doomwar
Member
Where's my hair?
Posts: 98
I Am A(n): Aspiring Voice Actor
Pronouns: he/him
|
Post by doomwar on Apr 14, 2017 10:28:45 GMT -8
Since there's going to be questions from amateurs and pros about learning accents and the like, let's try to put every question in this thread just so we won't overrun the board with said questions.
1) The most basic thing to do when learning accents is listen to the speaker of the accent and reading an IPA chart of said accent just so to reduce a number of mix-ups in your accents, which consonant you have to learn (like the Spanish trilled R, the English and Scottish dropped T, or even the American, Australian and Kiwi flapped T), and the general area of where your tongue is supposed to be in when pronouncing certain vowels.
2) All accents can be used with any Standard English dialect, but the same can't be said for General accents with regional dialects. Take this in mind as you'll be working with a script that's usually in a Standard dialect that's different from what you're used to, especially if you're doing a voice-over for international markets.
3) If you're attempting to speak in an accent that have multiple variations (what accent doesn't?), stick with the variant that you're comfortable with. Mastering all variations of an accent can be time-consuming so it's not worth it. And besides, who got time to master 200+ million variations of General American and General Canadian? (GAm got the lion's share in this case)
4) If you're currently living in a country that don't usually have shows that teach English or have characters who are bilingual, please don't assume that all English-based accents sound the same, that'll cause flame wars. (Hong Kong is a good example for this, since the Cantonese-speaking TV stations cast random English speaking actors in different roles like casting an Australian to portray a ghost of an American soldier who fought in Vietnam with an Aussie accent instead of an American one or casting a Canadian as an English nun with a North American accent)
5) If you're wondering what is the easiest accent to pull off, it actually depends on what accent you're currently speaking with. In my case, I speak in a Boston accent, but I can also speak in General American so the easiest accent for me to speak in is either General Canadian, which is actually pretty similar to General American in sound, with some differences (like the ow-raising - which for some reason to some Americans sound like 'oo' in boot - and a split on rather or not the 'o' sound in 'hot pot' should be rounded but now includes words like 'father') or an Estuary accent as the Boston accent's original evolution historically is based on interactions between Eastern New England and the UK (That's why said accents are non-rhotic, why we don't normally rhyme 'father' with 'bother', and why our 'short a's' don't usually sound long -thus, no actual American 'twang' so to speak, save for a few accents)
That's all I have for advice, so if you have any other useful advice in pulling off accents, post them here.
|
|
doomwar
Member
Where's my hair?
Posts: 98
I Am A(n): Aspiring Voice Actor
Pronouns: he/him
|
Post by doomwar on Apr 30, 2017 10:57:21 GMT -8
There's also one more piece of advice to this thread.
6) As languages change overtime, so do accents. Do try to keep your accents updated by listening to speakers within a decade or two, sometimes their accents are no longer the same the last time you heard them.
|
|
doomwar
Member
Where's my hair?
Posts: 98
I Am A(n): Aspiring Voice Actor
Pronouns: he/him
|
Post by doomwar on May 14, 2017 10:26:17 GMT -8
If you're wondering how many variations of RP and Estuary accents are there, I've calculated the vowel-based variations of RP and came up with 700+ so it's pretty hard to do a convincing RP, meanwhile Estuary accents, based on the combination of vowels and 'dark Ls,' ranged to 150+ million (and counting) so you got a much better luck doing an Estuary accent than doing RP. However, the Aussie and Kiwi accents are much harder, since they only have 16 and 8 vowel-based variations respectively.
|
|
doomwar
Member
Where's my hair?
Posts: 98
I Am A(n): Aspiring Voice Actor
Pronouns: he/him
|
Post by doomwar on May 30, 2017 11:00:06 GMT -8
Can anyone of our UK members (before it officially disbands) tell me what the heck is 'General British'?
I know that the term 'American Twang' most likely refers to how we Americans elongate our 'short A's' - aka /æ/tensing in linguistics. (Which is completely optional when speaking in a New England accent and mostly optional in General American and accents related to General Canadian with the twang being restricted to words like 'marry, merry and Mary'.)
|
|
The Uncertain Man
Member
Looking for some gentle feedback on how to improve my demo.
Posts: 164
|
Post by The Uncertain Man on May 30, 2017 23:31:40 GMT -8
It'll probably just be Received Pronunciation.
|
|
doomwar
Member
Where's my hair?
Posts: 98
I Am A(n): Aspiring Voice Actor
Pronouns: he/him
|
Post by doomwar on Jun 4, 2017 19:56:32 GMT -8
That sounds disappointing, I was expecting an unholy fusion of Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English accents. In retrospect, no one in their right mind would go for that.
For those of you wondering what the 'Transatlantic' or 'Mid-Atlantic' accent (Not to be mistaken for the actual regional accent group) is, it is an artificial accent created back during early 1900's as a way for non-New England/non-Southern upper class Americans to talk in an RP-like accent similar to the RP used by members of the English upper class. Nowadays, it's an accent that's commonly used in movies and cartoons for posh American characters, historical figures and evil Americans (like the Joker), and it's also the most conservative accent as it didn't last long as a General accent after the World Wars, being replaced by GAm, a former regional accent. It's also the name for the accent that's usually heard when non-American musicians were singing, but I heard that in the UK the non-musicians don't like that.....
Anyway, if you want to attempt the Mid-Atlantic accent, go study the IPA chart in Wikipedia's Mid-Atlantic accent page. However, it's possible to do a Mid-Atlantic accent with modern English vowels but you have to do some experimentation and see how it goes. So give it a try, you might like it or not.
|
|
doomwar
Member
Where's my hair?
Posts: 98
I Am A(n): Aspiring Voice Actor
Pronouns: he/him
|
Post by doomwar on Jun 11, 2017 10:36:11 GMT -8
For any Canadians and/or New Englanders (especially those who have 'cot, caught, and court' as homonyms and using the round version of the vowel used in them) who have trouble pronouncing words like 'sorry' while trying to do a General American-style accent, instead of raising the tip of your tongue when pronouncing the O in said word, try raising or roll the sides of your tongue instead. Sure, this would make the quality of the O similar to an Londoner's, and forcing you to pronounce the R as a separate sound, at least this will prevent the word from sounding like 'sore-ry' to most Americans.
|
|
|
Post by mr on Jun 16, 2017 20:21:37 GMT -8
Not sure if it's appropriate or not, but there's a book that's more geared toward stage acting that can be used as a good baseline for several accents that one can use to give a floor from which to learn more modern or regional variations on. Stage Dialects by Jerry Blunt, make sure to get the one with the CD if you can find it.
It was a resource we used in my "Voice, Diction, and Dialect" class last semester (not the actual course material, the professor photocopied sections of the book and gave us MP3 files of the associated audio). Dialects that I can remember include Cockney, Brooklyn, Standard English, American Southern, Irish, Scottish, and French. I believe Russian and Japanese were mentioned somewhere but they weren't available for us to use because the prof wasn't proficient in those dialects. A decent knowledge of IPA helps a great deal.
|
|
doomwar
Member
Where's my hair?
Posts: 98
I Am A(n): Aspiring Voice Actor
Pronouns: he/him
|
Post by doomwar on Jun 17, 2017 8:43:24 GMT -8
You have to remember that accents (and languages) change over time, and printed materials don't. I mean you can still use the books if you need to do an accent and dialect from a specific era (especially with older books if you're attempting an extinct accent), but it gets annoying when you're trying to reverting back to your regular accent and dialect after a long recording session though.
Also you have to take in the fact that there's no one Standard English, as no one had agreed on which English should be used as the basis of an international/neutral dialect.
|
|
|
Post by Rebekah Amber Clark on Jun 17, 2017 9:23:10 GMT -8
There's no one right way to learn an accent. I learn strictly by ear, listening to the native speakers. I'm very audio/visual rather than a text-learner, so things like IPA charts are next to useless for my learning style. I think it's very important to take your learning style into account.
(And keep in mind that an online resource published in a given year is just as old as a printed material published that same year. I think there's too much of a tendency in this day and age to see ALL printed material as outdated, but it's my understanding that more books are published in print every day than a single human could read in a lifetime.)
|
|
doomwar
Member
Where's my hair?
Posts: 98
I Am A(n): Aspiring Voice Actor
Pronouns: he/him
|
Post by doomwar on Jun 28, 2017 10:59:59 GMT -8
I usually learn by text and audio, but only use visual in order to tell how round or unround my lips are supposed to be when it comes to vowels or how certain consonants should be formed. (Like the Japanese tapped L/R, or an S/Z-sounding L of Taishanese (which I sometimes speak in when I'm with family) and Mongolian, respectively)
Anyway, is it okay if my GAm have some regional variation? (like having father and bother not rhyming at all, a more open short A sound, centralized vowels and a complete lack of AE-tensing - as in 'marry, merry and Mary' are not homonyms at all)
|
|
doomwar
Member
Where's my hair?
Posts: 98
I Am A(n): Aspiring Voice Actor
Pronouns: he/him
|
Post by doomwar on Sept 25, 2017 10:59:37 GMT -8
I know I'm reviving a dead (sorta) thread but there's something bothering me and it's whether if I should glottalize (or drop) my T's when there's an S involved. (If you haven't figured it out already, this is an Estuary accent question) I know that I have to pronounce my T's when it's in words like 'street' and 'still' but what about in words like 'first' and 'thirst', I just don't know if they should be pronounced as 'firs' and thirs' or 'first' and 'thirst'?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2017 8:35:38 GMT -8
I don't claim to be an expert on accents in any way since I have no formal accent training, but I have managed to teach myself a few accents, among them Australian and Southern, and the most useful piece of advice I can give to someone who wants to broaden their accent work is to zero in on the specific core sounds of individual accents.
What does this mean? It means that every accent pronounces certain syllables, consonants, and syllable-consonant combinations in a certain way, and learning how to memorize these combinations is half the work when it comes to learning this kind of thing.
For example, in the Australian accent, the syllable "i" is typically pronounced "oi" as in "loike" instead of "like" and being able to remember that rule helps you pronounce that part of almost any Australian word that utilizes that letter, although there are always exceptions.
The other most useful piece of advice I'd recommend, and this costs no money, is listening to native speakers of a particular accent on YouTube over and over again, because that's how I learned to do all of the accents I do, and if it worked for me, it can work for you.
|
|
doomwar
Member
Where's my hair?
Posts: 98
I Am A(n): Aspiring Voice Actor
Pronouns: he/him
|
Post by doomwar on Jan 22, 2018 18:57:45 GMT -8
For American and Canadian VAs: When learning to speak in various accents, you'll notice that there are long vowels that don't involve moving your tongue, like the 'long a' in 'father' and 'palm'. The best way to reproduce the sound is by saying 'father' but replace the 'a' sound with a different vowel sound you're trying to reproduce and remember how the vowel sounds like, then try to reproduce it by itself.
|
|
doomwar
Member
Where's my hair?
Posts: 98
I Am A(n): Aspiring Voice Actor
Pronouns: he/him
|
Post by doomwar on Mar 19, 2018 19:47:39 GMT -8
For non-North American VAs: When learning to speak in a North American accent, you'll notice we sometimes pronounce the 'short a' sound differently in various words especially ones with the 'n' sound in either in the middle or end of the word. Of course, not everyone uses this particular sound very often as it's used differently in various accents, in a Bostonian's case, it's used primarily (and optionally) as an alternative for the 'long a'. If you're wondering what it sounds like, it sounds like the 'a' sound in Mary.
|
|