But I'd love to have a perfect west coast American accent when I speak english. Having learned a few other languages myself, it feels pretty good when you can surprise a native.
Anybody that went through that process of improving their accent with a tutor or on their own could share their learnings on it?
I deliberately trained myself to speak with a neutral American accent - probably what you mean by a West Coast accent - by watching particular actors and practicing - in private - speaking like them. In particular, for me, it was John Malkovich, who has perfect diction and enunciation.
This was in my teens and it took a couple of years, but it paid off. Nobody can tell where I'm from now, though people mostly assume California. I still say "y'all" but I say it with no Texan drawl, which sounds a bit odd to people, I think.
Just find people who speak the way you want to speak and watch them, listen to them, try to repeat things they say until you've got the accent down. At first it'll seem embarrassing, even if you're alone, and you'll find yourself feeling like a pretentious poseur for a while, but eventually you won't. It'll just be how you speak English.
As a non-native speaker, it's funny to me that some people think they don't have an accent. An accent is just the way you talk, if you speak, you have an accent.
What everyone seems to think an accent is, is "this person has a different accent from mine, therefore they have an accent".
It's like seeing a blond person for the first time in your life and saying "it never occurred to me I had a hair color".
A relative grew up in Minnesota but moved to Dallas as a young adult and ended up with a mixture — now there was an accent! (The MN part is now more or less gone.)
We say it in Western Massachusetts, but it's clipped, more like "Can I help yal?"
“Ya’ll” is linguistically necessary in English since the word “ye” was deprecated.
A common alternative to remove ambiguity between singular and plural “you” in some parts of the US is “you guys”.
Ye is a second-person, plural, personal pronoun (nominative), spelled in Old English as "ge". [0]
The word thou is a second-person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in most contexts by the word you. [1]
We deprecated ye and thou, but it’s the latter that “requires” y’all, because only thou (relative to us still having you) distinguishes the number of people.
Edit: put another way, “thou/thee is the one with number” meant that reintroducing them would create a number distinction.
that said, i wouldn't even worry about your accent. oftentimes, it's a great piece of conversation fodder, and a connection to your past that you take with you where ever you go.
When I started doing stand up comedy 12 years ago I realized I needed to work on my accent[1].
Here are some tips,
Pronunciation of english sounds is influenced by your first language.
Understand phonetics.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/fohull/a_yea...
Follow the links to Pronunciation: Basics, prosody and phonetics on the page above and understand how sounds are made.
If you don't understand the mechanics of tongue position, lip shapes, where the sound originates (front of the mouth or back of the throat) then you may not be able make the right sound.
If you can spend money get expert help (speech therapist, though I haven't done this personally).
Practice. Speaking involves physical muscles so practice those muscles.
Record yourself and listen ( after a few days). Observe pronunciations that need to be fixed and repeat.
In time, the mechanics of tongue position, lip shapes etc., will become subconscious and you will not have to worry about this consciously and you will speak naturally.
1. Most recent stand up comedy performance. https://youtu.be/845a6wyO5h0
How did you learn to physically make the sound? How much time did you spend practicing daily?
Thanks so much for the advice. I too hope to do stand up one day.
For some aspects of phonetics I found this book helpful,
https://www.google.com/books/edition/American_Accent_Trainin...
Also, I had help from friends in the comedy world sometimes. I would ask them if I am saying a word right before going on stage.
It took many years but that's because I had to learn it without any books. I was willing to become a child and look like an idiot for a long time.
If I had to do it all over again I would invest time in learning phonetics.
If the goal to for people to understand you ( vs sounding like a native speaker). I would focus more on the flow and the music of the language. Unfortunately this is cultural and can only be picked up passively through cultural immersion. You cannot pick this up as an outsider.
btw, your standup was really funny, kudos for putting yourself out there like that. That's amazing.
https://youtu.be/wBuA589kfMg In this video at 4:28 she demonstrates these “r-controlled” vowels (I was wondered what they were called).
This one has a fuller explanation of “r-colored” vowels and even gets into what makes “ir” in bird even more unique. https://youtu.be/GbLcJ1G6Fiw
But then, these are the types of sounds that are different by region, like the “paak the cah” example you said for Boston, certain southern accents, let alone other countries (England RP etc) which are often non-rhotic.
I enjoyed your standup talking about pronouncing emoji and banana, and about emoji finally letting us let out our feelings. :) I checked out your other clips. I guess the one you linked here is unlisted.
Edit: It might be easy to pick up accents maybe because I know 5 languages and also I'm a teenager and not an adult.
Note : I'm also south Indian who has never been outside the country but I can tell if it's a southern accent or a Midwestern accent or an upper class coastal accent.
I haven't deliberately picked up new English accents, but I've taken formal classes in Spanish, making conscious efforts to imitate the phonemes of native speakers.
I would say that consistency will count for a lot in choosing your dialogue coach. Every year I had a new teacher; the first was Mexican, the second was American, and the third was from Barcelona! So, I was faced with deciding which accent(s) to learn and how to distinguish them and how to avoid mixing them all together. So, identify your target culture, and articulate that to your prospective coach so that you're on the same page, and try not to change coaches once you've settled into a relationship.
So you'll soon find out that there is not one "West Coast American accent", although there may be fewer of those than British English has produced. Growing up, I learned how to communicate with Valley Girls, surfers, CEOs, computer geeks, vatos, Crips, Bloods, goths, rivet-heads, Christians, pagans... well, you get the picture!
And before anyone objects and says those aren't accents, "surprising a native speaker" will involve vocabulary, grammar and syntax as much as the phonemes and inflection. So the OP has a broad definition of "accent" in mind.
Accent Reduction for Non-Native Speakers of English
What I observe about most native English speakers who try to learn a tonal language is that they don’t really do the tones, but it isn’t because they aren’t capable. It’s because it feels silly or wrong to sing when you’re supposed to be talking.
I’ve also noticed I have friends with, for example, an Italian accent who can mimic my English pronunciation pretty closely if they want to mock me.
I think many people are pretty good at mimicry, but they probably keep their accent because doing it differently feels like they are being someone else, or they just feel silly or wrong doing it.
So I guess I say, tutors are great. Also maybe just mess around with mimicking speakers you want to sound like and put aside whatever identity you have subconsciously tied to how you currently speak? Especially try not to think about how words are spelled. Just mimic the sounds.
My problem with tones is mostly that they are hard to remember.
But I think you have a point that sometimes it feels silly. Especially if you learn with non-native with others who have the same bad accent as you, you don't want to stand out as the one who tries too hard.
Another issue is when the language you learn use the same alphabet. For instance, if you're French learning English, you're tempted to read the English words with your French accent.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/business/worldbusiness/05...
speech AI moves fast these days, maybe we can have a chatbot focusing on accents, in fact I have been thinking about this for a startup idea for a few weeks myself.
You learn IPA as a tool for discussing sentences and get someone whose mouth you can watch closely without freaking them out and who will watch and understand your mouth position well and provide immediate feedback.
For some language transitions though you have to start out retraining your brain to hear sound distinctions before you can hope to produce them. The L-R distinction in English, for example, is particularly hard for Japanese speakers because they can't hear that there are two sounds.
It can also be very helpful to enlist a native speaker with the target accent who is a coworker. Basically give them permission to tell you after every conversation what you said that wasn't in the target accent.
Secondly: I sang for 10-15 years, quite often in German, Italian, French, Latin, and a few others. In the community opera I was in the chorus with, they always had a diction coach, so we didn't sound like a bunch of Americans ("tutti" isn't "tood-ee", it's "toot-tee"). I'm sure that to a native speaker, we still did, but at least the effect wasn't comical.
Lastly: a shout-out to native French speakers. Is it even common for an American to lose their American accent, especially one over the age of 35? I read somewhere about a class in Paris where the teacher had you speak while holding a pencil in your mouth (sideways); I forget what exactly that was supposed to drill into you.
This is definitely a strategy for teaching the French “r”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrjMJ_PAlB8
It turned out right though, since I recently moved to France. It makes learning pronunciation _much_ easier. My r is already perfect.
I'm a native English speaker, but have modified my accent for teaching international students, to be better understood. I did it by interacting with small classes and individuals, and paying attention to their level of confusion/understanding. I had been explaining the same subject matter to native speakers for years, so could have a reasonable guess at whether confusion was caused by language or content.
An accent coach is certainly a good investment, but it helps to be specific about you're goals. Doing so will save you money in the long run. "Sounding native" depends on time, location, and association as much as it does on enunciation. You may know this already, but the West Coast is a big place. Just as the accents of most Englishman aren't solely split between the * Made in Chelsea* crowd and Sir Humphrey Appleby, there is no monolithic West Coast accent.
[1] Trivia: many cartoons are recorded and animated in and around Burbank
The thing is to speak clearly and don’t rush the words.
Try to enunciate each word slowly and carefully and first and you will not have a problem.
I love hearing accents. The diversity and genuineness of them are amazing and that’s what makes travel awesome.
I felt like an active repeater cleaning up the signal.
Here's a comment that I made, a couple of months ago, about someone that I used to work with[0].
I also remember the testimony of Fiona Hill[1]. If you know anything about her, she is seriously credentialed. Heavy duty The Real Deal.
She testified about how she came to the US, because she couldn't catch a break in the UK, with her "distinctive Northern accent."
Me mum[2] was raised by Scouse (Liverpool), and her parents went well out of their way to make sure she talked "posh." Worked a charm, but it was a pain for us sprogs, because she was constantly correcting grammar we'd use ;).
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31567522
- American Accent Training – it’s an audio book. Lots of great advice.
- Accent’s Way on YouTube. She’s an Israeli who taught herself the American accent to a complete perfection. You wouldn’t tell. Lots of information and motivation!
Her oldest video is 12 years ago and I couldn't personally tell if she's just talented at mimicking sound from a young age or if she transitioned from a thick accent to a natural American accent.
We tried the card game version with a room full of native "American" English speakers... but I first learned English in "Deep South" USA. Another player was Latina from Los Angeles...
It was very interesting: I discovered that I could hear vowels that they could not. They think they pronounce "o" in "orange" about the same as "o" in dog. While Southern USA would say "ahringe dawg", but we can also pronounce a more neutral "orange" but it's not the same as a West Coast standard accent.
I used to be really into these distinctions, trying to place people on the map from their choice of words and accent.
If you like this sort of thing, want to learn a new way to experience English accents, you might like the Color Vowel Chart:
Aim for something more neutral, like what you hear from national newscasters. No one will think about a neutral accent, but if you start saying "hella" and "stoked," it might be cringy. Or you say "The 101 was hella slow today," and every native Californian will know what's up.
Dude, hella is way norcal, and "the 101" is way socal; gonna stick out when you mix them like that.
The huge mistake I hear non natives make all the time is to incorrectly pronounce things like they're spelled. Eg pronouncing the "b" in "debt" (it's actually pronounced just "det" in every dialect), or pronouncing "says" with the same vowel as "say" (it's actually more like "sez" in most accents.)
There are zillions of other examples - I can't give you a list of words to be aware of, but I'm sure that someone somewhere must have compiled a good list.
I've known people who didn't focus on English who still had barely-detectable or undetectable accents, and I've known people who dedicated their lives to learning languages and never lost their accents.
My observation is that there are some people who can hear and imitate easily and naturally, some who can if they focus on it and try hard, and some who probably can't at all. There is a direct correlation with music, I believe. If you can hear a pitch and sing it, there's a good chance you can also imitate a native speaker relatively easily.
I'm not here to discourage anyone though. I tell my children that their brain is just as good as anyone else's. Even though some people are naturally better at certain things than other people, if you work harder than they do, you will be able to exceed them in most cases.
So the final word, the TLDR: practice, practice, practice is the way to learn to speak with or without an accent.
2. Squeeze your nose with your fingers and talk
3. Keep your chin up. Literally and figuratively
I am only half joking. Proper English is very the opposite of how I was taught to speak my native Bulgarian. I can do it well enough but still feels completely unnatural even after all these years. Especially weird because we were exposed to so much US English on TV while my teachers were doing the British one.
Take this too far and you'll sound like you're from Boston or Long Island.
---
[1] The 50-ish miles around Greater London.
[2] I don't really blame them to be honest.
My perspective was growing up in southern England (Devon and Somerset) and going to first public school and then private school (known as state and public schools in UK respectively). My Dad decided to send me to private school when I started developing a strong local Devon accent that he didn't like. At private school I learned "BBC english" that has a certain non-regional accent. For fun we used to imitate various regional accents - Devon, Somerset, London/cockney, Birmingham, Newcastle/Geordie, Yorkshire, Scottish, Irish are the main ones I remember. Later at age 23 I emigrated to USA and was immediately exposed to my boss's Brooklyn accent as well as generic NJ/east coast accent. Later moved to the midwest for 10 years and then the west coast, but by that time it was too late and I still retain what Americans consider a British accent, but which Brits now consider distinctly American.
We made a recording before we started and additional records over the length of the course, and I cannot believe how much more pleasant and American-y I sound now.
It kind of gives confidence I never had before when speaking English.
If you’re interested, I can give a referral. My mail is in profile.
However I come across from Northern India and have a strong mother tongue influence. Any general tips for me to switch to US or UK accents?
These days recording tech is all around. But study and repeat. Ask friendly people to correct you (at appropriate times) - most won't!
The generic way to perfectly learn a local dialect of any language is to:
- live there, have local friends, coworkers etc
- get an accent coach
- check if there's a good linguist specializing in the transition from your native language/accent/dialect to the target one (for me there was this guy https://www.youtube.com/c/PhoneticFanatic who is excellent at explaining things in depth, but his channel might not be useful for others)
On a separate note, if you feel you need to change your accent to fit in, perhaps the people you feel would appreciate hearing you speak in a different accent are not worth the effort of fitting in with?
Although I do understand the desire to fit in or not be judged differently (especially with the number of mean/bigoted people out there)
I had a housemate a few years ago who had normally a very Yorkshire accent, but for career reasons had been taking RP lessons and sounded like a BBC presenter.
Apparently its pretty common in some professions to take such lessons.
Is it something you wanted to change about yourself and did you or do you wish you could have?
Did people bully you for it?
Asking because I will be bringing a step son to the US and I’m wondering if we should try to correct his accent or not.
Though my experience may be vastly outdated. And it all depends on your environment. What kind of school would your child go to? Would it be a diverse school? Are kids more exposed to things now, so that accents won’t be so much of a big deal?
Either way, I think it would benefit to try and correct your kid’s accent. It would help them with pronunciation and help others understand them better. It may help them feel more confident in speaking.
If its a foreign language, depending which one, it could well be more hassle than its worth to try to get a "perfect" accent.
Whichever way, you should be prepared to invest a lot of time to it, especially if you are hoping to be able to fluently switch between accents. Its unlikely to be something you can master in a couple of weeks.
> I'd love to have a perfect west coast American accent when I speak english
Author failed to say what their present accent is. I enjoy regional accents; I find it sad that people would want to dispose of their heritage, and adopt some neutral "white-bread" speaking style instead.
People's accents change through immersion. My parents lived in Liverpool, but sent me away to school. But my sister went to school in Liverpool, and began to acquire a scouse twang. I hated it, because I thought it was put on; I don't think that any more. She was just talking the way her schoolfriends talked.
So I think the best way to acquire a particular speaking style is to hang around exclusively with people who talk the way you want to talk. In particular, it seems to me that hiring elocution tutors from Mexico and Spain respectively, can't be a good idea. My guess is that the author is hispanic.
I've seen this "immersion drift" in accents many times. I've even done it myself; when living in London as a youth, I started talking in a sort of mockney street style. It wasn't deliberate, or even conscious; in fact when I realised it was happening, it embarrassed me.
The trouble is that there's real benefits for having certain accents and you can't fault someone for wanting to be seen in a different way.
As an aside, for a laugh do you ever ask your sister to get you some "chghicken and chgan of cghoke" /s