9 December 2016

Video Post: I do the Accent Tag!

Told you I had a video planned. Now you can hear me talk! Are you scared for the writing charm of my blog persona to be broken? I know I am...


But this is something I could never describe in words, and for a change here's a video idea that I actually wanted to make for a very, very long time.

Despite making 2 takes of this I really tried to make the video as authentic as possible and filmed right after I came back home from uni, it was really spontaneous, I actually wanted to film on saturday. Thus I still have my everyday makeup, clothes and hair on. No uber gothiness for the camera, just some lipstick reapplied.



So enjoy this low-fi Windows Movie Maker video attempt. I wish my laptop could run legitimate video editing programs, but hell no...



What do you think? Do you have an accent? Do you have any suggestions for future videos, for the next time I'll have the apartment to myself with 4 hours for filming and editing to spare?



Maria

14 comments:

  1. As a linguistics freak - I loved it! As I have zero knowledge of Hebrew and it's impossible to get a grasp of its accent from such short video, I can say nothing about you having it, but I did hear something Russian in the way you speak, mainly when you said Russian is your mother language. It's hard to say what caught my attention in it, because I have no musical education, but these words just flowed with rising and falling intonation, with narrowly opened mouth, similar to how Russian language sounds to foreign ear.
    Also I'm jealous of you changing switching freely between languages. I mean, saying both ways to call your grandparents and putting an English "or" between them, all with perfect pronounciation? I would mess up every single part of this.
    It was fun. Super fun, especially finding out how differently would I pronounce some of the words you had to read - and knowing we both pronounce 'iron' wrong, no matter whether we compare it to English or American English :D

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    1. We pronounce iron wrong!?!?!?!?!
      Thanks so much, I am really happy you liked it and I would love to see a similar video from you hehe.
      You are completely right about the intonations which direct to Russian, though I must say that even my Russian is influenced by Hebrew and American intonations, I usually speak a bit more theatrically, this whole filming process has made me more awkward than usual.

      And the "or" part was perhaps the easiest transition between languages! XD but usually moving from one language to another isn't hard for me, true, but take in mind that I took a few takes of those reading clips to not stutter. Urgh filming again....

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    2. Yep :D We say it as something like 'ayron', while the British say 'ayen' and Americans 'ayern' :D I found a vlog about this, it's in Polish unfortunately, but the girl gives examples from songs and movies, so if you want, you might take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v-It9S9730

      On one hand I'd like to make this tag myself - on the other I'm fluent in just one of them, the rest is super wonky.

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    3. Haha, I'll check it out.
      But people who only speak English also do the tag, it's to see the different English (and above) accents out there :p you should do it!

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  2. I'm just like you, a 4 languages speaker and I understand at least 2-3 more. Every time I speak Russian with Russians - they say my intonation is "funny western" cause it goes up instead of down. What growing up in Israel does to us huh :)) i loved your video, way to go on not forgetting Hebrew or English, some colleagues at my workplace say that German really screws with their brains and pushes English out..

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    1. Oh cool, you're from Israel as well, high five!
      I find it weird communicating with other Russian speakers from Russia, since their slang and intonations are different, and I'm kind of nervous of saying something weird sometimes.
      Some of my friends said the opposite - that English pushes their German out and they cannot focus on speaking German anymore hehe. I love balancing the 2, it's 2 different worlds after all. Thanks for watching!

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    2. Oh, and I could never forget Hebrew! I learned it when I was 6 years old and during my teenage years it was the language I spoke most, even better than my Russian. It's like a second mother language to me, like I said :)

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  3. I loved this! ^_^ First of all the video is built on your personality and charisma, not on special effects or four kilos of make up. Secondly, your voice is very beautiful and your pronunciation of all four languages sounds lovely. <3

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    1. Awww thank you so much!!!!!! I loved using the silly effects though. I am happy you loved it, I will think of other ideas for videos. Talking about music instead of writing all the time could be something I'll try to do next.

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    2. Yeah, but there is a difference between some funny special effects (like you) and overdoing it so that the video is just a series of special effects! :D I'm looking forward to your next video!

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  4. You really don't have a bad accent.. And when you sing I don't hear anything at all. For some reason native Russian speakers have less of an accent when they are taught British pronunciation (instead of American). Wish I had your gift for language, and it was cool to hear what you sound like!

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    1. Thanks so much!!! We're taught American in schools, British pronunciation is miles away from me. I love to listen to it, but in all my attempts of emulating it I sounded ridiculous hehe.

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    2. Really! I just assumed British pronunciation because you sound EXACTLY like my half-sister, who was taught British pronunciation in school in st. petersburg. But she's lived in the US (in the South, no less...so she kind of has the strangest accent ever...Southern, British, and Russian)

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    3. woah, cool, I would love to hear how that sounds like!

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