Rating: 
Summary: The Accents Are TERRIBLE
Review: This book covers an astonishingly wide range of accents and is packed full of information on vowel and consonant shifts and intonation patterns, but an accent cannot be learned from a book alone. This is where the CD had the potential to be incredibly helpful, but it is instead its biggest flaw.The accents for the British Isles and Australia/New Zealand are, almost without exception awful. At best they are gross caricatures of the accents, at worst they are completely unidentifiable. To his credit he usually lists examples of films to see for examples of the accent, and this is indeed where I would suggest that people start. The accents that he performs are curiously stilted and exaggerated, and to me sound like an accent would sound if learnt from a book. I cannot authoratively comment on the North American accents as I have never lived there for any length of time, but to me even the American accents sounds stilted compared with what I hear in films and on TV. The foreign language accents are more debatable as so much depends on how the person in question has learnt English. I'll give you an example - in the chapter on Australian accents he states that the A sound tends towards an I, so 'day' becomes 'die'. Whilst this is certainly an Australian tendency, it is a subtle shift, and the degree of this shift can only really be ascertained from listening to a native. Simply replacing 'day' with 'die' (as he does on the CD) makes you sound like a caricature. Everybody I've played the CD to has been in fits of laughter. Don't get me wrong, I think there's a lot of useful information in this book, but the CD is very dangerous if anybody thinks that they're hearing authentic accents.
Rating: 
Summary: CD a let down
Review: This book covers an astonishingly wide range of accents and is packed full of information on vowel and consonant shifts and intonation patterns, but an accent cannot be learned from a book alone. This is where the CD had the potential to be incredibly helpful, but it is instead its biggest flaw. The accents for the British Isles and Australia/New Zealand are, almost without exception awful. At best they are gross caricatures of the accents, at worst they are completely unidentifiable. To his credit he usually lists examples of films to see for examples of the accent, and this is indeed where I would suggest that people start. The accents that he performs are curiously stilted and exaggerated, and to me sound like an accent would sound if learnt from a book. I cannot authoratively comment on the North American accents as I have never lived there for any length of time, but to me even the American accents sounds stilted compared with what I hear in films and on TV. The foreign language accents are more debatable as so much depends on how the person in question has learnt English. I'll give you an example - in the chapter on Australian accents he states that the A sound tends towards an I, so 'day' becomes 'die'. Whilst this is certainly an Australian tendency, it is a subtle shift, and the degree of this shift can only really be ascertained from listening to a native. Simply replacing 'day' with 'die' (as he does on the CD) makes you sound like a caricature. Everybody I've played the CD to has been in fits of laughter. Don't get me wrong, I think there's a lot of useful information in this book, but the CD is very dangerous if anybody thinks that they're hearing authentic accents.
Rating:
Summary: Lopsided
Review: This book is great, if you want to learn a British accent -- Blumenfeld dedicates more than eight minutes on the CD to it. Unfortunately for me, I picked it up for Asian accents. Blumenfeld wrote a large paragraph, describing how 'The King & I' demonstrated a lousy Thai accent. Who cares? He then dedicated all of 17 seconds to Thailand on the CD. Many other 'chapters,' are similar. A complete waste of my time and money.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, at best
Review: This book provides interesting history lessons regarding lingual development, and is moreso a great glossary of references (for the full-time linguistics student) than a handbook for actors as it purports to be. It's hard to read what he writes when he "spells" accents, as many of his phonetic symbols rely more on a presumed knowledge of the accents than examples. I've been all over the world, too, and don't find any of the accents on his CD to be convincing for the people I've met and places I've been to. Perhaps his "accents" would be a good representation for the way radio anouncers and news casters who try to minimize accents speak. But that is all.
Rating:
Summary: Comedy
Review: This book should be in the comedy section, while a lot of work have gone into research and the information is useful - the actual accents are terrible!
Americans might think it's okay but I've sat around the table with Australian & English friends and all we can do is laugh.
Please don't take one of these accents overseas and think you'll be taken seriously!!
Rating:
Summary: Quite splendid
Review: Though I was blessed with a natural ability to mimick any accent I hear, this book is an excellent reference for refining any weak spots. I find it very helpful in mastering American accents (I'm a Kiwi!)
Rating:
Summary: The Accents Are TERRIBLE
Review: Though the book is helpful, you need to be able to HEAR accents to practice & learn them. Unfortunately, the accents on these tapes are so inaccurate that you risk being run out of the prospective countries were you to actually try them!
Rating:
Summary: Not Impressed
Review: Unfortunatley, most of the book is simply a description of each langauge and its origins. Towards the end of these descriptions are a pitiful few examples of how to pronounce each accent. I had to return this book for it was did not have enough examples to perfect any one accent.
Rating:
Summary: INCREDIBLE
Review: Wow, when I went looking for a book to help me learn how to do accents I had no idea I'd find this. It seems to cover just about every American accent you could want. The CD that is included with it is invaluable. Within just a few days I was speaking like an English Gentleman. I have been trying to get that accent down for years. I work in a popular cafe here in Hollywood. We get many customers from London. I can even fool them. They ask me what part I'm from. They are amazed when I turn the accent off. Then, just for kicks, I'll start talking like I'm from Kentucky or the Bronx. This book is great for everyone who wants to add spice to their personalities, not just actors. Did I mention I get more dates when I use the accents I learned from this book?
Rating: 
Summary: Some Problems, but Generally an Effective Learning Tool
Review: You will not learn an accent from this book. Let's start with that for a statement of fact. An accent is integrated with the way a person speaks his or her native language. The way a person holds his or her mouth while speaking. This pattern is learned by imitating the sounds of speech a person hears every day between the ages of nine months and three years. To learn an accent, you must master the way the jaw, soft palette, nasal cavity, and tongue are held in speaking with certain accents. That said, you could actually learn how to hold your mouth for an accent by imitating sounds, just like a baby does. It takes more willful effort and study as an adult, but it can be done. And this book will give you the sounds to imitate and the structure to assume. Vocal coach Robert Blumenfeld eschews the lengthy dialect monologues that are usually preferred in textbooks like this one, in favor of practice words and sentences that allow you as speaker to familiarize yourself with the structure of your vocal apparatus. Simple hard work and repetition is the key to achieving any accent accurately, and this book, with accompanying CD, is a good way to go about it. Not everyone will find this book equally useful. Women, for example, will find this book more difficult to work with than men. Though the printed contents are just as useful for women as for men, the audio portion may not be. Blumenfeld presents himself speaking in the accents he's trying to convey. Women will not find it impossible to learn an accent by imitating him, but they will have a harder time creating a more feminine-sounding variant of the accent in question. This is especially true where it comes to certain Khosian accents and the native accents of East and Southeast Asia, where men and women vocalize differently, and accents are inflected according to gender. Likewise, those interested in accents other than Euro-American will be at a loss. These accents are treated very stintingly, and are sometimes lumped together in a broad, unfair manner, as the accents of Africa are. However, it is a simple fact that these accents are less in demand, theatrically, than Euro-American accents, so there's less call to spend precious CD time and print space on them. You may take my experience as representative, moreover, when I tell you that Blumenfeld's book can help you learn accents, but familiarity with this book does not make you a qualified dialect coach. As it turns out, that job is actually profoundly complex, and just because you are able to speak with an accent does not mean you are able to teach it to anyone else. Your best bet is simply to place this book in somebody's hands when they have plenty of time to practice, and wish them the best of luck. Despite these problems, this book remains a fair and valuable introduction to accents. Its structure, though it won't work for everybody, will help most people most of the time in getting the hang of the accent they desire to emulate. Just remember, the most important part of learning a new accent is not memorizing and imitating sounds, but holding your mouth correctly, and this book's method will teach that to you if you're willing to learn.
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