Teach Yourself Accents The British Isles

(Limelight). Do you need to learn an English or Irish accent quickly, or do you have plenty of time? Either way, Teach Yourself Accents The British Isles: A Handbook for Young Actors and Speakers is for you: an easy-to-use manual full of clear, cogent advice and fascinating information. Contemporary monologues and scenes for two are included, and audio tracks feature extensive practice exercises. Perfect for the young acting student, the book will help anyone beginning a study of accents to get a rapid handle on the subject and use any accent immediately, with an authentic sound. More experienced actors who need an authoritative quick guide for an audition or for role preparation will find it equally useful, as will speakers who want to improve a specific accent or liven up a presentation with an apt anecdote. This first volume of the new Teach Yourself Accents series by Robert Blumenfeld, author of the best-selling Accents: A Manual for Actors , covers upper- and middle-class English accents (British Received Pronunciation), London accents, and English provincial accents (Midlands and Yorkshire), as well as Welsh, Scottish, and several Irish accents. Train your ears to hear, and your vocal muscles to respond, and you can do any accent!

Covers the European accents most useful for the stage and screen: French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Yiddish. The most important features of each accent are detailed, enabling the actor to begin immediately to sound authentic, and Mr. Blumenfeld's unique approach makes the accents easily comprehensible. The incisive, succinct introduction to studying any accent is useful above and beyond the specific details of the accents covered here. The book provides a wealth of references to films where the reader can listen to authentic examples of the accents, and information as to what roles require the accents.

Offers advice and key details in bringing North American accents to life, including the Southern U.S. regional accents, Caribbean islands accents, and Canadian accents.

The third volume in dialect coach Robert Blumenfeld's new series on accents, Teach Yourself Accents: Europe, A Handbook for Young Actors and Speakers covers the European accents most useful for the stage and screen: French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Yiddish. The most important features of each accent are detailed, enabling the actor to begin immediately to sound authentic, and Mr. Blumenfeld's unique approach makes the accents easily comprehensible. The incisive, succinct introduction to studying any accent is useful above and beyond the specific details of the accents covered here. The book provides a wealth of references to films where the reader can listen to authentic examples of the accents, and information as to what roles require the accents. There are extensive practice exercises, included in the accompanying audio, as well as a selection of monologues and scenes. All of this makes the book not only a perfect guide for the young acting student but also an authoritative reference for more experienced actors and for speakers of all levels.

Paperback w/CD

Are you doing a play by Tennessee Williams? Or one of David Mamet's plays set in Chicago? Need to learn a Southern or Boston or New York or Caribbean Islands accent quickly, or do you have plenty of time? Then Teach Yourself Accents – North America: A Handbook for Young Actors and Speakers is for you: an easy-to-use manual full of clear, cogent advice and fascinating information. Contemporary monologues and scenes for two are included, and audio tracks feature extensive practice exercises. Perfect for the young acting student, the book will help anyone beginning a study of accents to get a rapid handle on the subject and use any accent immediately, with an authentic sound. More experienced actors who need an authoritative quick guide for an audition or for role preparation will find it equally useful, as will speakers who want to improve a specific accent or liven up a presentation with an apt anecdote. This second volume of the new Teach Yourself Accents series by Robert Blumenfeld, author of the best-selling Accents: A Manual for Actors, covers General American, the most widely used accent of Standard American English, as well as Northern and Southern regional accents, AAVE (African-American Vernacular English), Hispanic, Caribbean Islands, and Canadian English and French accents.

Accents of English is about the way English is pronounced by different people in different places. Volume 1 provides a synthesizing introduction, which shows how accents vary not only geographically, but also with social class, formality, sex and age; and in volumes 2 and 3 the author examines in greater depth the various accents used by people who speak English as their mother tongue: the accents of the regions of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland (volume 2), and of the USA, Canada, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Black Africa and the Far East ( volume 3). Each volume can be read independently, and together they form a major scholarly survey, of considerable originality, which not only includes descriptions of hitherto neglected accents, but also examines the implications for phonological theory. Readers will find the answers to many questions: Who makes 'good' rhyme with 'mood'? Which accents have no voiced sibilants? How is a Canadian accent different from an American one, a New Zealand one from an Australian one, a Jamaican one from a Barbadian one? What are the historical reasons for British-American pronunciation differences? What sound changes are currently in progress in New York, in London, in Edinburgh? Dr Wells his written principally for students of linguistics, phonetics and English language, but the motivated general reader will also find the study both fascinating and rewarding.

The grim tale dramatized in these pages, while it may strain credibility, is undeniably and unfortunately true. Its horrible events took place in 1818 in one of the most unlikely settings for such a saga on the face of the earth: the picturesque French provincial village of Morève in the Loiret département on the post road one hundred and thirty-five kilometers southwest of Paris, and its surrounding countryside: a complacent, prosperous backwater of tenant farms, orchards, and vineyards. As any of the populace would have been happy to tell you, this is a place where “nothing ever happens, thank goodness”; that is, nothing until suddenly people start disappearing, and bodies are discovered of people and animals who appear to have been murdered by vampires, throwing the district into fear and panic. At this point, Raoul Champfleury returns from Boston, where his aristocratic family had fled during the French Revolution, to his ancestral chateau of Morève—successfully reclaimed by the family under the Bourbon Restoration—for a prolonged visit with his mother, Dowager Countess Régine-Rosemonde, and his destructive brother and sister-in-law, the tyrannical Count and Countess of Morève, religious fanatics pursuing their futile but abusive efforts to convert the dowager countess from her entrenched atheism. Raoul is accompanied by his lifelong friend, Christophe Béranger, whose family had fled Morève with the Champfleurys. Before they know it, they are caught up together with the town’s mayor, lawyer Maître Littré, and the village’s one policeman, the intelligent and resourceful Pierre Dupont, in trying to solve the mysteries. What they discover horrifies them beyond words.