English Phonetics Diary (1)
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| source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXyWwirLfcg |
To start with my self study about English phonetics, I’ve chosen a topic close to my heart - accents in movies. I’ve seen two videos with dialect coach Erik Singer about actors doing accents from all over the world: Movie Accent Expert Breaks Down 32 Actors' Accents and Movie Accent Expert Breaks Down 28 More Actors' Accents.
I think it’s very important to explore this area, because of the impact television and movies have on our knowledge about the language. Both we, as teachers, and our students draw inspiration from those sources. The difference between those two groups is the awareness - children and teenagers have less tools and less critical views. Therefore, they can try to imitate an accent heard in a movie. Sometimes, it’s quite close to the original, while the other times it can be simply misleading. For that reason, I think it’s rather useful to be aware of the fact that, similarly to songs, movies and series aren’t always the best source to gain knowledge about the language.
Erik Singer shows bits of well-known actors doing various accents - from outside the United States, different European accents and some from Asia. He evaluates these performances, while also noticing some specific sounds or rhythm patterns in different accents. Throughout those videos, Erik Singer mentions a few terms connected with sounds:
I think it’s very important to explore this area, because of the impact television and movies have on our knowledge about the language. Both we, as teachers, and our students draw inspiration from those sources. The difference between those two groups is the awareness - children and teenagers have less tools and less critical views. Therefore, they can try to imitate an accent heard in a movie. Sometimes, it’s quite close to the original, while the other times it can be simply misleading. For that reason, I think it’s rather useful to be aware of the fact that, similarly to songs, movies and series aren’t always the best source to gain knowledge about the language.
Erik Singer shows bits of well-known actors doing various accents - from outside the United States, different European accents and some from Asia. He evaluates these performances, while also noticing some specific sounds or rhythm patterns in different accents. Throughout those videos, Erik Singer mentions a few terms connected with sounds:
- retroflexion (common for South Asian and Texas accents)
- voiced implosives (e.g. in Vietnamese)
- the pin-pen merger (words like pen, hem sound like pin, him)
- the differences between the rhythm of accents - e.g. American ones are more vowel-centric than British
Overally, I enjoyed these sources. I found these videos especially helpful and the way in which he explained new terms was very depictive and clear. I consider myself very lucky to have the opportunity to talk to students from all over the world. While theoretical knowledge is useful, it works best when I can compare it with what I hear while talking to my peers.
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