American Accents in Russian

[mangiami.livejournal.com]

Is there a stereotyped impression about American-accented Russian? For example, do many Russians usually think it sounds goofy, pompous, sexy, etc.?

What are the main speech characteristics that identify an American accent in Russian?

Are there any typical usages of Russian that will immediately identify a person as an American, even if they are speaking perfectly accented Russian? (E.g. In Japanese, I believe, overusing "I (watashi)" as a pronoun would make you sound American, even if you are using perfect pronunciation)

Comments

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

(Well. Hatashi if you're female; boku if you're male.)

[steppinrazor.livejournal.com]

Hatashi isn't used very often. Watashi is probably more common, in the grand scale of things. I imagine at this point, in modern Japan, boku is even used by women more than men. Either way, boku and hatashi are pretty casual and pronouns in general aren't used much. A foreigner would be more inclined to use watashi as it's not as casual as boku or hatashi.

It's difficult to explain, really, as it falls into cultural nuances.

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Ahh. I was under the impression that ha and wa were written the same way? Sorry, then.

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Oy. No clue where I got that idea. My apologies for the whole idiocy. :)

[oryx_and_crake]

I wonder, does overusing "I" in Japanese makes you sound specifically American or just generic foreigner?

[steppinrazor.livejournal.com]

That would probably depend more on the emphasis of pronouns such as I in one's native language ;)

[rooskiyroulette.livejournal.com]

Isn't this a Russian community anyway? ;-)

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

I wonder if that occurs in people speaking Russian as a first language and American as a second? Doesn't Russian often drop pronouns?

[padruka1988.livejournal.com]

There is no American language. :)

[padruka1988.livejournal.com]

Could someone please answer this question as it pertains to RUSSIAN, not JAPANESE? I'm actually really interested to find out, as my boyfriend always teases me because of my accent, and though I'm well aware I sound nothing like a Russian when I speak... Russian... I would like to know just how I sound.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

In my entire life, which lasted unbelievably long :)), I have never heard an American with "perfect pronunciation" in Russian -- and I have heard dozens of them, if not over a hundred already.
For example, the current U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, Mr. Alexander Vershbow, speaks perfect Russian - I mean, grammatically perfect, with rich vocabulary, extensive use of the idioms, deep knowledge of commonly-known film and/or book quotations that everybody would use in speech, etc. What gives him away is pronounciation.
The problem is that the phonetic systems of Russian and American English (and English in general) are too different - they require very different positions of tongue, jaws etc., so that someone who grew up using one system has to apply literally supernatural efforts to completely change his/her speaking skills and habits.
The most specific sounds that give Americans away are consonants, like R, T, and, sometimes most critically, V/W (because hard Russian "в" is neither of those two.) It's always quite funny to hear Americans pronouncing simple Russian names, like Ivan. It normally comes out like "Ивфаан" :) Softened consonants at the ends of the words (marked by Ь) are a big problem for most Americans, too. The infinitive forms of verbs give them away at once, because English T requires a totally dufferent tongue position than Russian "т", so all those "...вать" and "...дать" are a srious problem. I remember that funny "Independence Day" movie, when imaginary Russian military men sit in the clouds of tobacco smoke (of course, all Russians drink their vodkas and smoke their... babushkas?... all the time :)))) listening to radio signals from brave Americans, who are about to save the whole world again, and one of the "Russians" asks with terrible American accent:
- Когда они будут наступать?
Leave alone that it's bad word-to-word translation of English "when are they going to attack" (a Russian officer wold never use "наступать" in this case, when the enemy is discrete and surrounding) - the pronounciation is terrible: for a Russian ear the last verb sounds like "настоопач" :))

[schwarzer-tod.livejournal.com]

Re. the last two paragraphs: Yeah, I remember the Mongolian in Александр Невский (You know, the one movie where the Russians "save the whole world again"?) being impeccable. Oh wait, nevermind, they had Tatars speaking Russian.

But of course, one can expect more from Eisenstein's masterpiece (Tatars speaking Russian) than from a poorly-written summer blockbuster.

[vyacheslav.livejournal.com]

"and smoke their... babushkas?"

I'm not sure if this is related to what I said a few weeks ago about babushkas, but where I'm from people call the one piece dress(a mumu or whatever other people call them) a babuskha. I thought it was in common american usage but maybe not. I assumed it was because old ladies often wear them.

[tikvi.livejournal.com]

Yikes! Now I'm scared to open my mouth:-))) Can you describe the difference in the way our consonants sound? Or better yet, is there a way physically make our т's and в's (and all the other consonants) sound more Russian? I've always heard that -ть should sound like it has a faint "s" at the end.

And please forgive Hollywood's idea of Russian. It's laughable at best.

[malaya-zemlya.livejournal.com]

One of the best giveaways is intonation. I am not sure about the exact difference, but it seems that Americans tend to raise pitch at the end of interrogarive senteces much more than native Russians (and in a different way). This is not peculiar to Americans though, Bulgarians do the exact same thing and so do native Russians who stayed in US for too long :)

I don't think this sound has any peculiar character to a russian ear, it just sounds Western. Then again, I didn't meet all that many Americans while _in_ Russia, in their own country they sound perfectly normal : )

[onodera.livejournal.com]

Yes, and they don't lower their pitch before commas when iterating over a list of objects.

[zhp.livejournal.com]

Another giveaway is the use of the personal pronouns (мой, твой, его, etc) where in Russian you use either nothing at all or the pronoun "свой". For example, He told his sister.. - Он сказал его сестре...

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Yup. "Я парковал мою машину" instead of "я запарковался" :))

[ja-va.livejournal.com]

Most russians thing american accent sounds horrible.
The best way to identify american,- dreadful mistakes in every sentence.

[malaya-zemlya.livejournal.com]

:dreadful mistakes in every sentence
Or any other foreigner for that matter...

[devinshire.livejournal.com]

The best way to identify a Russian? They never know when to use the article.

Осторожно, пожалуйста.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

And German/Japanese/French/Arab/etc. people don't make mistakes in Russian? I know the Germans I met in Russia made just as many mistakes as I do.

Russians, of course, never make any mistakes in other languages.

How is this a useful reply?

[socialsodomy.livejournal.com]

As an American, I am not the best judge, but as a student of Russian I get to hear alot of American trying to speak Russian.

Anyway, I really think the way most American women try to speak Russian sounds really funny. In English, a lot of women use very "sing-songy" intonation with the pitch going up-and-down all over the place. My impression of the way Russian woman speak, is so much different: they keep the pitch relatively flat then at critical moments they shoot it up so high as to make the moon jealous! ;-) That and some how managing to simulateously laugh and speak complete sentances. Pure talent, there.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I don't speak anywhere near fluently, but one of the things I as an English speaker have the most trouble with is the question intonation. In English, the tone goes up at the end of a question sentence. In Russian, the tone doesn't vary much and emphasis is placed on the "important" word in the sentence (so there are a couple ways for me to get tripped up there).

I think this is a relatively common mistake, and would be something that applies only to native speakers of languages that have an up-tone question -- such as English (or Spanish, or many others).

I also have trouble with words that have five consonants in a row, but I can't think of any examples offhand and I'm sure that's not a problem restricted to English speakers.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

>I also have trouble with words that have five consonants in a row

I think that здравствуйте alone might provide enough torture for the first-year learners :) Though in real speech, half of those consonants could be easily omitted :)