Austin Improv

Sara asked about accent workshops in another thread, so I thought I'd share this recommendation...

I highly recommend this bookfor accents. There's a version for American accents, too. Those books spell out accents phonetically, but unless you've heard the accents in person it's really hard to fully grasp them.

I've always been decent at accents, though I don't use them in shows often. The first thing to do if you want to get better at accents is to start to listen to how people speak. It sounds very obvious and very strange. But listen to the sounds that words make, without letting your brain translate the sounds into the letters that you know spell the word. That probably doesn't make sense, but I think our brains our wired to make the slightly unfamiliar (like a different-sounding accent) become familiar. So your brain is constantly working against you actually *hearing* the accent.

Scour NPR archives for interviews to hear accents you want to work on. That, plus the books I mentioned should help a lot.

We had to learn IPA in high school theater to sound things out phonetically. Can anyone else read IPA?

TexasImprovMassacre wrote:We had to learn IPA in high school theater to sound things out phonetically. Can anyone else read IPA?

I had to learn to speak in what they called "Standard American" and the IPA. It's been awhile though and I thought it was bullshit so I probably haven't retained much.

Those 2 books I recommended don't use IPA. They explain why in the preface. They use their own alphabet that's pretty easy to understand.

i recomment the arthur lessac system. it is WAY simpler than IPA.

http://www.amazon.com/Use-Training-Huma ... 975&sr=8-1

(granted, like kaci i studied this in college and have forgotten much of it, but then again i have forgotten most of what i studied in college. perhaps early onset alzheimer's? or just following the trend?)

however, if you are into learning new systems and acquiring new data, this is a great read. and at the time that i was practicing it, it was really easy to follow.

I can't ready IPA very fast, but I still remember most of the symbols. I also had to learn a "Midwestern preferred" dialect

I love this site:

http://web.ku.edu/idea/

I love this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k

This seems like a good resource for learning accents:

http://web.ku.edu/idea/index.htm

I took a workshop on accents dialects and dipthongs a while back and the coolest tip I learned and I use to this day is "Find a springboard phrase."

For example: My Scottish brogue is based off of the springboard phrase "Let it never be said..." At first, I would actually say this to launch into the accent. Nowadays it has become automatic.

How to use it is simple. Find a phrase that best represents (don't be afraid of stereotypical phrases either) the accent, dialect or dipthong you want to pull off. Then just practice that phrase over and over agian. Start to add more words and then add some more. Soon you will be able to carry on a conversation.

What is cool about a springboard is that it launches you into not only a train of thought but also a state of mind which is HUGE when pulling off accents. If you don't beleive it, then the audience won't either.

-Dav

I love This American Life as a venue to soak up various regional accents. In fact I often find myself so caught up in listening and mimicking to accents that I realize I have let all the actual content slip past my brain and have to rewind the show to relisten to what they are saying

fbillac wrote:I took a workshop on accents dialects and dipthongs a while back and the coolest tip I learned and I use to this day is "Find a springboard phrase."

For example: My Scottish brogue is based off of the springboard phrase "Let it never be said..." At first, I would actually say this to launch into the accent. Nowadays it has become automatic.

How to use it is simple. Find a phrase that best represents (don't be afraid of stereotypical phrases either) the accent, dialect or dipthong you want to pull off. Then just practice that phrase over and over agian. Start to add more words and then add some more. Soon you will be able to carry on a conversation.

What is cool about a springboard is that it launches you into not only a train of thought but also a state of mind which is HUGE when pulling off accents. If you don't beleive it, then the audience won't either.

-Dav

The best one I ever heard was in order to do a british accent...



Say, "air. hair. lair."






= Oh, Hello.

This site is pretty cool:
http://accent.gmu.edu/
It is people from around the world reading the same passage and it has all sorts of information about the speaker, where they were born, if they are a native English speaker, how long they've been speaking English, etc.
(I like to do it by Browse, Atlas, but the Search feature is pretty robust, too.)

Also, there was a professor on the UT campus that had good accent training. I'd approached them about getting a workshop set up back in the day. You might want to plunder their drama department for theatrical resources and traiing of this type.

Wesley wrote:This site is pretty cool:
http://accent.gmu.edu/

We used the standard phrase from that site for a bunch of videos of the accents of the folks from all over that came to the Keith Johnstone intensive at BATS in 2006. I can't find all of them, but here's some up on google video.

Dave wrote:
The best one I ever heard was in order to do a british accent...



Say, "air. hair. lair."






= Oh, Hello.

ha! cracks me up!