Which English Accent do I have to follow?

[sureshcris]

Hi all,

This is SURESH, an Indian . I heard many native speakers of English saying Indian's English accent is severe. Yes I do understand how the native speakers find it difficult to understand our English accent . I would like to get the correction from the native speakers. Is there any standard accent to follow in US & UK? Please suggest me which accent do I have to follow?

Thanks a million
[Please forgive me if there is anything wrong in this post cuz I am a new guy and this is my first post]

[Englishuser]

Hi sureshcris,

Welcome to the forums! I must say I find Indian accents quite interesting and easy to understand. There is absolutely nothing wrong about an Indian accent. However, you feel you'd like to 'soften' your accent and get closer to a native English or American accent. It's really quite impossible for me to recommend any particular accent. An RP British accent or a General American accent would both be good models for imitation for most people, though. It is easy to gain access to audio materials featuring these accents, and they are both widely understood and carry enough prestige.

Englishuser

[sureshcris]

Great
Thanks a lot for the good opinion on Indian English accent

[prezbucky]

sureshchris

I don't know about a standard British/English accent, but in the United State it seems that maybe the least severe accents (most neutral American accents) are found in states like Ohio and Washington.

So if you meet some cool people from Ohio or Washington, make sure you get on the phone with them. hehe
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[Jamie (K)]

Suresh, there's no one Indian accent. Everything depends on the native language of the Indian. Speakers of Gujarati and Oriya have a whole different set of problems from those of speakers of Hindi and Malayalam. And the Telugu speakers have a VERY interesting set of accent problems in English.

If you aim at an American accent, the one that's considered the most "neutral" is "General American", whose native speakers live in a geographic band from northern Ohio through Michigan, northern Indiana, northern Illinois, and southern Wisconsin and Minnesota. People in other parts of the country can have a similar accent, but that part of the Midwest is the area where broadcasters from the South or the Northeast get jobs in order to "neutralize" their speech. People in the state of Washington have a distinct regional accent.

You can also imitate the standard accent of England, but be aware that if you use too aristocratic a British accent as your model, people are liable to find you comical.

Generally, English speakers don't care if people have a foreign accent, as long as their speech is clear and does not require a lot of work from the listener. So people are generally okay with nice Indian accents. The biggest problem for Indians is that they don't know ordinary colloquial language, and many of them sound like they've swallowed a dictionary. You should learn a lot of idioms, phrasal verbs, etc., if you want to communicate well.

[Alan]

Hi,

I think we've flogged this subject to death, haven't we? Who cares what accent anybody uses as long as we the listener know what the speaker is saying. Variety is the spice of life, somebody said somewhere.

A
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[Englishuser]

Hi Jamie (K),

You wrote:

[Conchita]

Yes, Alan, we've gone down that road before. Still, it's a fascinating subject and I'm holding my breath for a reply to Englishuser's (could we say 'inciting'?) last post!

[Alan]

Hi,

I think you're right, Jamie, I am being grumpy today. Two red rags are: tail chasing discussions (I sat through enough of those in my full-time job in meetings) and the other one is accents and questions about which is better. I was born with the ability to mimic and it's also a curse because I tend to copy the speech patterns of the person I'm talking to without intending to and I reckon I can get away with doing almost all British English accents. I've done it for real many times and it's worked. And anyhow what the devil is an aristocratic accent when it's at home?

Yours grumpy all day long this Saturday,

Alan
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[prezbucky]

All right, Alan, it's time for you to do a keg stand!

hehe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keg_stand
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Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Jamie (K)]

[Yankee]

.
Most Americans like British accents and also can't identify where in Britain an particular accent comes from. In fact, there are probably plenty of Americans who would mistakenly identify an Australian accent as British. However, there is a certain British sound that most Americans will identify as "highfalutin" and pompous. To a large degree we can probably "thank" TV for this perception.
.
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Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Alan]

Hi Amy,

What's TV got to do with it? Surely you can be pompous in any language and it's not the accent, it's the personality. If I want to talk 'pompous', my face changes along with it. Isn't that the point? Oh, and another thing what for crying out loud is 'do a keg stand'?

A
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[Englishuser]

Hi Jamie (K),

You said:

[Yankee]

Hi Alan

Certainly personalitly also plays a role. But why is the idea of TV hard to understand? TV has done a lot to establish the stereotype. A pompous person with a British accent is inevitably portrayed with an aristocratic British accent.

'Doing a keg stand' is not something I'm personally familiar with. Actually, I'd never even heard the term before. I guess 'keg stands' must not have been in vogue when I was in college -- it sounds like the sort of nonsense that might go on in some fraternity houses on a Saturday night. It might be best to ask for more detailed information directly from the horse's mouth: prezbucky.

So, Mr. hehe, have you personally done a keg stand?

Amy
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Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English