TV-series 5h
In the evenings I've been watching Grey's anatomy on Netflix. I have the english subtitles there because otherwise I would miss too much information for the vocabulary is challenging: I wouldn't know those words in Finnish either. Listening actively the pronunciation, words, structures and grammar was weird at the beginning but after few episodes it seemed to get easier. Well, this wasn't a surprise: I experienced the same with the German language ten years ago when I was living in Mainz and all the tv-shows and movies were spoken in German.
At the beginning of the autumn their accent didn't bother me that much but by the time it got annoying. I've been trying to watch and listen more of the British English and suddenly the language in Grey's anatomy started to sound very fake. At least my friends in there don't talk like that. They're though slightly different from an average american: they have a University degree and they all have spent longer time in Europe and they have european roots, of which they're strongly aware. And they're from North: the states of Washington and Oregon, in which the English has a nicer accent, or so they say. The happenings of Grey's anatomy takes place in Seattle but that's not really taken in count in the way people talk, but obviously it's explained by doctors' origin all around USA. The views and the rain are genuine.
Tinkerbell: Secret of the wings. I was watching this movie on Netflix with my daughter and I had to translate it to her simultaneously. I had seen the movie twice a year ago when it was in movies but still this was quite challenging. I was skipping some parts and tried to interpret the top points at least, sometimes the characters were talking way too quickly and partly at the same time, in those cases I just told why they're doing this and that. At least my daughter didn't complain and watched the whole movie.
I probably would like to be a translator and interpreter, it's just my foreign language skills will never be good enough for that.
Also in English, as well as in Finnish, the characters are speaking in very high voice. It bothers me a lot, especially because I don't want my daughter to copy that at all. She doesn't do that -yet. But I have realised some of her friends do and it's extremely annoying. At least in Finland a deeper voice is considered more convincing and taken more serious. And otherside a too high voice gives a childish, weak or even a stupid impression. I was wondering if this is only here, but obviously it's the same way in some other countries too. Margaret Thatcher is one good example of this.
I read some articles about it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/how-the-iron-lady-changed-her-voice/13834.html
This one was good: it even had ideas for use in class giving an exercise to do basing on the sample.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2011/nov/15/woman-lower-tone-voice-successful
And listened to the samples as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28_0gXLKLbk
Especially in the shows that are aimed for girls this phenomen of unnatural voice is too obvious. In boys shows it might be in contrary and with an annoying amount of extra sound effects. Sometimes we watch those shows that we watched in 80's like "the wind in the willlows" or "Tao Tao-panda". They've so much slowier tempo and more like a calming effect on children. Children find still The wind in the willows fascinating and one their favourite movie is the british "Snowman". There's no speaking at all but beautiful music combined with nice old-fashioned drawed animation.
Movies 3h
Love actually. One of the movies I have been watching several times. I chose to watch this again because of the different accents and ways to speak English. Hugh Grant of course is nice but to my huge dissappointment his stuttering is not that charmy anymore. In this movie comes up several time the diffenrence between British and American English. Here's one example about it:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIXHcOjJpxY
But it's certainly true: an accent can make a man very attractive. We all know Sean Connery and his accent, voice, character and everything. Sean Connery is probably the most attractive man in that way ever born on this planet. And mainly because of his voice and everythign in him. On youtube I found an actress who's quite gifted with accents:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k
Some of her accents are not that perfect but it was an interesting climpse and made the differences hearable in short time. Usually the problem comparing the accents is that people sound so different so one person talking in several dialects and accents would make the best case to observe the diffenrences. Inspiring!
In Love actually there are also many other ways to speak English: there is this portuguese girl who's learning to speak English and she has a very strong accent. It's kind of nice accent though, I've heard that Finnish accent is quite unpleasent. But it doesn't matter for Italians or Spanish people how they speak: it always sounds sympathetic. Russian (Polish etc) and German (and Austria) accents are not nice either. What makes one accent charmy and another one annoying? On BBC was an interesting text about this subject:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/yourvoice/poll_results.shtml#A
I read some pages about what people think about their own accents as well: http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/yourvoice/accents.shtml
There should be an English course for this theme only, it's really interesting.
Back to Love Actually. (I seem to get easily lost with my thoughts now, sorry about that!) One difference between the accent on the movie was because of the social background: the girl, in who the prime minister falls in love, is from the ugly side of the city. She and her family speak clearly diffenrently than Hugh Grant. It's interesting how in England the different accents to signify the class has been living so strong so far but obviously it's changing: I read an article how even the the queen's accent is getting less upper-class-style:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1080228.stm
At the end of working on this theme I watched again a part of Ellen de Generes show episode in which she's comparing British and American English with Hugh Laurie. I like Hugh Laurie as well and his way of speaking and acting is really respectful. Ellen de Generes, well, at least she's popular in the US.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYmrg3owTRE
I got inspired of this study session or more like continous sessions, I was working on this several times. I started to figure out in my head different ways to research the dialects with the applications connected to phonology and phonetics.
Other movies I watched during this autumn for this were: Tara Road (I love the book but the movie was a disappointment) and Notthing Hill (the themes were quite similar to Notthing Hill but had this very funny scottish character in it).
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