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Hello everyone! Welcome to a new video.
Greetings from a mall!
This is the first of a series of videos I'll be coming out with on Tuesdays
Let's call them:
"Language Tuesdays"!
On Tuesdays I'll be posting videos about different subjects having to do with languages
and hopefully they'll also be in various languages.
Today, I want to tell you guys about
an interesting experience I've had here.
It was something totally new for me.
I went to a see a speech therapist for my Russian!
When one thinks of a speech therapist, for the most part someone comes to mind who works with native speakers
of a certain language who have difficulties pronouncing certain things.
Because of this, I was a bit nervous at first to ask a speech therapist for help
in order to improve my accent, because I thought they might not take me seriously.
However, as it turned out,
there were actually a lot of speech therapists
who were willing to help me out.
And that was great!
How did I ever come up with the idea to go to a speech therapist here in St. Petersburg?
Well, I got this idea from someone
who held a talk a few months in Bratislava about his experience with learning Russian.
He was American, and I was really confused when I heard him talk for the first time,
because his Russian pronunciation was amazing!
He spoke entirely without an accent,
and at first, I was convinced
that he was Russian.
At any rate, he told us
that when he lived in Russia,
he went to a speech therapist
they worked together
and gradually, he began losing his foreign accent in Russian.
So I thought to myself:
"I could do that, too!"
"Just like he did."
A few months later,
I moved to St. Petersburg and-
like pretty much anyone who speaks a foreign language-
I wanted to get rid of my accent.
So I did an internet search,
and I found a few different places.
So let me give you an idea
of how this all went down.
My first lesson was the more expensive of the two.
It cost about 1800 Rubles
it might have been 1700, 1900-
I don't remember exactly-
around 1800.
Compared with prices in other countries
that's really a good deal.
It cost about 30 Euros.
But in Russia, of course, that pretty expensive.
And for me, as a student, it also wasn't very cheap.
Nonetheless, I still wanted to try it out,
so I took the bus to their office,
and had my very first speech therapy session!
The speech therapist was a professional-
Something I'm always going to remember, now,
about Russian-
is something she told me:
"Russians speak with their lips."
Then, she went on to tell me
that I talk more with my jaw.
I guess I just move my jaw to much when I speak
and because of that, my pronunciation is different than that of a Russian speaker.
It really was very interesting.
One of the techniques she used was
she had me stick a chopstick in my mouth
and told me to speak
and I wasn't about to move my jaw up and down
because I had a Chinese chopstick clenched between my teeth!
It honestly really helped, and I even felt the difference.
Now, when I'm just talking freely,
I try to think to not move my jaw to much,
but of course, sometimes I still mess up.
Afterwards, we read a children's book,
and she took notes on my pronunciation.
To summarize the lesson:
It really was very professional,
but a bit to expensive for my taste.
Anyways, after the lesson, I search for a new speech therapist with better prices
and I ended up finding a tutor.
My second lesson cost 1000 Rubles.
that's around 16...
yeah, around 16 Euros.
Of course it was a bit different than the first one-
she didn't have her own office, so we met at a coffee shop.
One of the first things I noticed that was a sort of red flag
was that she said in Russian,
on the letters "O" and "A" change their pronunciation depending on their location in the word.
This is an obvious phenomenon,
like in the word "слово", which isn't pronounced as "sloh-voh", but rather "sloh-vah".
I already new this basic fact about pronuncation, though, of course.
She went on then, to say that the rest of the vowels
are always pronounced exactly the same.
That isn't correct, though.
For example, the word "январь" (yanvar', "January")
it is written as "yan-var",
but as far as I know, everyone says "yin-var"
She did help me, though.
For example, she explained the difference between the sounds "byu" and "b'yu"
like "ub'yu" (I kill), ya ub'yu tebya (I'm going to kill you)
The sound "byu", on the other hand, is pronounced with no pause.
She told me that when I speak,
the pause I take in between those letters is too long.
So,
for example, I might say "govor'yu",
instead of "govoryu" (I speak)
Finding out about that was pretty helpful.
The word "bel'yo" (laundry) is also a good example.
Between these two syllables
there also has to be a small pause.
So don't just go from the first syllable to the second.
It has to be said like "bil. yo."
That was something I had never thought about before.
So let's sum it all up:
A few days after my second speech therapy session, I talked to one of my uni professors
about the fact that I had already been to two separate speech therapists,
and she went on to say that
it may be helpful for me,
but for really great results, I should work with a "phoneticist".
So what the heck is a "phoneticist"?
It's a person who doesn't just deal with the pronunciation of individual letters and sounds,
but also how the sound within words
surrounded by other letters, and how they sound within entire sentences.
This is due to the fact that a foreign accent
doesn't just come from mispronouncing certain letters,
it also has to do with syllable stress, intonation,
and, especially in Russian, the reduction of sounds.
In Russian, one doesn't say "ridukts-I-YA" (reduction)
but rather "ridukts"yuh"
or you don't say "Na-be-rezh-na-ya" (waterfront of a river)
but rather simply "na-b'-rezh-ney"
not "slyeh-du-shai-ya oh-stah-nov-ka" (next bus stop)
but instead "slye-d'-shayi ah-st'-nov-kuh"
This is most likely something that you Russians would never even think about,
but for me as a non-native who is learning Russian,
it is very helpful
when someone explains to me word for word how the pronunciation of these words works.
"in Russian, it's like this,
and you have to do it this way."
Working with a speech therapist isn't alway going to be in the cards for students,
especially if you live in a country other than Russia,
because Russia is a lot cheaper than, for example,
-services like this are a lot cheaper than, for example, in Germany,
or in Europe in general.
A great alternative I could recommend is just working with friends,
or with a language exchange partner.
since both a free options, which is awesome for students.
Anyways, thanks so much for watching-
If you enjoyed it,
I'd be really happy if you gave it a "thumbs up".
So did I end up getting rid of my accent in Russian?
If you speak Russian, you'll have noticed that, unfortunately, this in not yet the case.
But there's still hope!
I think my pronunciation's improved a lot since I moved to St. Petersburg about 3 1/2 months ago.
It's going to keep on getting better, too!
So,
who knows what it's going to be like in a few years? :)
So let me ask the Russian speakers, now:
What do you think is the most noticeable thing about my accent?
What should I do to lessen or improve my accent in Russian?
I look forward to find out what you guys have to say about that!
I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who's also gone to a speech therapist-
whether for speech impediments in their native language,
or perhaps even in a foreign language like I did.
How was it and did it help?
Until next time!
Bye!
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