Customer Reviews

Dialect Monologues (Vol 1)

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I own nearly all of Dr. Stern's Accent/Dialog books and tapes, including "Dialolect Monologues" I and II and over 20 of his individual accent/dialect tapes (example: Acting With an Accent/Norwegian & Swedish). While I do feel that it is worthwhile to own Dr. Stern's tapes in order to complete one's libary of accent/dialogue books and tapes, I do not feel that Dr. Stern's tapes are the best of the bunch. If I could only choose one author's accent/dialogue tapes I would not choose Dr. Stern's. Dr. Stern's system has several flaws. The first flaw is that Dr. Stern is a "one man band", meaning the only voice you will ever hear is Dr. Stern's. By contrast, two of the three other accent/dialect systems I own include lots of recordings of actual natives speaking the dialects. The second flaw is that Dr. Stern chooses dialects that bias towards educated middle class. For example, his tape on New York City accent does not teach the normal Brooklyn/Bronx dialect of the "Dese and doze, toity toid street" variety, but instead uses as his standard a sort of mildly Jewish middle class Manhattan accent as the single dialect he teaches on the tape. Similarly, his tape on the Polish dialect sounds so sanitized and educated that its really hard to tell what accent it is other than being mildly European and educated. Similarly, his Italian tape is of a European, educated person instead of the lower class Italian that one would expect to hear included on a tape devoted to Italian. A third and severe flaw in Dr. Stern's single-dialect tapes is that he repeats every exercize first in standard American and pauses for the student to repeat it, and then says the word or sentence in the dialect and pauses for the student to repeat it in the dialect. This effectively wastes about a quarter of the tape, as it doesn't teach anything to hear and repeat the words/sentences in standard american. A forth flaw is that Dr. Stern is obsessed with his pet theory that each dialect must resonate from a unique portion of the mouth cavity. Dr. Stern wastes from ten to twenty minutes of each of his hour long single-dialect tapes going on and on about the point of resonance of the dlalect. This is mind-numbingly boring to hear more than once, so one ends up fast forwading through it when listening on subsequent ocasions. The two accent/dialect systems that I recommend are not currently offered by Amazon so I will not give their names. Hopefully at some point Amazon will expand their selection of accent/dialect tapes. It would also be extremely useful if Amazon had a cross reference system in place so that one could show all video tapes or recordings that, say, give examples of a Cockney accent, an Irish accent, etc. For example, the 1938 video of Shaw's Pygmalian is an excellent example of Cockney, but one must figure this out on one's own as Amazon does not list videos by the accent/dialects they use.

It is amazing that a supposed authority on accents, Dr. Stern, would be associated with this book (and especially the cassette that goes with it.). He is - allegedly - a dialect coach to the Stars. It may explain some of the atempts at foreign accents that have recently come out of Hollywood. The accents on the cassette are nothing short of embarrassing - A cringe a minute. I asked a fellow actor to listen to the French accent and guess what it was: He guessed Spanish! If you want a first rate book on accents, buy Robert Blumenfeld's "Accents - A Manual for Actors". Now where do I go to get my money back?...

This is a good source for those already familiar with the dialects contained therein. David Alan Stern is obviously a very talented man who is capable of accurately portraying different accents. All sounded authentic to me, although once in a while the Boston and Irish dialects sounded a bit put on to me (but seeing as how he has a doctorate in speech, Dr. Stern probably has more of an ear for authentic dialects than I do). The book also contains some helpful hints (though if you're learning the dialect for the first time, I would recommend his tape series, Acting With An Accent or Robert Blumenfeld's Accents, A Manuel for Actors. All in all, the book and the tape are very helpful in allowing one to hear the rhythm of different accents as well as speech patterns and vowel and consonant substitutions.

I recently bought the CD version of this, and I am compelled to warn people who are thinking of buying this. If you are at a;; serious about learning dialects, do NOT buy this CD. ... A high school drama student would have done a superior job. You would be better off learning dialects from the Simpsons or Saturday Night Live. This is not an exaggeration, this is a flat out warning. Don't waste your money. ... Pygmalion is old school cockney. Not modern. You want authentic Cockney? Try "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Love, Honor and Obey." They're the best. "Scum" and "The Krays" are also pretty good. And that's on the authority of a real cockney girl (my girlfriend).

I enjoyed the introductory material, but the "meat" of the product is supposed to be to train a person in 13 different "dialects". First problem: the actor doing the readings does NOT seem to have gotten very familiar with the monologues before doing this recording. There are notable slips and pauses while he seems to be interpreting the characters on the spot. Second problem: The actor seems to be doing precisely what the monologue author has advised us NOT to do - rather than the voices sounding natural, it sounds like the actor has lifted his voice half an octave (because, after all, he's "in character now", right??) and his expressive efforts frequently interfere with our understanding of the accents themselves. What we need are multiple readings and interpretations. Third: the problem is never resolved about the fact that any "dialect" has a whole range of sounds included within it, and that authentic dialects often sound much different from the movie versions most people think of, OR the versions we're offered on this tape. So the problem is that, having known actual German and Irish and Italian folks... what I have heard from them bears little resemblance to what I hear on this tape. Sometimes the "stereotyped" accents are much more true to life than what we hear on this tape. Fourth, the tape includes American dialects: Texan, Chicago, New York, Boston. Besides my comment above about the range of sounds to be heard within any dialect, it is questionable whether some of these are really reflecting a distinct dialect anymore. I've lived my whole life in the Milwaukee-Chicago-Detroit-Buffalo dialect zone that the tape describes and I've talked to a lot of people both rural and urban (grew up in Metro Detroit, friends from those three other big cities, and my job regularly takes me to every corner of Michigan), and what we're given as a dialect for my region just doesn't sound familiar at all. I do not hear it either in my own voice nor anyone I know or can remember meeting. Even if such a voice exists here somewhere, what's the point of developing a dialect that is so rare it can't even be recognized by natives?

I would consider reading more by the monologue author, who seems to have good advice to give. But this product is totally sabotaged by the use of one actor giving one take on the monologues, with no specific instruction about the choices he made in doing so, and at the same time seeming to violate some of the fundamental principles of dialect acting that we've just been told about in the accompanying booklet!
I suppose I may possibly get some practical use out of this at some point, MAYBE. But... on one listen, I'm not enthusiastic and for the price of $20 it was pretty disappointing!

I am so angry that I spent my money on this useless, non-phonetical, horribly-accented piece of CRAP!
WHY didn't I read the reviews BEFORE I bought it???

This book was a big disappointment. Basically you listen to the accent on the tape and follow along with the monologue in the book; as if the author is saying "ok this is how a French/Boston/Southern/etc. accent sounds like, now you do it." It could be compared to signing up for piano lessons, the teacher coming in and playing the Moonlight Sonata, and saying "that's how piano music sounds, now you do it." To both, I'd answer "I KNOW what it sounds like, if I could just 'do that' then why on earth would I be paying you for a lesson?"
For people like me, that can't just pick up an accent by ear, it would have been very helpful if at least the monologues were written phonetically. Even better, some space could be spent pointing out certain sounds that are unique to the language - stress this sylable, drop that letter... For example, when I've listened to people trying to fake a Southern accent, most of them know to drop the final g in -ing words. When I tell them to try replacing the short e sound with a short i, that's something a little more subtle that they might not have picked up, but when they try it, it works. I'm from the South and I didn't even notice that I did that until a Northerner pointed it out for me.
That leaves the people that can pick up an accent by ear as the group that would get some use from this set. But for them the question would be, Even if the actor does a good job, if you want to learn, say, a British accent, why not get recordings of British people speaking instead?

This item had been withdrawn from the Timberland Regional Library Service Center in Olympia, Washington and it looked like it had been put in the trash. When I buy something at Amazon I expect a quality product. This was a tape and booklet of dialect monologues, library code CAS 792.028,
Karshner 1990.

I am so angry that I spent my money on this useless, non-phonetical, horribly-accented piece of CRAP!
WHY didn't I read the reviews BEFORE I bought it???