Getting Rid of American Accent

[cal2u]

Hi everyone!

 

I've been learning Chinese for about three years. I took two years of class online in high school, and I started taking Chinese again last Spring at my university. The past six weeks I had the opportunity to go to Chengdu for a brief language program and I really enjoyed it there, but it highlighted the fact that I really hate sounding like a foreigner when I speak Chinese. 

 

While I was there, my Chinese teacher put me in contact with a graduate student studying broadcasting, and for the first time I had someone really sit down with me and work on my pronunciation with a phonetics textbook. She was fantastic, but I didn't have a lot of time to work with her.

 

When I listen to recordings of myself, I sound glaringly American, but I'm not sure how to correct myself. I make mistakes with tones sometimes, but I don't think that's my main problem. Do you guys have any recommendations? Do I just need to find someone else who can tutor me? It looked like there are some phonetics textbooks on Amazon.cn that I might try, but I'd appreciate any advice you guys could give.

 

Just for reference, I've attached a really short clip of me speaking a sentence I was practicing on Cerego and trying to make less American-sounding: 生命的价值是什么? shengming de jiazhi shi shenme? Again, any feedback, but especially critical feedback is really appreciated!

me.wav

[889]

Based on that brief clip alone, I don't hear anything that screams you're American.

 

Looking for a voice tutor, you need to find someone you can mimic and enjoy mimicing. Speaking together should have the quality of a harmonious duet. It's a question of matching voice quality -- characteristics such as pitch and range -- but also personality: your voice says a lot about you. If I hear anything distinctive in that clip, it's that your voice sounds a bit soft, and maybe that's the influence of a female tutor.

[cal2u]

Hmm, maybe I don't sound super American, but I don't think I sound Chinese. I think your advice about trying to find someone to match voices with is important, though. I'll definitely keep that in mind.

 

I know that the sample I posted is really small, but I didn't know if it was appropriate to have a thread focused on asking people to listen to me speak and critique my pronunciation.

[889]

There's another thread here specifically for that.

 

In any event, of course your voice doesn't sound like a native speaker's. How many non-native English speakers do you know who speak with a native accent, speaking in particular of those who started studying English after they were 16 or so. Nobody would ever mistake Henry Kissinger for a native American, and he's been in the U.S. since 1938.

[cal2u]

Gotcha, didn't see the subthread. Thanks for the pointer

[Publius]

Hi, cal2u. You should put a little more stress on 命. It's a little bit too weak, not enunciated as clearly as the rest of the sentence. Other than that, I don't hear anything wrong or foreign.

Hmm, probably it's the different stress pattern that makes your speech sound American,  but one cannot be sure without hearing more.

[Demonic_Duck]

Yeah, you're pronouncing 命 as something more like neutral tone. You also sound a little nasal, which may be why you're perceiving that you sound "American".

[889]

I also have to ask, rhetorically perhaps, whether that's a model sentence you ran through 100 times first, or whether it's a reading that's fully characteristic of your Chinese conversational speech. That is, perhaps your everyday voice is quite different.

[roddy]

I don't think you have a particularly America accent, and I suspect it's the more usual case of inaccuracy in pronunciation. The 值 sounds more like a ch- sound to me, for example. Get the best feedback you can and make slow and steady improvements. 

 

"my Chinese teacher put me in contact with a graduate student studying broadcasting, and for the first time I had someone really sit down with me and work on my pronunciation with a phonetics textbook. She was fantastic, but I didn't have a lot of time to work with her."

People like that are golddust and as they're outside of the usual Chinese teaching circles can be very difficult to find. My one was a lecturer at a college of education who prepared village girls for the Putonghua exam so they could be elementary school teachers. 

[Guest realmayo]

The typical English-speaker (maybe other European languages too) speaks too much from the back of the mouth than the front of it. I can't explain it any better than that; it's how lotso f native speakers including several teachers have described it. I suffer from it and don't like it but when I make too much effort to correct it and end up overcompensating I end up sounding like the eunuchs do in Chinese TV series. So for that reason alone I'm unwilling to offer any advice except to suggest sometimes putting effort into tightening up the lips and/or cheeks when producing certain sounds.

[Flickserve]

The typical English-speaker (maybe other European languages too) speaks too much from the back of the mouth than the front of it. I can't explain it any better than that; it's how lotso f native speakers including several teachers have described it. I suffer from it and don't like it but when I make too much effort to correct it and end up overcompensating I end up sounding like the eunuchs do in Chinese TV series. So for that reason alone I'm unwilling to offer any advice except to suggest sometimes putting effort into tightening up the lips and/or cheeks when producing certain sounds.

I shall try this tip.

[cal2u]

image.mp3

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I meant to reply earlier in the week, but I've finally gotten around to it. I've attached the recording of the native speaker I tried to copy.

 

@899 I know that most people still have an accent when they're learning a new language later on in life, but that doesn't necessarily mean that its impossible. At least for now I have the motivation to try getting rid of it. I did practice that sentence before posting it. I was trying to copy the "feel" of a recording I have, but it never sounded quite right. 

 

@Publius I probably should have posted the recording I was listening to. I thought his 命 sounded weak too, but I probably made mine weaker than his. I should probably make a longer recording and then post it in the other thread. 

 

@roddy, Thanks for picking up on the zh/ch issue! I've been told that before, and I think it usually it gets better if I slow down when I'm saying "zh." Do you know if this is a common problem? The lady I worked with actually does similar work! She helps Sichuan girls who want to become flight attendants speak better Putonghua.

 

@realmayo I think this might be my problem too. I know my teacher said that when she says 去, for example, the muscles underneath her bottom lip are tense, but I'm not sure which other sounds are like this. I guess I just have to experiment and really focus on watching native speakers' mouths.

[BozHogan]

I was engaged to an Iranian woman that came to the US when she was 18. Her pronounciation was almost perfect. So "almost" is pretty plausible. Well, maybe not for Chinese.....(???)

You sounded pretty good to me. I would have guessed that you were a very soft-spoken Chinese person. However, that is coming from a novice who just got back from five months in Chongqing. I didn't make an effort to learn any more of the language than I had to, but I was almost exclusively with non-English speakers so I have done a LOT of listening.

I think it's great that you are working on your pronounciation early. I'm going to do the same before I start drilling the wrong pronounciation and have to unlearn it.

Also, I'd give some thought to what kind of accent you want to have. I noticed a few things in Chongqing. Sometimes they pronounce the Pinyin X and SH as S, so that Shanghai sounds like Sanghai. In fact they don't even know they are doing it, and don't appear to be able to hear the difference. Also their N's can often sound like L's (only at the beginning of a syllable), so Nanjing sounds like Lanjing. Until I realized this was happening, it lead to some very confusing moments. Chengdu isn't too far from Chongqing. Did you notice anything similar? I think there was a lot going on with the vowels too, but I'm too new to have distinguished exactly what.

For me, I think I'm going to try for a universal national television style accent. Would that be different from Beijing, I wonder? Because I'm not focused on any one particular city (yet) and I'm going to have to do a lot of public speaking all over the country. That's probably the accent that most people will have heard a lot of.

[cal2u]

Oh, yes. I think the accents in Chengdu and Chongqing are going to be pretty similar. A lot of the time there's no difference between n/l, zh->z, ch->c because they don't have a retroflex for those consonants. I forgot the Chinese word for that though. I also know that sometimes I have trouble hearing the difference between n and ng, but that's probably just a problem with my listening comprehension.

As for a goal accent, I'd like to speak pretty standard, although sometimes I try to make my accent stick out less by not having as strong of a retroflex for example

[889]

No reason you can't have one voice for public speaking and another for conversation. Do you think the CCTV announcers talk like that in real life?

 

I agree that you should try to take one region's accent as your standard. It's bad if you start mixing Beijing and Sichuan sounds in the same sentences, for example: consistency is important.

 

Myself, I happen to like the Beijing voice and try to take the voice of well-educated Beijing people as my standard. But again, this depends on what fits for you.

[陳德聰]

To be honest you kind of sound like Chris Parker, and he is British. So if anything, you've gotten an accent upgrade in Chinese! (Just kidding, no offense meant to Americans...)

 

But honestly, I'd love to hear you speaking in actual sentences at a relaxed natural pace.

[stapler]

 

I really hate sounding like a foreigner when I speak Chinese.

 

I find this strange. I think I'd feel uncomfortable if I didn't sound like a foreigner! Something to do with my underlying ego/self image.

[cal2u]

 

To be honest you kind of sound like Chris Parker, and he is British. So if anything, you've gotten an accent upgrade in Chinese! (Just kidding, no offense meant to Americans...)

 

But honestly, I'd love to hear you speaking in actual sentences at a relaxed natural pace.

 

Sure! I'll make a recording tonight and post it in that other forum. (To be honest, many of us Americans think the British have cool accents too. Don't tell them I said that, though haha)

 

 

I find this strange. I think I'd feel uncomfortable if I didn't sound like a foreigner! Something to do with my underlying ego/self image.

 

I think I know what you're saying, but let me know if I'm off-base! Yeah, I shouldn't say I "hate sounding like a foreigner." That's not really how I feel. It's more that I have this idea of "native-level" Chinese that I'm trying to reach, and my accent is just one aspect that I'm trying to improve. I have a decent number of Chinese-American friends, and so I sometimes I feel weird when I get treated differently for being a foreigner, and I'm not used to that. I've definitely thought before that having a good accent would magically allow me to experience China -- maybe not as a 中国人, but at least not as a 歪果仁  It's weird, I really don't have much to complain about. As a white person in China in general people think you're attractive, if you're into nightlife maybe you can find a place that gives free drinks. At the same time, I've felt out of place before, but I think that's just something I need to get used to. Sorry for rambling; I guess I'm still not quite sure how I feel about this! 

[Flickserve]

There are always cultural differences that will make you feel like an outsider. It is the different experiences growing up that cause it.

[cal2u]

I think so. The good thing is that I don't think that they're usually insurmountable. 'm really appreciative of the Chinese friends that I have made and of fact that we've been able to become good friends in spite of whatever cultural differences we have.