Videos
Funny videos about foreign accented pronunciation
CALST is not so much to learn vocabulary in a new language (though you will learn new words). It helps you to achieve a more native-like pronunciation, like her:
Or him:
If learners don’t have the «th»-consonant as in thick in their native language, they may instead pronounce «s»; others may pronounce «t» or «f». This can lead to misunderstandings:
Very many languages have only short vowels. English has short, lax vowels and long, tense vowels. Not getting the vowels right may cause problems:
Disclaimer: You can find many funny pronounciation videos on the web. Here are a few. A foreign accent can cause communication problems or be met with prejudice. It’s good to laugh about foreign accent jokes, it is not okay to laugh at a person for their foreign accent. Remember, we all have a foreign accent in most languages.
In many languages, words that are written differently may sound the same:
In some languages, letters are a fairly close representation of sounds. In other languages, like English, they are not:
It is not only foreigners who may have an accent (as in the second part of this video), native speakers do as well. It’s just some variants have a higher status than others (the status of some variants is sooo high that it’s called standard pronunciation) – with apologies for the offensive language:
Or listen to this British lady (any language has many variants, by the way, I just don’t know of any videos for them):