Azamat
What do you think about my English pronounсiation? (2)

What do you think about my English pronounсiation? This is  my spontangeous speech. Please correct my mistakes if you find some and compare my two recordings.

 

My last recording:

https://soundcloud.com/liteyshik/how-i-learn

My first recording: (This is not my spontangeous speech, I read an article.)

https://soundcloud.com/liteyshik/the-day-of-the-dead

Aug 27, 2015 3:19 PM
Comments · 7
5

1:25 – You didn’t pronounce the “d” in “friends”. You also need to emphasise the vowel in it more.
1:29 – You said “very” as “vewy”.
1:43 – You said “course” with a Russian accent. The vowel should be like the sound in “sure” or “door”.
1:53 – You said “strongly” as “strongwy”.
1:59 – You said “who” with the same vowel as in “put” or “took”. It should have the same vowel as in “you” or “suit”.
2:08 – Your pronunciation of the word “grammar” wasn’t clear. I had to relisten to this part a few times to figure out what you were saying. It didn’t help that the vowel in “learn” was off too.
2:30 – You said “talk” with the vowel in “don” rather than “dawn” (in many American accents they pronounce both sounds as “aw”, whereas you said it as a short “o”).
2:32 – Aspirate the final “p” in “app” less strongly.
3:53 – I can’t quite make out what you said here. “And I really can have it”?

August 28, 2015
4

Other random comments:
-You pronounced “o” at the ends of words like “also” and “so” with a bit of an accent. I don’t know how to describe the sound to you, but it sounds ‘off’ to my ears.
-You kept saying “learn” incorrectly, and there a few times I had to figure out what word you meant from the context. It sounded fine at 0:06 and 1:32. It was even harder with “learning” because you also kept pronouncing the “ng” as “n”.
-Are you intentionally pronouncing “ng” and the ends of words as “n”? It IS done in many accents, but it’s non-standard and I think in combination with your Russian accent it really makes the listener have to strain their ears a lot more to understand.
-I also noticed you dropped the final “t” in “want” several times. I’m guessing this was also intentional. I lot of English learners try to do this to sound more natural and it ends up coming out awkwardly, but I think you pulled it off perfectly. I would normally say not to do this, but with the way you’re doing it it DOES make you sound more natural. Just make sure you don’t do it in formal contexts!
-It wasn't too slow or fast for the type of video it was.
This probably isn’t what you were hoping to hear, but you sounded much clearer when you were more relaxed and not trying too hard to put on an accent eg. from 0:00-0:43. Don’t worry about it too much, I could understand just about the entire recording, and there were only a few times when I had to go back.


Good work, you're doing well!

August 28, 2015
4

Here's what I heard in the first recording. I'm being VERY nit-picky, so don't be disheartened by the size the list. I didn't have many problems understanding you, I'm just listing words where your accent was more obvious. I’m only commenting on pronunciation errors and ignoring grammatical ones:

0:08 – You said the vowel in “please” as “i” instead of “ee”.
0:13 – You need to put more emphasis on the final “a” in “advance”.
0:40 – The “i” in “begin” had a distinct Slavic accent.
0:47-0:50 – I don’t understand what you said from “I started…” until you said “I spent…” I’ve listened to it several times and I think might have said something like “I started at/in school…”?
0:53 – Are you saying “spent” or “spend”? It sounds like it’s in between, but it sounds more like “spent” than “spend”. If you wanted to say “spent”, aspirate the final “t” less. If you wanted to say “spend”, then the “d” needs to sound like a “d”!
1:10/1:15– The “a” in “podcast” should but the same as the “a” in “father”, not the “u” in “cut”.
1:17/1:30 – There should be no vowel between the “s” and the “f” in “useful”. The “s” should also be pronounced like an “s”, and not a “z”.
1:20/1:35 – The vowel in “love” should be the same as in “cut”. The same goes for the first vowel in “funny”.

August 28, 2015
3

I can't really notice a lot of difference between the two videos as far as pronunciation is concerned, but I can say that I understand you really well.

 

Keep doing what you're doing and you'll sound like a native in no time at all!

August 27, 2015
2

*I have been living TO

*spent about 4 hours each day LEARNING (it would be better another verb)

You have a good pronunciation!

August 27, 2015
Show more