Okay, hello everyone, this is a video about accents
Specifically, my accent in English, German and Mandarin
If you don't know who Erik Singer is, he is a dialect coach
and he has appeared in a bunch of Youtube videos
where he, idk, talks about language and dialects
and about the accents that actors put on for movies and stuff and it's really interesting
Give it a watch
Anyway, he also has a website where you can "donate" your accent
Which means that you send in a recording of your speech and that will be used as educational material
I guess for dialect coaching?
I just thought it would be a fun thing to do and I haven't seen anything like it, yes
So on the website it says:
I think that's how you say it
An that's so sweet, I like that!
I try not to focus on my accent because then I'll change how I speak
Reading passages. So there's three parts to this:
You have some short sentences, then there is a poem
And then you're supposed to speak about anything you wanna speak about and it's just supposed to sound natural
And yeah and I'm going to do that last part in English as well as German, which is my native language, and Chinese or Mandarin
Which is technically also my native language, I guess I'm a "heritage speaker", in that my mom is a native speaker
And I'm just, I was stupid and did not learn when I was little
Without further ado, let's get ito the reading passages
That was all the reading passages and now I'm going to read to you a poem called Dali's Last Hurrah
Not sure who wrote this poem but we shall read it to analyse my accent!
That was the poem
Now I'm just gonna talk a bit about my accent and the languages I learned
So we'll start with English: I first started learning English when I went to preschool
I went to preschool in Hongking, and at that point I only new German and Mandarin
And in Hongkong, pretty much all of my classmates were speaking english, and I was left out
So I had to learn
I remember I took a class that was called "Extra English"
And it was with this lovely woman, I think she was British
So maybe I had a British accent at some point, probably not
But yeah, she was my first English teacher
And she would read, like a story ...what's it called, story books for children to us?
That's not how you says it
Bilderbücher, what's the word, oh my god
Like the gruffalo for example, she would read these books to us, and I'd just listen, and understand maybe a little bit of what she's saying
I don't know how I didn't get bored because at the beginning I couldn't understand anything
But yeah she would read these stories to us, and then we would dress up in costumes and basically have a little play
Which meant that we could repeat the story we just heard and dress up as the characters
It was really sweet, I loved that teacher and I loved that class
Later I had English teachers from all over, I had some from Singapore, from the US, from Germany
I went to a German school if that makes it this easier to understand
And then later on, I didn't learn most of my English from teachers, I learned it from movies and TV shows
And that was mostly American, Hollywood movies and media
And even later than that, I started watching a lot of Youtube
And so on youtube there was a bigger variety of accents than in Hollywood
So I watched British Youtubers, Irish Youtubers, Australian Youtubers
Like people from all over the world ad everthing has influenced the way I speak
I thoght that I spoke in a very americanised way
because of the movies I watched when I was younger
But apparently that is not the case
And people have told me that I speak, idk, in a very particular way
One more thing, I find that my accent changes
depending on the people I surrpund myself with
For example, I hav two friends who speak in an English accent, and I find that when I'm talking to them
My accent will morph a little bit into the way they're speaking
Which is a little, which is strange because I can't do accents
And I always, I'm kind of embarassed because I feel like I'm doing a bad imitation but I'm not even doing it consciously
Then in German now, hi everyone, my name is Mona
German is my native language, I've spoken it since I was little, I went to school in German
and this is my most fluent language
I think my accent is pretty standard
I don't really have a regional accent
Even though one time i was talking to a girl
And she went "Wait a second, is your dad from soandso?" And I was like
Actually yes!
"Is your dad from NRW" (German state)
And I was like "yeah! He is!"
For some reason she could hear that, even though I don't think I have a regional accent in German
One time I was even told that I have a Chinese accent in German, where I just though to myself
That is such bullshit, I don't even have a Chinese accent when I'm speaking Chinese
What?
Other than that there's not much to say about my German
My dad is from NRW but I grew up in China, went to a German school there, where there were people from everywhere in Germany
Which is why I didn't pick up (forgot the German word) one specific thing
Oh my god this is terrible, and right after I said German is my most fluent language
Then let's talk Chinese now
My Chinese is really bad
I'll do a litte introduction first
Hi everyone, my name is Mona, I'm 19 years old
I grew up in Shanghai, China, and my mom is from Taiwan
But my Chinese isnt't very good because I went to German school
So I had one or two Chinese classes a week and the rest was completely in German and English
And when I was little I wouldn't watch Chinese TV or read Chinese books
So my reading is really bad
And writing is terrible
Speaking and listening is fine when it's simple, but not as soon as it gets more complex
I think my Chinese is around the level of a small child
Because that's when I went to school and so I always stayed at that little-kid-level
My accent, well, some people say they can hear that my mom is Taiwanese
But my mom's own accent isn't very Taiwanese sounding
And of course a lot if people just say that I have a foreigner's accent
So, I don't know, I'm now learning Chinese in the hope of improving a little bit
Oh! Okay this is fun, they have some extra questions for someone whose native language is not English
I'll recite the only poem that I know how to recite in German, then I'll recite the only poem that I know how to recite in Chinese
So the German poem, I think it does not have a title, I think the title is just the first line of the poem
And there's not really an author that's definitely known
So, it's called "Dunkel war's der Mond schien helle"
That's like the first part, and then in Chinese, this is just the one poem I had to learn for school so
And it's one of the most famous it's called... ummm... does it have a name?
It's called Quiet Night Thought, by Li Bai
Okay, so
This question I also like
One German insult that I really like, and I never use it, but I just like the sound of it, is Kackbratze
Just because it's, it has all these harsh sounds and it sounds so much like an insult, Kackbratze
So "Kack" means shit or poop or whatever
and "Bratze", I actually had to look this up because it's not really used outside of the context of this word
And it means an ugly person
But I don't use Kackbratze to just mean someone is physically ugly, it's just an unpleasant person
"What a Kackbratze"
I think that concludes this video, thank you for watching.
This was really fun to record, and I'm going to take the audio from this video and donate it
Thank you for watchig and goodbye!
