Nika English Lessons: изучаем английский на пляже

English accent?

       Once I was lying on the beach somewhere in the South of England with closed eyes but wide open ears. I was trying to make out accents of the English language. I was enjoying myself in a place popular among the tourists from all over the world. A cloister of accents and dialects. I had a very good teacher- an intelligent native speaker from Dorset,a friend of mine. He taught me how to catch the differences between Australian, Canadian, London, American etc accents. It was a big job, you know. I was confused a lot. Which accent to pick up and practice afterwords?
     Eventually I understood the most important:
1) first get rid of the strong Russian accent
2) then develop clarity, pace and volume.
     Clarity? What is it? Have u ever found yourselves in the situation when you talk and see that people can’t catch your words? No clarity! Clarity involves pronunciation of sounds, intonation, rhythm and flowing (connected) speech.
    How to work it out? Modeling a native speaker. But a logic question comes out: a native speaker with what accent? Do you know that there are over 30 different English accents in England alone? And that's not all. Would you believe there are over a hundred different English dialects across the world?
    Well, here are the very helpful links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P-Bk-Sm9dY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I-vqGntcw8
This guy “Papa Teach me” and this lovely Jade speak English you should imitate:).

    Being clear is the most important thing.
    I should say “Be ready to work a lot!”
    Beckham (a famous English footballer) started talking posh RP accent.   He worked hard with a super private teacher to develop a posh-RP accent (accent of apparently, just 3%, but they tend to be people in positions of power, authority, responsibility). Why do people change the way they speak? Historically received pronunciation(RP accent) signified a higher social class than a local accent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pts9YBJlxdI

     A parable.
     Finally i’d like to tell you a little episode. This spring I had to spend a month in London traveling a lot every day. I needed to ask the way where to go. Once a very nice middle-aged lady showed me the way somewhere and I had a small talk with her.   She has been living in London since her birth. And silly me, I exclaimed “You must be a cockney!” Oh, I could see that I hurt her feelings. “No, don’t you hear that i’m speeking like a person with a degree!”:)
Mind your accent!:)

Вы заговорите на английском! Practice makes perfect!