How to distinguish between different English accents?

[Daemon99]

[Prezbucky]

Nina, dahling:

To do the American R, curl your tongue so that the sides of your tongue are touching the gums just inside of your back/side teeth. (molars and pre-molars). Then just breathe the "errrr" sound, and you should have it.

Laboratory = LAB-ra-tory

... We omit the first O, more or less
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[NinaZara]

And I suppose the the tip of the tongue touches the palate? Right,Tommy?

[Jamie (K)]

[NinaZara]

You're right, it doesn't, in the middle, but somehow, in the end, it ended at the back of my front teeth. Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong.

[Jamie (K)]

You're supposed to curl it back behind your alveolar ridge, which is that "ledge" right behind your teeth.

This website will show you a diagram of where your tongue should be:

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/

[NinaZara]

It's there, but the tip touches it when I say somehting in the past form, like "curled"

Great site, thanks!

[Prezbucky]

this is an interesting discussion

nina, it sounds like you need to do tongue-tip curling exercises so that you can hold the curled tip of your tongue under, but not on (not touching), the alveolar ridge (as described by jamie). YOU CAN DO IT!

hehe
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[NinaZara]

Tom, you made it sound like it can be done in the gym.

And thanks for the kind words, I'm sure somehow I'd manage. Thing is, on days when I spend too much time on English, my friends started asking why I sound like "gaijin" (foreigners, aliens). It's hard, juggling between languages. It's frustrating too, sometimes, but I try focussing on the fun side of it.

[NinaZara]

After mustering all the courage I had, I decided to post my recording here. I just registered with Kantalk (I did this because I am just so free today), and I see a lot of people do this.

Maybe you can tell my Malay accent?

http://www.kantalk.com/Recording/Play/ID/4551

Oh, BTW, I am not sure whether I said "snack" correctly.

[Jamie (K)]

Nina, you sound like you've made real progress with those R's. Most of them sound good.

[NinaZara]

Really? Isn't there anything that doesn't sound right? I still cannot enunciate the R's in "her brother".

[Jamie (K)]

[NinaZara]

Oh, I see. I thought three syllables was correct. I just checked the pronunciation on Dictionary.com. Fewh, I'm so glad you told me!

[Zarghuna]

WoW!
The discussion seems very, what should we say? Life Changing? like those reality shows where you learn to cook one simple dish and it is a 'fruitfully life-changing' experience for you, which, by the way always ends in tears and the whole family embraced in a crushing hug by "the one" !!
So, Nina, how do you feel now that you've learned to actually pronounce those Rs more acurately? (though acurately is not right since there's no one correct way)

A teacher of mine once told me that we aren't dependent on the language but the other way around, since language is a tool for communication, everybody has the right to choose his favourite tool! I disagree though.