El. knyga: Teach Yourself Accents: North America: A Handbook for Young Actors and Speakers

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.

This book and CD is for acting students and professionals. The first chapter gives background on muscles of the mouth, rhythm and stress patterns, intonation patterns, and phonetics. Later chapters cover the general American accent, the Midwest, the South, African-American vernacular English, Caribbean and Hispanic accents, urban accents of four major cities, and Canadian English and French accents. Each chapter contains monologues and scenes. A list of phonetic symbols will help students interpret instructions for the accents. The CD contains practice exercises. Author Blumenfeld is an audiobook narrator. Limelight Editions is an imprint of Hal Leonard. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

(Limelight). 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 an enclosed CD contains the 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.