Pronunciation Diary

Dear Diary,

I hope Frank doesn't want me to write an actual diary entry because well, who the hell would talk to a book?! Those people should really try to make friends...or hire a shrink. And a "pronunciation diary" sounds even more illogical...to learn the right way to pronounce things by not talking to an actual person but to a book...Hm...He's probably just checking if I do anything at all, besides studying for PCs in front of PCs.

Time to talk about pronunciation...or is it "pronounciation"... there is no "autocorrect" function, but I still knew that there is no "ou" sound like in the verb "to pronounce", because I heard it more than once. The English language is packed with all sorts of unexpected and sometimes even unnecessary ways of pronunciation depending on the type of word (noun, verb, adjective), its origin (French, German, Slavic etc.) and on the combination of vowels. Once you get the hang of it I think it is possible to mispronounce only one out of a hundred, but this last one percent is made up of a category I like to call "you guess'ems" (I hope i spelled it right even if it is a word creation) because you really need to know these words and their pronunciation by heart. Sometimes even English native speakers struggle with one or the other. This problem has two possible sources: Either the native speaker really doesn't know the correct way to pronounce the word, or that there is more than one commonly accepted way to do so. This brings me to my second topic: accents.
The most widely spoken second language is of course also the one with the most different accents.
The best known accents in English (not counting the native ones) are the Italian one, the Asian one (mostly India) the Spanish one and of course "se german one". It is even possible to clearly distinguish between the origins of native speakers because of their often strong accents. For example: proper British gentlemen sound nothing like Rednecks from the Deep South, like Alabama. I'm trying not to sound to offensive, so if you still judge watch the video I linked below. (even if you don't watch it ;) !!!)

Video 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKcJ-0bAHB4

A real Scotsman from the hills of Aberdeen sounds nothing like a maple syrup slurping Canadien.

Video2/3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5WizElFlDc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE951FDvQfU

It's haf past 10 pm. and I still have to do some French stuff so this is it for my first "entry" in this diary.