[HN Gopher] Tutors / tips to change your English accent
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Tutors / tips to change your English accent
Let's start with that my accent is clear enough and I don't have
communication issues at work. I actually feel quite comfortable.
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?
Author : thiago_fm
Score : 99 points
Date : 2022-08-07 10:34 UTC (12 hours ago)
| jackallis wrote:
| i have question, Why?
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Can anyone tell me what it was like to live in the USA as an
| immigrant child and have a strong accent?
|
| 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.
| ampham wrote:
| I had an accent because English wasn't my first language
| despite being born and growing up in the US. I had to take
| 'English as a second language' courses and was bullied through
| school. I was also scared to talk for my first two years in
| elementary school.
|
| Though my experience may be vastly outdated.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.
| dixie_land wrote:
| I have many Asian American friends and I can tell you with
| confidence that they have zero accents even when their parents
| sound like someone fresh off the boat. Kids mimic how their
| friends and teachers talk, not their parents
| dehrmann wrote:
| > perfect west coast American accent
|
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| > "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.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Keep those shibboleths straight.
| simonh wrote:
| When I've been to the states, as a Brit the only regional accent
| I've regularly had problems understanding is west coast.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Any specific things stuck out to you about it?
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Some good advice in here. One thing I'll add is: make sure you
| know which English words have weird spellings that are nothing
| like the pronunciation. (This is a lot of words!)
|
| 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.
| fgeiger wrote:
| Is that the list you are looking for? ;-)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos
| fgeiger wrote:
| Maybe better enjoyed when someone reads it to you:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1edPxKqiptw
| katspaugh wrote:
| Two recommendations:
|
| - 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!
| redthrow wrote:
| > Accent's Way on YouTube > taught herself the American accent
| to a complete perfection
|
| 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.
| tartoran wrote:
| To me accents are nice, diction is the one that is important to
| practice for clear conversation. One can be a native speaker and
| have a terrible diction though.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| I have a London accent, with a bit of Home Counties[1] thrown in.
| It's not an 'Eastenders' accent. What I would like is to
| transition to soft Scottish accent, as someday I expect to be
| living north of the Border, and the Scots _really_ don 't like
| the English[2] (in the main). It's an odd use case to be sure,
| but it's something I'd like to do nonetheless.
|
| ---
|
| [1] The 50-ish miles around Greater London.
|
| [2] I don't really blame them to be honest.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Not at all the same thing, but I was briefly capable of speaking
| enough Chinese to just barely make it around rural China for two
| weeks, and I attribute it to a tutor I had who was a musician and
| taught me to literally sing the tones.
|
| 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.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| causality0 wrote:
| Feeling silly can definitely hurt you. When I was learning
| Spanish in school I could never forget how stupid I felt
| assigning genders to inanimate objects.
| uranusjr wrote:
| Also sometimes accent shows because the speaker isn't sure at
| real-time how the sentence is "supposed" to be said, and
| therefore falls back to the way that feels the most natural. So
| yeah, listen to more people speak, mimic them, and practice
| repeatedly so it comes through naturally when you need them.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Accent coaches are great. I worked with one in the context of
| learning an Irish accent for theater in college.
|
| 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.
| mprime1 wrote:
| Here's a class from Stanford (continued studies so anyone can
| take it, for a price), it was via Zoom for the last couple of
| years. Accent Reduction for Non-Native Speakers
| of English
|
| https://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/courses/professional-...
| atum47 wrote:
| Thanks, I'll look into it
| jacknews wrote:
| Do you want an English accent, or a particular American accent?
| mkl wrote:
| From the question:
|
| > I'd love to have a perfect west coast American accent when I
| speak english
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Author said they want a "West Coast" accent.
|
| 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.
| ergeysay wrote:
| I am a non-native speaker. I've took an accent training course
| from a coach, it took about a year.
|
| 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.
| trey-jones wrote:
| There seem to be a lot of people interested in learning how to
| speak with a certain accent. I only really have observations to
| share about this. I studied linguistics at university in both the
| US and Germany. I'm a native English speaker. I studied Chinese,
| Japanese, French, and Spanish to some extent in addition to
| German and English. I don't consider myself fluent in any,
| unfortunately, but I _can_ actually sound like a native speaker
| in any of these languages, when I focus on it.
|
| 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.
| lottin wrote:
| You should start by learning the phonology of the English
| language and its main dialects (namely Standard British English
| and General American). You need to know the theory because if you
| try to rely on your perception it will fool you. You need to know
| what you have to pay attention to. For example, if your L1 is a
| Romance language you have to be aware that vowel length is
| important in English, and that diphthongs are a single phoneme.
| Things like these you'll never be able to figure out yourself,
| they need to be taught. Once you know the theory in and out, you
| have to get a lot of exposure to the accent that you're
| interested in. Lastly, you start to imitate what you hear. Bear
| in mind that it takes a lot of practice to get a foreign accent
| right.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| Professional actors rely on "dialogue coaches". Have you ever
| viewed "The King's Speech"? That seems like a parallel
| experience.
|
| 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.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by "West Coast accent". Generally,
| the stereotypical Surfer Dude/Valley Girl accent is looked down
| upon in professional circles unless you live in Los Angeles or
| you're a Kardashian. If by "West Coast", you mean the relatively
| neutral accents of, say, Silicon Valley employees and CEOs, then
| you should look for American movies and shows featuring Brits
| imitating modern-day Americans (Christian Bale, Hugh Laurie,
| etc.) and compare those performances to the actors' original
| voices in order to get an idea of how they "translate" their
| accents. Cartoons are also helpful[1]. A British voice actress by
| the name of Theresa Gallagher does a nearly flawless "neutral"
| American accent as the mother of the titular character in _The
| Amazing of Gumball_.
|
| 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
| kebsup wrote:
| As a Slavic language speaker, i used to pronounce "th" as "d" and
| simply focusing on this mistake made me feel like the accent
| improved greatly. I have also met a lot of people who roll their
| "r"s, so that's another easy fix.
| dehrmann wrote:
| One of my CS processors was slavic, and for a few weeks, I
| thought De Morgan's laws were the Morgan laws.
| dave333 wrote:
| Just practice imitating the desired accent a lot - eventually you
| will get really good at it.
|
| 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.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| First of all: my admiration to anyone who really tries to do
| this.
|
| 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.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > 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
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I loved this. _un crayon_
| unsafecast wrote:
| I was supposed to have learned the rolling r, since that's
| how it's pronounced in Romanian (my native language). It
| always came out as the french one though. Nowadays I can
| somewhat kind of do it for the common words so I don't sound
| terrible. I'm guessing with a bit of practice I can figure it
| out.
|
| It turned out right though, since I recently moved to France.
| It makes learning pronunciation _much_ easier. My r is
| already perfect.
| tintedfireglass wrote:
| Listening to a particular accent will get you comfortable with
| it. Too much tech youtube helped me with picking up an American
| accent
| printvoid wrote:
| While this thread is mostly about American accents and switching
| among them. Is there a way to inherit in general the western
| accent. Anything US related or British accent would do me good.
| Bonus points for Australian accent.
|
| 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?
| unsafecast wrote:
| What did it for me was just listening to _a lot_ of spoken
| English. Try to watch movies, youtube, listen to podcasts, etc.
| You need to feel it. And practice speaking to yourself or
| others.
| kimchidude wrote:
| Could I shamelessly post a link to my accent training YouTube
| channel? The whole channel is devoted to language development
| through speech shadowing exercises. These exercises will help you
| do some accent training on your own:
| https://m.youtube.com/c/IELTSRyan
| vbo wrote:
| I tend to pick up the accent spoken around me (I'm not a native
| English speaker). Not quite sure to what extent it borders native
| speaker's accent, but it happens without any training.
|
| 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?
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Personally I love hearing different accents and turns of
| phrase, makes things more interesting.
|
| Although I do understand the desire to fit in or not be judged
| differently (especially with the number of mean/bigoted people
| out there)
| mkl wrote:
| There are some interesting search results for [accent training
| app]:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=accent+training+app&atb=v279-1__&i...
|
| 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.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Where do you live? What's your first language?
|
| 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)
| oblak wrote:
| 1. Forget about the letter "R" and use "ah" instead. That's how
| they talk.
|
| 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.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Forget about the letter "R" and use "ah" instead. That's how
| they talk.
|
| Take this too far and you'll sound like you're from Boston or
| Long Island.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Unsure about west coast american, but there's a metric fuckload
| of accent coaches for the British RP (received pronunciation)
| accent.
|
| 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.
| senthil_rajasek wrote:
| I went through this process on my own. I grew up in India and my
| first language is Tamil which is very distant to the European
| languages. I now live in the midwest. I can't tell the
| differences between regional American accents except the very
| famous Bostonian "paak the car" but I've listed some tips on how
| I improved my pronunciation.
|
| 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
| noobhacker wrote:
| I'd love to learn phonetics, but with written materials like
| this it feels like learning to ride a bike by reading a book.
| I'm still at a loss with regards to how to actually make the
| sound. Without a teacher, I don't think I even realize my own
| mistakes.
|
| 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.
| senthil_rajasek wrote:
| You are right. Language is a living thing and the spoken
| language needs to be practiced in real life.
|
| 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.
| causality0 wrote:
| That's impressive work if you only learned English as an adult.
| There are whole sentences in there where you sound like a
| native speaker. I'd say your biggest remaining issue is
| rhoticism with words like Jersey.
| dominotw wrote:
| I personally found that learning the intonation and 'rhythm' of
| the language has way more influence on how easily the other
| person understands you.
|
| 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.
| drivers99 wrote:
| You didn't ask for feedback but based on context I think you
| might appreciate it. I'm also assuming you're going for a
| standard/midwestern American accent. If not, this won't apply.
| The only phonemes that stand out to me in your stand up are the
| "r-colored" vowels like "ar" in farm, the "er" in "New Jersey"
| and "nervous", and the "or" in "for", the "ir" in "shirt".
| (Actually "ir" in shirt and "er" in "nervous" are the same
| phoneme /e/ and you did pronounce it at the end of "power" at
| one point.)
|
| 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.
| senthil_rajasek wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it.
| tintedfireglass wrote:
| I don't think you need professional help with that. Your
| original accent you picked up because of the people around you.
| If you are with Japanese you will pick up a Japanese accent. If
| you are around bangaldesis you'll pick up a South Asian accent.
| You can simulate the same using the internet
|
| 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.
| satya71 wrote:
| There are a few apps that help you with that. I've used "Real
| Accent" and it's useful for practicing a new accent. There are
| some with live instruction now. They may be worth checking out.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| This won't be a helpful answer, but reminds me of the times I've
| had to translate between the Ukrainian team at work speaking
| English for the Indian team speaking English. And I only speak
| English.
|
| I felt like an active repeater cleaning up the signal.
| ggambetta wrote:
| I'm currently studying West Coast American (Los Angeles
| specifically, so "Hollywood" accent) with a tutor I found on
| Preply. We're using a book called Mastering the American Accent
| by Lisa Mojsin, which comes with audio tracks. Getting feedback
| would be ideal (hence a tutor), but maybe you could use the book
| by yourself?
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| I used an accent coach
| (https://www.dannybryckcoaching.com/accent-modification , who was
| excellent). Highly recommend this path--you need a human in the
| loop providing feedback. You will probably be able to get some
| improvement on your own, but it will be inefficient.
| synergy20 wrote:
| hour pay is the key, as long as it's affordable.
|
| 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.
| nixcraft wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, how much does such service cost hourly?
| So I did A quick google search returned group training begins
| at about $40 an hour per person, and individual training at
| $100 an hour, with additional fees for materials.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/business/worldbusiness/05...
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| I don't recall what I paid as it was a few years ago, but I
| do recall feeling like it was worth it.
| pulse7 wrote:
| How much did you pay?
| eric4smith wrote:
| I don't think accents are a problem per-se.
|
| 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.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Be careful what you wish for.
|
| 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
|
| [1] https://www.brookings.edu/experts/fiona-hill/
|
| [2] https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/SheilaMarshall.htm
| traceroute66 wrote:
| What's your native tongue ? Some variant of English or something
| else ?
|
| 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.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| Write down a list of words that you do not pronounce as you want.
| Record yourself reading them out loud, listen back to it and try
| to say it better next time. You can also create some sentences
| from those words and read them.
| jzellis wrote:
| I'm a native English speaker, but I'm from Texas, and as a kid I
| tended to talk really fast and mumble: if you've ever seen the
| show King Of the Hill, I talked like Boomhauer.
|
| 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.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Were you the guy who left this voicemail for Mike Judge?
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kiwgG6T9se0
| theophrastus wrote:
| As more of a story of external impressions, i'm from Seattle
| and I postdoc'ed in Germany and I got more than my share of the
| opinion on English from those who could speak English there
| (damn near 100% at a University). The first problem they had
| was placing my accent; they couldn't. Finally they concluded
| that i was some-sort of Canadian (which is pretty accurate).
| Then they did their own versions of U.S. accents. Almost
| universally these divided into New York and Texan. Their
| impression of the states, based on either vacationers or
| hollywood, confirmed their view that people from the U.S. were
| either loud with a Texas accent or loud with a New York accent.
| We decided that it was a natural sampling bias based on the
| overhearing of the loudness.
| clairity wrote:
| the easiest way is to be around people who speak the way you
| want. my accent has changed multiple times in my life as i
| moved to different parts of the country (south, east, west).
| none of it was conscious doing. of course the hard part of that
| is the moving, but the internet lets you find people around the
| world to listen to and even talk with.
|
| 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.
| rendall wrote:
| > _I still say "y'all" but I say it with no Texan drawl, which
| sounds a bit odd to people, I think._
|
| We say it in Western Massachusetts, but it's clipped, more like
| "Can I help yal?"
| kibwen wrote:
| Calling it now, in ten years "y'all" will be a standard
| fixture of every American English dialect and nobody born
| after 2020 will bat an eye at it. It's just a great word,
| distinct in semantic utility and satisfying to enunciate.
| Even as a Pittsburgher with a license to "yinz" I still say
| "y'all".
| davidgh wrote:
| Agree.
|
| "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".
| wrycoder wrote:
| Then, there's all y'all.
| rbt5009 wrote:
| Also a Pittsburgher and I find y'all and you guys to be
| much more natural and widely applicable than yinz.
| d23 wrote:
| For me (also from the south), specifically, it was about
| identifying the sounds that I usually misspoke. Dragging vowels
| out was one obvious one, but one I literally couldn't hear at
| first was e.g. the difference between "pen" and "pin". That one
| took a lot of practice and I still have to think about it
| occasionally for multisyllabic words I'm not sure how to spell.
| glmeece wrote:
| I grew up in SoCal (NW Orange County - in between Seal Beach &
| Los Alamitos), but my mom's family hailed from near Texarkana,
| TX. I can still recall one of my second cousins asking me, in a
| _very_ Southern accent: "Gregory Lee - whaay dew yew tokk so
| fuunny?" It was the first time it occurred to me that _I_ had
| an accent. I 've reconnected with her on social media and
| talked to her a couple of times. Her accent has flattened out,
| but I still get a chuckle about that exchange.
| stavros wrote:
| > It was the first time it occurred to me that I had an
| accent.
|
| 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".
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _I 'm from Texas_
|
| 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.)
| horns4lyfe wrote:
| That's funny, I grew up in west Texas and had the same accent.
| Interestingly, after living in Austin for a few years it was
| completely gone
| anonymousDan wrote:
| For what it's worth, I would take a beautiful Texan drawl all
| day every day over most other American accents (which tend to
| sound really nasally)!
| [deleted]
| robaato wrote:
| A few decades ago, when learning languages at school, we had
| access to tape recorders for particular phrases: listen, record,
| rewind, repeat ad nauseam. Very powerful.
|
| These days recording tech is all around. But study and repeat.
| Ask friendly people to correct you (at appropriate times) - most
| won't!
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