Reprise du message précédent :
Non mais non

please?    
 
Besides, it´s not like you really will have to give it, I don´t know where you live but I bet it´s not anywhere close to most people  

Anyway (:o), update the first post, invite ppl, and I'll be recording myself

Sadly, I am not the first poster.
 
I´ll send him a PM but he might not get it in time

Anyway, here is mine
 
You have to wait 30 seconds before the link to download the file appears though.
 
let me know what you think of my somewhat husky voice.  

Now I'm jealous

Yep, you absolutely can. How is your french ? (:D)
I guess, it is as if I would read a french text

I'll upload mine as soon as I have recorded it But there is no way I could beat you and your british accent. But I plan to move to London one day

Don´t be jealous. One (cute) girl actually told me a couple of months back that she thought it would be cuter if I still had a French accent. Guess what, I was a bit gutted for a couple of days    
 
My French is all right, I still *am* French. I can´t spell anymore though. Nor can I find all the right words when I need to
A bit annoying when it´s supposed to be your bloody mother tongue.
 
London rocks. I was on top of Primrose hill this afternoon, the view was just breathtaking. I love this city.  

Sorry, I had forgotten I had posted a question on this topic

Thx to those who kindly answered

(and Kryten : you are the fag )

That always happens to me too. Pretty frustrating.
OK, I'm going to London today, will be back on Wednesday night so no recording of the terribly long sentences of Mr. Dickens before Thursday, in fact!

Girls trying to hit on you?    
 
 
Hum. Enjoy yourself in the capital. And remember what your friend the Barclays hole in the wall says to all foreign card owners:
Keep Britain Tidy.  

Egads, that blew me away. How long have you been living in London? Are you 'originally' French born & bred?

My teachers have been telling me to slow down for years. Can't get the speed right on this bit. CURSE YOU DICKENS! Curse those endless sentences of yours and that dreadfully awkward punctuation!

 
Originally French born and bred, spend a year or so there when a teenager, and have moved back a couple of years ago  

Ahhh I love the English accent so much...nice job tailindil.
It's so much classier than the American one.
 
But yeah, getting the accent is probably the hardest part in learning a language. Mine is not that bad, you can still tell that I'm french (some people are thinking sometimes that I am actually canadian).  
 
But I tried though. I swear I tried, I don't know how many times I sat in front of my computer with some conversation's sample and a microphone to work on my accent.  
 
My roommate always came to help me, but no matter how many times or how hard I tried, after every phrase, she was looking at me like "not bad, but I can still tell that you're french".  
 
And I'm still working on it, I try to improve it every day, and sometimes, it sounds right to me, really. But not to them. It's always slightly French. I just can not ear all the nuances.
 
Rhaa, in a few year maybe, two or three....or much more than that. Yeah, probably more than that. I'll never get it right anyway. God-damn accent.

It's just about taking part, not a contest of "who has the best accent"

What's so bad about the French accent?

the accent
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

yeah, I actually don't get it
I managed to get rid of all the big issues the french have with their accent (awful stuff like "zi" instead of "the" for example), but going further seems really hard to me, my stress accent is pretty poor right now . One of my teachers advised me to keep it though, she thought it was cute
And I wonder, what are your motivations for trying to lose every bit of french accent? Just the pleasure of reaching perfection? Anything else?

I'll be leaving for New-York in a few weeks, and I don't plan to lose my accent.
Right now my only concern is to be able to converse once there, and it's hard enough for me.

Depends how much time you stay there. If it's a matter of weeks, you won't lose it  But after a few years, you might.

Only for 2~4 weeks, in order to conduct a small project.

 
Don't worry about it mate, we all have to at one point, nothing to be ashamed of. But if you do as you say, you will get there eventually. Maybe in a few months, maybe in a few year, but the one danger is to stop caring, at which point your accent won't improve anymore, and might get worse    
 

 
Well, in my case, I just could not stand the idea of someone being able to tell I was French right away. So I tried to get rid of that accent.
 
   
 

My main trouble with my accent when I was at school was with a teacher who used to make fun of me because I sounded like I was american
I never could get rid of that after I spent a few weeks in north carolina

Well back from London but couldn't find a moment to record this thing. Won't be happening before Monday I'm afraid.

Well in fact, I found a moment :
 
http://lorenelenoir.free.fr/voix/dickenslorelei.mp3

Me too
 
http://orgasm.free.fr/hfr/anglais/paradox_dickens.mp3
 
Can we already react to other participations, or are comments forbidden until everybody has uploaded his file ?

Well I don´t have any problem with it...
 
Paradox, are you German? If not, how come you have such a German accent?    
 
 
Lorelei, one can hear that you are French. The accent. But the pronunciation is very British (i.e. where you put your emphasis on within a word, etc.) Where did you learn?

I learnt all my English in France. But I dated an English guy for ages.

What English accent are you talking about ? The RP/BBC one ? I'm leaving in England for a few months and noone does speak with that accent even in London... The easiest one to understand is the one that seems to be the american one to my ears (without the "R" letter prononciation though), south of england basically. It's like listening to PPDA on TF1 speaking with a french accent that noone speaks in France... a very neutral accent that most of the french people think it's a parisian one (well most of the ones not living in Paris anyway).

Right. I´m not sure I understood everything you are saying but still,

• A southern English accent sounds like anything BUT an American accent (even without the wierd ´R´s they do there)
• London does not have one accent. At the very least it has two. But most probably it has 8 million different accents. Why would an indian accent be any less of a London accent than some south-London cockney? It certainly is more common. No, London does not have once single accent. And it certainly isn´t the Queen´s English.
• However there is a standardised BBC English and some people *do* speak it. I know I tend to, though I´ve occasionally been told I have an Oxford accent... I know more brits than I dare count that just speak a standard, educated, southern English. Yes, they read the guardian and shop at waitrose. So what?

There are lots of american accents by the way. My favorite is the one from New York (Natalie Portman & co.). It is pretty flat/neutral and really far away from the damned one we've got here in Birmingham (such as "boy" for "buy" O_o). I do prefer speaking with an american accent even here in England. I've asked my pupils (who are english, I'm a french language assistant in a high school for girls) which accent sounds the best to them and they told me about the south of england, the really south...
 
After about 6 months in the country I start saying "a/eu" instead of saying "eRrrr" (american way), and it bothers me.

Jep, I am german. But I thought you knew that

 
 
Jep, and I don't want to offend you, but your english reminded me of an episode of friends, where Monica and Phoebe have this american friend who has a fake british accent I think it is sometimes exagerated and some words reveal your real nationality: hour, women, possibility, inheritance because of the misplaced stresses  
 
Don't get me wrong here, you are by far the best french speaker I've ever seen (after tailindil, but he's cheating It's as if i had to read a french text ) and I'm not criticizing it
 
Now feel free to make fun of my ach-so-strong german akkzent

I have to say the text brought the most British parts of my accent, I had a lot of trouble with the length of the sentences and was extremely tired so tripped over some words.

Why didn't you guys chose the text from the speech accent archive? You could have compared with many other people and I guess the text has been chosen to cover a wide array of English phonemes.

Just my 2 cents.

http://accent.gmu.edu/browse.php

 
Well thank god for that. It´s the single most annoying feature of all american accents. No offence meant, but American accents to my ears range from mildly annoying (New england) to incredibly annoying (Texas) with every shade of annoying in between.
 
The worst is their bloody spelling. I took me months to tame my computer to stop it telling me I was wrong just because I enter the right number of vowels when I write.    
 

 
I didn´t know    
 
Huell, hi pelief ssat yourr schechmann Akzent iss rreally not ssat pad.  
Well, I study with loads of Germans though so I´m pretty much used to it.    
 
Whereabouts are you from, in Germany?
 

 
Yeah, Dickens is a bitch.    
 

 
Well, not a bad idea but it´s a bit too late I suppose    

Hi guys, I'm trying to find a special phrase so if U know it THX !
 
Colosse aux pieds d'argile
 
how would you translate it ?
Starting from this point, where would you find some phrases in order to sound more english than english ^^ ?

Idol with feet of clay.

You're sure ? (it's important )
 
Ok, THX a lot, I'll write it down

Found in my dictionary

ok, mine doesn't show such things (pocket edition...)

Hi everybody,

I would like to translate the word "features" in french ... I think the best word is "fonctionnalités" or "caractéristiques", but these two words are too long for my need

For example, for a car, the "features" are "Number of doors", or "Color" ... so I think it makes no sense to use "fonction" in french

If you have any idea of a good translation that keep nearly the same size ...

Thank you

----------------------------------------
Edit : ATTRIBUTS \o/ Thank you