erinja:

...having said that, after you've tried your best, if you still can't do it, no big deal. You'll hear many different accents in the world of Esperanto, and there have been many eminent English-speaking Esperantists who never mastered the Esperanto R. The poet Marjorie Boulton is the most famous example.

There is no excuse for the average American to use the American R in Esperanto. For the vast majority of our samlandanoj, a very acceptable Esperanto R appears in words like "ladder" or "butter" (the "dd/tt") when spoken in normal conversational speed.

Haha, here, kids make the sound of a regular non-rolling American R when they play with their cars.

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I think that it's important to try your very hardest to have an international accent in Esperanto. But some people can easily imitate new sounds and speak with a certain accent, and other people find this extremely difficult. If someone has spent a lot of time practicing to try to get the right accent, but still fails, I refuse to stigmatize or judge that person for that. Accents come easily to some people and to others, with great difficulty.

Perhaps someone can post a link to one of the threads on this forum that discuss methods of teaching yourself how to do the Esperanto R.

For the record, I would much rather hear someone speaking Esperanto with a horrible accent and perfect grammar, than someone with a perfect accent but horrible grammar.

orthohawk:a very acceptable Esperanto R appears in words like "ladder" or "butter" (the "dd/tt") when spoken in normal conversational speed.

Yes I think the quick trilled R shouldn't be a problem to pronounce. It's how I say my R's in Esperanto, mainly because a full trilled R like "rr" in spanish, makes a word sound/feel broken and looong.

Shanemk:

orthohawk:a very acceptable Esperanto R appears in words like "ladder" or "butter" (the "dd/tt") when spoken in normal conversational speed.

Yes I think the quick trilled R shouldn't be a problem to pronounce. It's how I say my R's in Esperanto, mainly because a full trilled R like "rr" in spanish, makes a word sound/feel broken and looong.

Yes, the 3-tap trill is the ideal but my point was that in average American English, the 1-tap R exists in the speech of the vast majority of the population (even theough they don't realize it, its being spelled with d's or t's ) The 3 to 4-tap trill does not (unless you're Scottish).

I don't think that the three-tap trill is ideal in Esperanto at all, unless we're talking about a compound word with two r's in a row (irreveno, anyone?)

A single tap is usually enough, I think.

Extending the subtopic (because I haven't posted for while and think the thread is interesting) ...

erinja:
For the record, I would much rather hear someone speaking Esperanto with a horrible accent and perfect grammar, than someone with a perfect accent but horrible grammar.

I agree with this completely! However, I think that it's often difficult to tell one (bad grammar) from the other (bad pronunciation) with Native-English-North-American (NENA) speakers. Here's why I say this.

We NENAs naturally rush unstressed vowels; e.g. banana = buh + na + nuh. We all know that the grammatical keys in Esperanto are it's final (almost always unstressed) vowels. So the question is: is the speaker's grammar poor, or does his/her final grammar-defining vowel end up half-way between an "A" and an "O" (or even worse, between an "-AN" and an "-ON").

Since NENAs subconsciously pronounce the same vowel differently in the same word, depending upon whether it's stressed or not, it's difficult for non-NENAs to get a fix on the "pure" vowel sound that provides the grammatical key that LoZo so creatively designed.

I know that this thread started out with the "R" issue; I'm just not sure it would make my top ten for achieving an international accent. I'm putting in my two cents for "vowel purity" as the number one issue for NENAs, and all native-English speakers. I'm natively bi-lingual in Spanish and English and it's also the biggest issue between those two sets of speakers.

P.S. I have heard a lot of comments from Radio Verda listeners about the Italian speakers being the "most pleasant/easy to understand". I agree - I think it's because they tend to keep the vowels "pure"; i.e. same whether stressed or unstressed.

Absolutely, Dave. And in the case of Esperanto, the issue of intelligibility can hardly be divorced from the aesthetic issue.

Any regional colour - be it rendering Karto like Kato, or swallowing the finajxoj, or making Pledo sound like Plejdo - makes it difficult for the listener to comprehend easily and is contrary to the spirit of Esperanto.

No accent that irritates or causes difficulty in comprehension can be reasonably be labelled as pleasant.

I repeat my challenge to Ceige. Name one national accent in Esperanto that is charming.

Didn't ceigered say that he liked chinese accents in Esperanto?

At any rate, I think that a 'foreign' accent in Esperanto is much like a 'foreign' accent in any other language. Some people will like it, some people will dislike it. Some people think that English spoken with a French accent is romantic and attractive; some people think that this same accent is snotty and hoity-toity, still other people have all kinds of other opinions. I personally think that an English-language accent speaking practically any other language in the world sounds horrible, but my friend who used to live in Israel said that she knew people who thought that American accents speaking Hebrew were cute and charming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvqXVEOI6nU&fea...:Ŝanŝan ĉe la paralimpikojn

. Nothing to do with the R, but I found this clear, despite there being a Chinese influence in the accent.

An accent doesn't necessarily equate to bad Esperanto. Accents range from heavily influenced by the native language, to just a light colouring of vowels and intonation, and minor differences in the consonants that do no diverge so far as to render the consonant so foreign it is incomprehensible.

And if you can't pick up that retroflex R in a Mandarin Chinese accent you need your ears cleaned!

(overexaggerating here like usual) I'd almost put good Chinese accents in a sort of "prestige" accent position for Esperanto, given that the way the intonation is performed is very clear. Then again, Mandarin Chinese contains every sound that normally appears in Esperanto and more, so provided there are no difficulties in the speaker pronouncing the consonant clusters, it should be extremely understandable. Then again, I may have just been lucky and listened to some very nice ones!

And to be brutally honest, I do see accents as separated from just bad pronunciation. My version of an accent is something petty and harmless like having two "u" sounds in Esperanto (something Australian speakers might experience more than other English speakers, since we have a crazier vowel inventory - compare u-bar (ʉ), ʊ and normal u).

My accent of bad pronunciation is clear disregard for the phonology of a language, which I assume you may be imagining in place of "accent".

(re the spirit of Esperanto - the spirit of Esperanto is merely to bring us together without overriding our culture and what not - surely accents do have a place in that, even if you're like myself and prefer homogenous accents for sake of convenience. And do we really want to be all the same? If so, sorry, I'm outa here! There's no room for me on a planet where there's nothing new to come across! )

A quick question - has Brazilian Esperanto come to anyone's minds during this conversation by any chance?

ceigered:My accent of bad pronunciation is clear disregard for the phonology of a language, which I assume you may be imagining in place of "accent".

Did you mean 'my idea of bad pronunciation...'?

Now, the phonology of a language (or variety) will tell you

(a) how many 'abstract sound units' (phonemes) there are,

(b) the different ways those abstract sound units can actually be pronounced (phones), and

(c) which environments trigger which phones.

Disregard for the phonology of a language automatically manifests itself as a foreign or non-local accent from the POV (or POH, perhaps? ) of the speakers of that language.

For example, the phonology of (most native varieties of) English dictates that the phonemes /k/, /t/, and /p/ be aspirated when they begin a stressed syllable. Fail to do that, and... Presto! It'll seem like you have a foreign (Indianish?) accent.

Similarly, the weakening of unstressed vowels and the swallowing-up of R's go contrary to the principles of Esperanto phonology. Disregarding these principles will end up giving your Esperanto what we've been calling a 'national accent' here.

Note that an accent is any rule-bound, systematic, non-haphazard manner of pronunciation. Even the Queen of England has an accent, albeit a relatively prestigious one.