Creative & Culture

How To Lose Your Accent

How To Lose Your Accent

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How to lose your accent: When learning a new language, often the hardest part is not learning the actual words themselves, but learning to pronounce them in a way that sounds like how a native speaker of that language would pronounce them. There are subtle sounds that speakers in one language might make, that someone who speaks a different language would have difficulty hearing and reproducing. By studying and learning these difficult sounds or working with a voice coach, you can have success sounding like a native speaker. Enlarge How to lose your accent: When learning a new language, often the hardest part is not learning the actual words themselves, but learning to pronounce them in a way that sounds like how a native speaker of that language would pronounce them. There are subtle sounds that speakers in one language might make, that someone who speaks a different language would have difficulty hearing and reproducing. By studying and learning these difficult sounds or working with a voice coach, you can have success sounding like a native speaker.

Hello, I am Gareth Jameson. I am an actor and a voice coach from www.londonvoicelessons.

com. Here are some tips for working on your voice. Now an accent is very simply made up of the sounds that are encountered in that language.

So, if you really want to improve your accent in a new language you need to listen very carefully to how they actually pronounce the sound, what shape is their mouth in? Let me give you an example. If you had grown up in France, while you were growing up you would have learned the R sound that they use for the letter r there that you get in words like, tres and erect, it's right at the back of the mouth it's called a uvular trill, R. Now if a French person moves to England and learns English they might speak it wonderfully with beautiful grammar and vocabulary, but it will be very hard for them to lose that R sound.

So instead of saying rain they might say rain (spoken with French accent) with an r. So, for French people what you need to do is listen to the R sound in native like English person and see if you can emulate it give it a try. And if you want to work on your accent, losing it and changing to a native British accent, what you've got to do is do that for every single sound I'm afraid.

It's very hard work. Another sound that people find difficulty with is the "i" in ship as opposed to the "ee" in sheep. "i" and "ee" to really listen.

Can you hear the difference? In some languages there is no difference. So if a Spanish person tries to say ship and sheep they sound the same, sheep. But it's not just the sounds.

It's not just the vowels and consonants you need to work on. The accent that you are trying to take on, the English accent, will have a certain intonation pattern and a certain stress pattern. Let me tell you what I mean.

If you are a native Spanish speaker, then you will be used to speaking a stressed, syllable timed language, excuse me. So that every syllable you speak normally has the same amount of time devoted to it, a very regular rhythm. So that if I say something like, and excuse my bad Spanish here, if I say donde estan los lavabos por favor? It's "d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d" all one like this, clap.

Donde estan los lavabos por favor? But if I say it in English, where are the toilets please? We stress some syllables more than others. Where "d-d-d-d-d." Dum d-d dum d dum.

Where are the toilets please? You need to listen to this. If you are from a syllable timed language then it's going to be really hard for you to hear that stressed timing. You really listen out for it and work on it and that will really make a difference to your accent as well.

But we haven't got time to talk about all the ways you can change your accent and lose your native accent. Probably the best way is for you to find a book that lists all the sounds and ideally one with a CD or a DVD that you can listen to. And there are people who teach this and will help you to lose your accent with regular lessons.

I wish you all the best.