yan_Alkovic no problem. I understand, it is hard to find ways to explain this somehow, and I suspect, we also have different ways of doing this sound formation, and so explanations from other speakers may at times be less helpful or even somewhat confusing, as we are all different in many ways.
Take care.
I find listen and repeat activities very helpful for accent improvement, such as you get with, e.g., Pimsleur or Glossika). Maybe because it breaks down the task into separate steps, listening, then speaking. Not sure. In fact, I do not even attempt shadowing until I am very comfortable doing listen and repeat. For me, this is where I work on pronunciation - and I intentionally focus on that task. Shadowing, I find, is better for flow and stamina - getting my mouth around longer passages. So for a dialogue, e.g., I do lots of listen and repeat for each sentence - once I feel I have the pronunciation down, I then try to shadow the entire dialogue in one stretch and discontinue listen and repeat for that dialogue. Especially for those with accent problems, I would recommend a listen and repeat phase prior to shadowing.
Thanks for sharing your experience with this.
I agree, esp on shadowing helping flow and muscle stamina in the language. But it's challenging until one is more comfortable with a dialogue. I also do it in that order.
That moment when you can't figure out if Professor A is purposefully mixing up his left and right hands because, from the perspective of the viewer, his left is on our right and his right is on our left.
No, I do know left from right - it is that mirror image thing again.
اعجبتني الفكرة. اطبقها ان شاء الله. شكرا
أتمنى أن يخدمك بشكل جيد
Many years ago I attended my University's annual German theatre production, arranged and performed by a number of students. I remember that year it was "Die Feuerzangenbowle" by Heinrich Spoerl. While some of the students had clearly worked hard on the pronunciation of their respective lines, there were some who spoke with such a blatant New Zealand accent that they were all but unintelligible. Towards the middle of the play I had found myself completely lost as to what was going on, and being unable to follow it, I mistook the intermission for the end of the play! My friend, who had performed in the play, asked me the following day what I thought of it. I told him it was good, but it did end rather abruptly...
What a wonderful anecdote, Chris, to illustrate the sometimes hilarious, sometimes disastrous consequences of being misunderstood...
AGREED on Native Speaker thing...ok most FOLKS will be more impressed that you learned their language- means you speak at least 2 languages. And they usually feel flattered you tried that hard to learn their language. And they still will know you may not understand- dont' touch the vegetables- like in Italy for example. Dr. thanks for recommending the actor DAVID ALAN STERN, PhD who teaches accents- he has courses in individual accents- for less than $20!!!! there is a younger guy too who demonstrates various accents and teaches actors.
Hello there! Yes, David Alan Stern has a whole range of courses called "Acting with an Accent" where he will suggest a fulcrum for a range of speech forms. I can't recommend him highly enough!
@@ProfASAr I feel silly but I misunderstood what he does, he for example helps someone speaking English to have a good Italian accent as an actor, not how to make a better Italian accent in Italian. Hope that makes sense. Perhaps I'm not able to utilize what he's teaching and adapt it as you could.
Extremely helpful info. You had a previous video from perhaps 10 years or so ago about accent formation (as I recall) where you spent some time on this topic. My experience is much more limited than yours, but that video was the only one I'd ever heard mention of the idea of a point of articulation being the root source of pronunciation and accents. I've paid attention since and cannot recall another mention of this concept anywhere. The demo you did there was various types of English accents (American midwest, southern, etc.) which was an epiphany to me. I found that demo more helpful than variations in Russian or Korean because my American ear could immediately recognize clear differences and I could immediately start experimenting with how it felt (plus it gives great new voices to use when reading to kids). The only thing close to this anywhere I've seen was a Luca Lampierello video from ages ago on prosody and the importance of practicing entire phrases and sentences to acquire the phrasing, tonality, and influence of adjacent sounds on each other.
After seeing your accent formation video years ago, I became conscious of this and kept it in mind a bit when studying Spanish though in hindsight I didn't make it a focal point of learning as I should have. Lacking technical jargon, I came to think of it as my "default mouth position" or "rest position". Subjectively speaking, I found it helpful to find the position and "tension" that my mouth (and other organs) relaxed to as I'd finish speaking a sentence or the position I'd start from when I started tensing my mouth to speak. Today's video added the idea of an axis of energy or motion which seems a nice description of the general movement toward and from the rest position which I'd not thought much about. I found that my Spanish rest position was definitely different from my English rest position. I found that Spanish sounding vowels and consonants felt natural to use in this position. I also found that developing this position enabled me to do "harder" sounds like the rolled R fairly easily. Indeed, I'd given up on the RR's all together and accidentally found I could easily do them after I was using a more Spanish like rest position and had exercised my mouth in that position for perhaps 2 to 3 weeks. FWIW, I do most of my focused pronunciation practice with a lot of looping of phrases of audio using Audacity. I found the first couple weeks of Assimil Spanish audio to be helpful at the beginning because of the slow and clear pronunciation. Being an experienced musician, I found that this repeated practice with looped phrases and sentences was enough feedback to adjust my rest position to something more Spanish like than English. My sense from a few native speakers is that they are pleasantly surprised by my accent compared to most Americans (who are likely using their default English pronunciation positions).
Having done this once with Spanish, I think I will do better the next time I work on pronunciation of a new language since I have a much better idea of what it feels like to slowly adjust a rest position and movement axis (or axes) with listening feedback. I'd tentatively plan to initially focus more on finding a rest position that gives better vowels since vowels are easier to produce and can be slowed down more easily than many consonants and it would probably be the easiest first step in the right direction.
Bottom line is that your introduction of this concept has put me into a much better position to learn pronunciation in the future. Instead of focusing all my effort on an IPA-like devotion to mastering particular sounds, most of my effort will be focused on finding a more native-like rest position that sets me up for success on making the "hard" sounds. Don't underestimate the importance of this discovery (observation?). I think it could lay a foundation for better methods for gaining better pronunciation skills. Right now, my sense is that having a more natural rest position and axis of motion (or whatever terms are best here) is a necessity for more natural speaking, and that this is best approached consciously rather than the more typical modern approach of working on one sound at a time as a variation from a similar sound in one's native language.
Thank you so much for your detailed comment. I am very glad that this notion has been helpful to you. Your musician's take on it is most interesting!
@@ProfASAr One other thing I'd forgotten about and just remembered. While I'm getting older and my hearing is not what it used to be, it is still probably above average (as I've tended to protect it against loud music and other such things). Years ago, I was visiting a company that made ultrasonic welders (20 KHz and 40 KHz). When they demoed the 20KHz model, I heard a loud horrible screeching something like fingernails on a chalkboard. As I recall, I did a combination of grimace, loud groan, and covered my ears. My colleagues wondered what was up. One of the guys working at the company said that every once in a while, there would be someone who had a similar reaction but that it was fairly rare. Most people couldn't hear anything associated with the welder operation.
Very helpful, clear and practical.
Glad it was helpful!
I remember that the book by Robert A. Hall, Jr. that you discussed late last year had some interesting discussion of these issues.
I think that in American English, vowels and most consonants are spoken near the back of the mouth. This includes the American R and the velar L. Even with F and V, much of the articulation is near the back of the mouth. Sounds that other languages make with the tip of the tongue behind the front teeth, such as d and t, are generally made in American English with the tongue near the alveolar ridge. The lack of rounded lip vowels may be a reason that native English speakers have difficultly hearing the difference between sounds like the French u and ou sounds.
I have known people for whom making the sounds in foreign languages is effortless. There are people who have never studied a language but are able to say words in that language with what to me sounds like almost perfect pronunciation. Unfortunately, in my own case, even after studying a language for many years, my pronunciation is probably still worse than your right hand raised pronunciation.
I did add some notions of this kind when going over Hall's book, and so now I have given it this more thorough treatment. You say your pronunciation is even worse than my right hand's? Well then, you have the most to gain from experimenting with this to find a different point of articulation. Go for it!
We can observe these different loci of articulation even between different regional accents of English. If you try to imitate different accents, you'll feel that locus moving around your mouth. For instance, a Minnesota accent feels like it's pronounced with a tighter mouth while a Southern England accent feels more open and toward the back of the mouth.
Absolutely. Dialect & acting coaches know this and teach it, but for some reason it hasn't made its way into academic phonetics.
Phonetic awareness is a helpful skill - I think this is the idea behind learning the IPA (International Phoenetic Alphabet). Glossika provides the IPA for each sentence in its program, for example. Probably would be helpful, though, I must admit, I have never taken the time to learn it. Good in theory though.
Why not take the time?
@@ProfASAr It is on my to-do list. Would love to hear from others if it has been helpful. Intriguing.
Haha I currently try to build a standard american english accent. I’ve never heard about that base of articulation, but it sounds logical. Thanks again for another interesting and useful video! :)
You are most welcome. I hope it was helpful to you.
Thank you for commenting
I suggest finding an actor whose voice/speech pattern you like and practicing imitating them.
Jep definitely helpful! I found shadowing useful for that.
There are alot of challenges about languages so that it's difficult to learn new language but it's most to travel own countries by that language
Thanks for commenting.
That cat is enormous.
He is pretty big, in point of fact, but the camera angle is making him look ever larger.
16:00 I have heard this before and I understand it, but I disagree. I was raised a monolingual Dutch-speaker in the Netherlands, never lived abroad and learned my more or less 10 foreign languages mostly through reading literature and listening to podcasts (barely doing any speaking) until last year I moved to Italy to study at an international university in Italian and English. When I speak English, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Swedish and German people usually think I am a native speaker. I think it is to a large extent a natural talent, people have said the same about my Arabic, Russian or Danish, in which I am still a beginner, and I am fairly good at copying regional accents or the sounds of languages I never studied. I find being taken for a native a lot more satisfying. I am usually quite embarrassed when people notice my foreign accent and I feel an outsider, whereas when people don’t notice your accent they treat you like one of them and you don’t have to explain once again how you learned the language in question (and what Assimil is).
Thank you for sharing your perspective and your experience. It does sound as if you have an extremely high degree of natural talent in this regard. Are you musically gifted as well?
@@ProfASAr I play guitar since the age of 9, I think I have some talent but not an awful lot.
I just tried observing this "focal point" with several of my languages (English, Japanese, Polish and German) and it does seem like there's a slight difference in my perception of the tongue, but it's really hard to describe and quantify. I guess I'll try to pay attention to it some more.
Also I did check out Acting with an Accent, for Texan and Scottish, and I found that it either put to words things that I already knew about these accents from observation and learning about their phonetics (though sometimes it mentioned things that I already did intuitively but never noticed them), or it used very nebulous terminology that didn't make sense to me even with the audio. So it might be good for a beginner, a person setting out to learn a new accent, but not when one already knows that accent.
Also I totally agree about shooting as close as possible to sounding like a native - it's good enough to be competent, but getting every single nitty-gritty detail down just takes far too much time.
Thanks, as always, for your substantive comments, Yan, that make reading through this section valuable for anyone who finds my videos of interest.
@@ProfASAr You flatter me so, Professor! Always glad to be of assistance!
@@nextstepelt5170 Fascinating! Strange how that works out for you and how the point of resonance is in front of the mouth…. I guess I’m also in the camp of being able to replicate things but not necessarily getting how exactly I’m doing it. Voices are so strange…
I wrote a comment asking about your opinion on the "Accent addition" method of Dr. Olle Kjellin, was it removed by mistake?
I did not see that other comment - UA-cam mysteriously blocks or removes some of them - and I am sorry, but I have never heard of Dr. Kjellin or his method. What can you tell us?
Maybe because I shared a link. Write in Google: "Accent addition" by Olle Kjellin. He wrote many academic papers, however there's a short nice summary in Reddit. You will see it in Google results.
Profesor Alexander, una pregunta ¿Cuántos idiomas habla el gatito? Saludos desde Argentina!!! 🤩
Si yo hablo un idioma, él habla ese idioma: solo tenemos un cerebro que compartimos entre los dos.
@@ProfASAr 😹😹❤️
Came for the language tip, stayed for the gorgeous chonky kitty.
Then you should enjoy this: ua-cam.com/video/vI3eoYg3hXU/v-deo.html
Your video is very helpful and insightful. I also wanted to tell you how much I love your cute, furry cohost. Do you also speak Cat? 😂 Seeing your sweet kitty just made my day 😍 🐈⬛
Yes I do!
In Russian almost the same strong American accent with wrong pronunciation but understandable for most people
Thanks for commenting. I know my Russian pronunciation is not good, but I have worked on it, and as you note, when I have spent time in Russia, I haven't had trouble communicating with people because of it.
Very informative! Is there any place where we could find hints about that "base energy point" in the mouth for different languages? I totally get the point - I can feel in my mouth how the base point is different when I speak German trying to pronounce the words correctly. It changes when I speak Spanish and it's different for Polish
As I said in the video, I have never seen or heard this written about or discussed when other aspects of phonetics are treated. The only person who works with this (and works very well) is an actor named David Allen Stern who has a whole series of courses for training in various accents called "Acting with an Accent." I highly recommend these!
@@ProfASAr thanks for the recommendation. I’ll check it out! :)
السلام عليكم. لاحظت انك تمتلك قط اضخم بكثير عن باقي القطط. هل هو كذلك. ام فقط الكمرا تظهره بهذه الطريقة؟
إنه كبير ، لكن زاوية الكاميرا تجعله أكبر
I'm confused. When you say, "with my right hand up", you are holding your left hand up. Or is your screen reversed like in a mirror?
Must be.
@@ProfASAr All right, it's your right hand then. Thank you.
Great video! Very well described. A guy named Chris Aruffo did a fantastic Ted-X talk where he talks about these "articulatory settings". I strongly recommend it in addition to this video!
ua-cam.com/video/TDxFrwkiHIw/v-deo.html
It's like each language has a set of phonemes and the individuals who speak that language find a kind of "average" point of focus from where all of the phonemes of that language are easiest to access. Like, if your vocal apparatus is always primed and ready to hit a guttural French "r", that's going to affect how all of the other sounds are articulated, even common ones like "D" or "K".
Thank you for sharing this. I am glad to hear of someone else who is on to this, and I am not surprised to learn that he is studying dialects and accents. When I discuss this topic, I give credit to David Alan Stern and other accent and dialect coaches - they know about it - but it has not made its way into general phonetics.
P.S. It is sadly telling to see how few views this video has after 10 years, particularly compared to other Ted-X talks.
@@ProfASAr Agreed! He has also done a lot of research and work into ear training for musicians, notably with development of absolute pitch.
@@ProfASAr You're actually the only person besides him that I've ever seen touch on the subject as it applies to dialects and language learning. I'm surprised with how big the language learning community is on youtube that it doesn't get more attention.
My friend, forgive my observation. You said مثل هذا. It literally means, like this. The word you meant to use is هكذا.
شكرًا لك. بمساعدتكم ، ربما في يوم من الأيام سأحقق الكمال
كيف يمكن لقطك ان يكون هادئ بهذا الشكل! .... اريد تعليم ذلك لقطتي :)💔
يسعدني أن أسمع أن مقاطع الفيديو الخاصة بنا تمثل سلوكا جيدا للقطط
@@ProfASAr
سأري قطتي الفيديو ، ربما سيصبح قطك مثالاً يحتذى به بالسلوك الجيد .
@@lamees_er آمل ذلك ، وهنا فيديو تدريبي مدته 15 دقيقة لقطتك ua-cam.com/video/vI3eoYg3hXU/v-deo.html
@@ProfASAr
نعم لقد رأيته بالفعل ، ساحرص على مشاهدة ذلك معها .
C a t
Have you seen this? ua-cam.com/video/vI3eoYg3hXU/v-deo.html
1s comment brother
Thanks for this. I hope you watched it and learned something of value...
cat
Have you seen his full feature? ua-cam.com/video/vI3eoYg3hXU/v-deo.html