erinja:Within the Esperanto community, Italians and Hungarians are considered to have good accents.

Granted, I’m just starting out, and my accent probably sucks, but I remember listening to a Hungarian Esperanto speaker on a radio archive and found that his stressing of the first syllable threw me off quite a bit. Instead of stressing the penultimate syllable, he lengthened it. Although once I got used to it, it was easier to follow.

I found it took me a while to understand Ana Renkontas because the consonants were palatalised sometimes: "ne" becomes "nje", and the diphthong "aŭ" sounds a lot like "o" to my English ears: ankaŭ > anko. But, perhaps at this point in my learning, it’s time to start listening to other accents. Once my language abilities have sufficiently improved, I look forward to hearing a plethora of different accents at meetings and such.

I would guess that the give-aways of an English accent would be: (I tried using IPA on this forum, but some of the characters weren’t showing up properly, so bear with my rotten phonetics).

1) Diphthongisation of the vowels e i o u: ej ij oŭ uŭ. For Canadians this won't be a big deal, as we don't diphthonise these anyway.
2) Mispronunciation of "a" as "ah" or "æ"
3) Rolled/tapped r’s (which one is it by the way, or can I use either?)
4) Aspiration of p, t, c, ĉ, and k: sounding like pʰ tʰ cʰ ĉʰ and kʰ.
5) Reduction of vowels in unstressed syllables. Amika > Uh-mij-kuh.
6) Clear l’s instead of dark l’s in words like "kial".
7) For many North Americans, "u" approaches "ü" or "üŭ".

I think that 4) was the toughest for me to learn when I started French. As for training the ear, I haven't found any Esperanto sounds difficult to perceive. Has anyone else?

I think it would be really useful for beginners to see some links to "good" or "classic accents" at natural speeds. Just to sit back and listen to some great speakers would help me a lot. It's kind of like wine tasting, they all taste good until someone teaches me which are better. Then one can only improve with practice

languagegeek:I remember listening to a Hungarian Esperanto speaker on a radio archive and found that his stressing of the first syllable threw me off quite a bit.

Yeah, I know. I met many hungarian speakers. They usually have an above average knowledge of the grammar but they do sound a bit melodic on that. I'm perfectly fine of course but I can recognize them easily.

3) Rolled/tapped r’s (which one is it by the way, or can I use either?)

I've heard a lot of variations on r's along the way. They are generally accepted as long as the words you are trying to say are otherwise recognizable.

By being italian I trill/tap my r's without a problem and from what I am told these two variations are allophonic and allowed.

4) Aspiration of p, t, c, ĉ, and k: sounding like pʰ tʰ cʰ ĉʰ and kʰ.

Yes, I find this mostly with t's on native English speakers.

As for training the ear, I haven't found any Esperanto sounds difficult to perceive. Has anyone else?

As long as the pronounciation is flawless, I'm generally okay. Apart from individual phonemes, personal pronouns are sometimes thought as too close in pronounciation and thus sometimes difficult to distinguish, especially on a noisy background.

I think it would be really useful for beginners to see some links to "good" or "classic accents" at natural speeds.

I think I have a recording of a rather skillful Italian esperantist somewhere, reading a short story. It was done for beginners, and it is slightly slower than natural speed, but if you are interested I can give you a link for it.

You have it about right on the American/Canadian accent. But most British people have an accent that is quite distinctive and follows slightly different rules. One of those is the tendency to pronounce the a like in "pan" rather than like the a in "far".

Btw I don't think it matters that much whether you use a clear or dark l in kial. If it's too dark, that's not so good, though, since the l might be lost in the mix.

mnlg:I've heard a lot of variations on r's along the way. They are generally accepted as long as the words you are trying to say are otherwise recognizable.

By being italian I trill/tap my r's without a problem and from what I am told these two variations are allophonic and allowed.

I find I’m tending to tap the r’s in between vowels and after consonants, but rolling them before consonants and at word boundaries. I’m sure this will all sort itself out in time.

I think I have a recording of a rather skillful Italian esperantist somewhere, reading a short story. It was done for beginners, and it is slightly slower than natural speed, but if you are interested I can give you a link for it.

Estus tre bone! I find, in my own language learning, that listening comprehension is often more difficult than reading or speaking. And I need the practice.

languagegeek:
I find I’m tending to tap the r’s in between vowels and after consonants, but rolling them before consonants and at word boundaries. I’m sure this will all sort itself out in time.

Just a short roll, not a long one like in the old "Rrrrrripples have Rrrrridges" commercials, right?

I don't really view this as a problem to be fixed. This is more or less the way I talk (a short roll, not rrrrripples and rrrrrrridges). Unless I have been unknowingly irritating other Esperanto speakers for years, I don't really think it's an error. It's natural to pronounce a certain letter slightly differently depending on where it falls in a word and what surrounds it. It's ok so long as it's still recognizable as being that letter.

I also found that the accent of “Ana renkontas” is strange.

I think that my accent is not bad, since most of Esperanto sounds exist in French.
I have some trouble with the R; I flap it but can't manage to roll it. (And I don't know how to say interreto, for instance.)
And maybe I don't stress correctly.

Mutusen:I also found that the accent of “Ana renkontas” is strange.

It is a somewhat strong slavic accent.

There is a reason why this accent appears in Ana Renkontas and not in Ana Pana, though; more advanced students are expected to start dealing with differing accents, since this is an important aspect of communicating in the world of Esperanto. Especially for things like transcribing speech - it's important to recognize the words, to recognize what the person is saying even when certain letters aren't pronounced as you expect, and to use context to determine what the person means.

erinja:It's natural to pronounce a certain letter slightly differently depending on where it falls in a word and what surrounds it.

Naturality comes from your own native language(s). Fortunately Esperanto (just like many other languages) has allophones, and they are of course tolerated. A lot of people will pronounce the "n" of fungo differently than the "n" of nomo, but Esperanto's phonotactics does not distinguish them. Therefore they can both be used for that phoneme. Only when the variation might bring ambiguity (say, an uvular fricative for "r", which might sound too similar to "h"), then it would be better to stick to the phonetic guidelines provided in the 16 rules. There are other phonetic mechanisms in esperanto, as for instance assimilation, undermining the "1 letter = 1 sound" principle, but my skills in linguistics are far too low to approach this matter, so I'll just post a link to Wikipedia

My thanks to everone for the tips and details. I will give the TYO cassettes a miss. have been listening to the EAB pronounciation tracks, very good, I will get the CD from them.
MNLG could you send me the link for the Italian voice pronounciation that you mentioned?