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Comment by zwieback | Hacker News Reader

I love TLP but losing your accent is easier said than done. I started learning English when I was a few years old and I've lived in the US for 22 years speaking English 99% of the time. My German accent is still clearly there. I'm not sure what it would take at this point but it's not something that happens easily. I listen to the way other people pronounce words but hearing your own accent is hard.

Interestingly, my kids claim they can't really hear my accent, they know I speak a little differently but they don't think I sound like Arnold or Angela.

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I think TLP's accent advice falls squarely into the "fake it until you make it" category - like becoming a confident presenter by impersonating somebody confident when you get on stage. It's not that if you try hard your accent will go away, it's more that you (consciously) do an impression of the accent you're learning. So if you're studying German you go full Ahhhnold.

I didn't read that TLP column until I was mostly fluent in my second language, but in retrospect I think it's spot on (and one of his best - he can be a little hit or miss).

This is a big stumbling block for Swedes trying to speak Danish (which is a very similar language grammatically, but pronounced quite differently). Going "all in" reminds many people too much of Swedish comedians making fun of how Danish sounds, so they worry they'll sound mocking if they speak like that. So, many will try for a less "exaggerated" Danish accent instead, which ends up not sounding very Danish at all. Doing the Swedish-comedian-impersonating-Danish accent is actually a decent place to start, but it just sounds wrong and borderline offensive to Swedish ears to try it.

I don't think it actually matters whether you're any good at the impersonation - the point is to convince your brain that you're creating a new persona, rather than trying to change your existing one. (An overarching theme of TLP's writings is how extraordinarily good the brain is at insulating itself from change.)

There are actors that grew up in many different countries you have seen in movies that pass just fine as americans. But it's impractical for most folks to work with a dialect coach for years, but it clearly is possible. And outside of LA the demand for dialect coaches is almost zero.

My father grew up in a very rural part of the U.S. and had a very rural accent as a result (all his brothers still do). When he moved to Chicago as a young adult, he realized the social stigmas attached to his accent were hurting him and he set about to get rid of it. I'm not quite sure how he did it, he says he just read the dictionary and practiced the pronunciation guides for each word. But it was pretty total, he can't affect his native accent anymore even when he tries.

Here on the East Coast, there's actually quite a few dialect coaches who make their living teaching Asian immigrants how to pronounce all those terrible English 'L' and 'R' sounds (among others) they struggle with. The immigrant community here is pretty large, and the desire to succeed is very high (and their accents are often seen as barriers to success, often rightly so), so there's actually a fairly robust accent/dialect industry here.

At least for some people it's easy to pick up accents (even for languages she doesn't actually speak, she just speaks gibberish): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw

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