Question by Lucky Lemons: How to speak with a Russian Accent?
I am trying to learn how to speak English with a Russian accent so I can audition for a play. I would really appreciate any suggestions for changing the sound of certain letters.
Thank you!
Answers and Views:
Answer by Killuah
Hello i am studying russian, i think you might consider watching stuff on youtube or any other broadcasting site, it will help you out a lot. Although exercise yourself on rolling off your tongue on Rs, and forget on pronouncing th-s if you were born in america,those ones don’t exist in russian.
Thats the advice i can share, i am still studying.
Good luck
Add your own answer in the comments!
sin_talk says
instead of th u should say s and z (zis is) sank you,then o like in word war u should pronounce this o like any other(i.e. what),the the o: (work) is pronounced like yo (this typical russian sound),h is not inspired, r is front one (ur tongue is touching the front upper palate), and as for intonation it is every time down(even inn the middle of complexx sentence) except for what,where questions.
i guess that is ity but u can watch movies on youtube and write me if u need smth good luck
Man of Hurst says
English pronunciation is a really hard matter for most Russians starting to study English. Some things are complex, some unusual. Russian has different phonetic structure than English does. First of all, "r" in Russian is always very clear, different parts of the mouth are involved. Secondly, there is no such a sound "w" as english-speaking people pronounce in "word", "wall", "window", etc. Many Russians who are newcomers in English do not distinct "w" and "v" from a pronunciation point of view and tend to use a pronunciation of "v" when they meet "w". Hence, "wall" becomes "voll", "window" becomes "vindov". "Th" is a really hard thing for many Russians and sometimes hardly possible. There is no exact equivalent but the nearest is "s" or "z". Therefore "this" is quite often pronounced as "zis", "tooth" -> "tus", etc. Frenchmen have the same peculiarity. So that replace "th" by "s" everytime you wanna pronounce it. Another thing which coud be used as means to determine native Russian among others is a pronunciation of russian letter "x" (do not mix with latin "x"). Russian "x" is close to the english "h" but must never be omitted or softend as in "hour", "hobby", "hollow". Moreover, Russian has no the notion of "long vowel" and "short vowel". All vowels in Russian have an equal length. Because of this, many newcomers pronounce "beach" and "bitch" in the same way (ditto for "lead" and "lid", "read" and "rid", etc.).
Hope it helps. Use of youtube's russian content is a good piece of advice. The most cryptic thing for me is the necessity to speak English with russian accent. I can hardly imagine the situation when it coud be useful.