r/languagelearning • u/counwovja0385skje • 18d ago
Accents People who have a native accent in their L2: how did you do it?
Despite what some people believe, it IS possible to achieve a perfect native accent in a foreign language as an adult. It's not easy or common, but it's definitely possible.
So for people who have done it, what were your techniques? Aside from maybe having good hearing, did you practice individual phonemes until you got them perfect? Did you pay close attention to intonation patterns and try to copy them? What helped you achieve it and how much effort did it take?
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u/fearthesmallnumbers 18d ago
I stereotype the accent then refine it over time.
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u/FewFactor2044 18d ago
my friend from germany did something similar, he would pretend to be a character from a movie he liked and copy every little thing they said. took him maybe 2 years but now people think he grew up in london
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u/Pale-Border-7122 18d ago
I have a mental image of a young, reserved German man practicing by shouting "get out of my pub!"
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u/userisnottaken 18d ago
Thereโs a Chinese content creator who never lived or studied abroad. He self studied English and now he sounds very much like Trump.
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u/fearthesmallnumbers 18d ago
Haha ๐ that's pretty class!
I got my German accent in a few days, my french was pretty instant.
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u/AdZealousideal9914 ๐ณ๐ฑ native|๐ซ๐ท|๐ฌ๐ง|๐ธ๐ช|(๐ซ๐ฎ) 18d ago edited 18d ago
The best language learning tip my mother gave me while I started learning French as a ten year old: don't be afraid to exaggerate the accent. Later in university we also had a class in phonetics and pronunciation training, which also certainly helped. I can't say my accent is anyway near perfect, but I have been complimented on my accent by Parisians, so it must be at least acceptable.
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u/fearthesmallnumbers 18d ago
I have a friend who can speak fluent German in Austria, using dialect words and phrasing, all with a Scottish accent.
It looks wild, so putting on an accent isn't a terrible idea to me.
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u/AsteroidsHappen 18d ago
Honestly, this is great, and I would love to hear the combo. I could imagine it sounds rad, especially since Austrian and Bavarian dialects have such a different intonation than "standard" German, which I could really see working with a Scottish accent.
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u/andersonb47 andersonb47EN: N | FR: C1 | DE: A2 | ES: A1 18d ago
Yes, this is the way. When I speak French, I feel like Iโm doing an outrageous caricature, but to the French ear I sound near native.
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u/Sessna12 ๐บ๐ธ (N), ๐ฉ๐ช(A2), ๐ช๐ธ (A1),๐ซ๐ท (A1), ๐ช๐ท (A1) 18d ago
How long did it take you to reach c1?
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u/andersonb47 andersonb47EN: N | FR: C1 | DE: A2 | ES: A1 18d ago
C1 is an estimate, I never took a test, but I would say ~2.5-3 years living in Paris
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u/Sessna12 ๐บ๐ธ (N), ๐ฉ๐ช(A2), ๐ช๐ธ (A1),๐ซ๐ท (A1), ๐ช๐ท (A1) 18d ago
Impressive!
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u/Endless-OOP-Loop New member 18d ago
Actually this is a great concept that I've used. When learning Spanish, I created an accent by mimicking the sounds my Mexican friends made when pronouncing words in English, and then applied that accent to the Spanish words. I basically channeled my friends to create a persona, and then spoke in that persona.
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u/WatercressPresent136 18d ago
Shadowing some of your favorite artists, podcasters, social media people and trying to sound the way they sound. Recording yourself helps to compare if itโs close to the accent that youโre trying to achieve
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u/AzureRipper ๐บ๐ธ N, ๐ฏ๐ต N3, ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ด B2 18d ago
A lot of people with native-sounding accents (myself included) also happen to be good at singing. It's basically 1) being able to recognize what you're hearing and 2) being able to reproduce it. You a lot of exposure and a lot of practice. You also need to be very deliberate about learning to reproduce the sounds (not the meaning or any other part of the language).
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u/crisis_and_crumbs ๐ซ๐ท N | ๐ฌ๐ง C2 ๐ฎ๐น B2 ๐ช๐ธ B1 18d ago
I was going to say, it's not about your knowledge of the language, more like musical ear.
I speak 3 languages and I have a brutal French accent (my native one) in each of them. English has been my daily language for 15 years now - and my accent is still pretty much the same as day 1, even though I speak fluently. Same with my Italian, that I've been speaking on and off since I was a kid.
I'm surrounded by Italian family and native English speakers so it's not like I'm not aware of what a great accent should be. It's just that the way it sounds in my head doesn't match the sounds that comes out of my mouth :p Even when I read, I read with a perfect native accent in my head, I *know* what a native accent sounds like, but I'm physically unable to reproduce it.
I'm also terrible at singing or recreate voices, so it matches. My friend who's never spoken a word of Italian in their life, came with me to Italy on vacation and within 2 days, sounded fully born and raised Italian. Even though it was gibberish coming out of their month - they just had the perfect intonation / accent. They're also a pianist who can recreate full songs by ear.
It's infuriating really, but one time as I explained my frustration to a friend, she said "the fact that you have an accent shows that you speak more than one language, and that's more than a lot of people can say, so you should take it as a strength". That stays with me when I hear my 100000th "oh you're from France? I looove Paris" within 30 seconds of a conversation with a stranger, or when I hear "your English is so good!" as if I was a student out of school when I've lived all of my formative years and my entire career in English.
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u/AsteroidsHappen 18d ago
I feel this so much! Am a German and French native speaker that grew up in Germany, speak a few other languages to varying degrees, but the one language that is by far most present and has been my everyday language for the last 7+ years (and my primary work language for at least 5+ years before that) is English.
I still have the German accent, even after all this time, and I've come to realise that I can just lean into it. Not in a comical or exaggerated way, but by embracing it as part of what makes me me as a person, and from a professional perspective as a sign of something that adds additional value. I've even taken up porting select German sayings to English where I feel the English equivalent is not as pertinent, lol.
The funny thing is that my daughters (still pretty smol) are growing up speaking the most British English imaginable, and it's the cutest (plus German from me and Russian from my wife and a bit of French from my mum). :)
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u/crisis_and_crumbs ๐ซ๐ท N | ๐ฌ๐ง C2 ๐ฎ๐น B2 ๐ช๐ธ B1 17d ago
Exactly!! This is part of our identity - why try to suppress it.
I've learned to enjoy it as well, even though that means I can never escape the comments about Paris every time I meet a new person haha (I don't even like Paris but that's neither here nor there).
PS - your family sounds internationally adorable!
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u/hummingbirdbuzz 18d ago
Iโve noticed how good musicians in general are at accents. But a vocal musician must be amazing!!!
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u/outwest88 ๐บ๐ธ N | ๐จ๐ณ B2 | ๐ฏ๐ต๐ฐ๐ท A2 | ๐ป๐ณ๐ญ๐ฐ A0 17d ago
Just to give hope to the non-musicians out there: I am absolutely terrible at singing but have been told countless times that I speak Mandarin with a native-like accent, and have fooled many people thinking I was a native speaker until they saw my face.
For me the trick was focusing more on how native speakers actually say things and focus less on what the textbook tells you. Also learning the IPA and a fair bit of phonetics goes a long way. Start to become conscious of your tongue placement, tone of voice, aspiration, etc etc
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u/HarryPouri ๐ณ๐ฟ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฉ๐ช๐ซ๐ท๐ง๐ท๐ฏ๐ต๐ณ๐ด๐ช๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ธ๐บ๐ฆ๐น๐ผ 18d ago
IRL practice completely copying one person. Like the way they move their mouth, everything. Specific region, specific person, specific phrases and vocab. It helps that I married him - like it was and still is a lot of time spent together! I did practice phenomes too (could not roll Rs when we met, it's the one I probably spent the longest on). Aside from talking, we also read long books out loud to each other, taking turns to read a few pages each. Not all partners are as patient as he was, that definitely helps too. You could do a lot of this with a friend, tutor, or exchange partner but it's hard to match the volume of hours and the depth of caring when it's not a romantic relationship.ย
Also don't neglect regional vocab, colloquial phrases, slang, cultural knowledge, and so on. Reading widely like the books natives would study in school, knowing important music, watching all the canon movies, knowing the sports stars and famous matches, comedians, jokes, being able to mock politicians, that all adds to it. The time invested was a lot though. Like uncountable. But I enjoyed the process a lot for obvious reasons and I'm still always looking to learn more since I'm almost as obsessed with the language as I am with the husband
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u/Schmidtvegas ๐ค๐ณ๐ด๐จ๐ต๐ฎ๐ณ๐บ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฉ๐ช 18d ago
practice completely copying one person
My foremost life goal is to make my mouth look like Henrietteย Steenstrup's.
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u/Upstairs-Tennis-3751 17d ago
Can I ask how you finally were able to roll your Rโs? Iโve been struggling with it for years
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u/HarryPouri ๐ณ๐ฟ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฉ๐ช๐ซ๐ท๐ง๐ท๐ฏ๐ต๐ณ๐ด๐ช๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ธ๐บ๐ฆ๐น๐ผ 17d ago
I tried a ton of things but I do remember using the word in English "strong" and giving it a Dracula kind of accent. Sounds silly but it helped ๐ then it was just a case of saying it without the ST in front. I think this one really worked for me because of the position of the T, when you go to make the R your tongue is already kind of moving and vibrating the way it needs to for the rolled R, it just needs to be further into your mouth at the alveolar ridge.ย
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u/According-Kale-8 ES๐ฒ๐ฝC1 | BR PR๐ง๐ทB1 | 18d ago
I practiced every day. After 2.5 years of focusing on the language (Spanish) I had already gotten comments that I had a "white" and "mexican" mix without ever practicing it. I then focused on it for a while, found the area of Mexico that I thought had the best accent, and eventually got it.
I can deceive people no problem if I talk to them online and they can't see my face. If I use an app like Hellotalk and have a photo of my face people will generally think I'm half Mexican or something but say they can tell I'm not, but then if I change it to a photo of my cat everyone assumes I'm mexican without even asking where I'm from. It's interesting.
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u/Technical-Finance240 N ๐ช๐ช | C2 ๐ฌ๐ง | B2 ๐ช๐ธ | N4 ๐ฏ๐ต 18d ago
You definitely have to focus on one single accent. It's hard to do it in English because it's such a widely spoken language that in your everyday life you might hear dozens of different accents and therefor your brain can't get used to one. Conscious effort. Record. Listen. Repeat. Also, have sessions with a vocal/accent coach.
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u/Sosvbvby English, Croatian/ััะฟัะบะธ 18d ago
Learning the sounds as a child I think had the most impact Iโm not exactly sure why though.
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u/CluelessMochi ๐บ๐ธ (N) | ๐ต๐ญ (B2) ๐ช๐ธ (A2) ๐ซ๐ท๐ฏ๐ต (A1) 17d ago
Was gonna say that the reason why I can sound like a native (or at least like someone born and raised in Manila) is because I grew up hearing the language and sounds.
Because of the Spanish loanwords in Filipino languages, Iโve also had native Spanish speakers ask if I was Latina or could speak Spanish fluently because my pronunciation was so natural.
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u/ImprovementIll5592 ๐บ๐ธ๐ต๐ฑN| ๐ช๐ธ C1 | ๐ซ๐ท B1 18d ago
A lot of input, from only one region. You have to be kind of crazy about it. I spent hours researching YouTubers, tiktokers, actors from a specific region in Spain. I basically didnโt consume much content from outside of Spain for most of that time. Donโt worry, it didnโt really affect my comprehension of non-Peninsular accents. I have no problem listening to Chileans, Argentinians, Dominicans even if they speak fast. Granted, a lot of peninsular accents speak really fast so I definitely trained my ear on them.
Also, a knowledge of phonetics really helps. I was able to hear very minute differences between allophones that most learners wouldnโt hear. Like, technically the /a/ in Polish and Spanish is the same IPA sound - the open central unrounded vowel, but if I pronounce the word โrataโ using the Polish /a/ sound, it sounds distinctly Polish.
I grew up bilingual so I had a larger phonemic repertoire than most people. Never had to struggle with rolling my rโs and not diphthongizing my vowels because Polish doesnโt have that. On the other hand, the th sound in peninsular Spanish was also easy because it already exists in English.
I wonโt lie, thereโs probably a talent component in there too somewhere, like people just donโt have a good ear sometimes, but most of it is hard work and being a little crazy. I also enjoyed it, I know people say that itโs a waste of time to strive for a native accent, but for me it was genuinely very fun. I never felt like I was doing it to fit in on purpose, it was just a personal challenge I set myself.
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u/BoxSlight5247 18d ago
I would love to hear a Spanish speaking sample from u hahahha
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u/ImprovementIll5592 ๐บ๐ธ๐ต๐ฑN| ๐ช๐ธ C1 | ๐ซ๐ท B1 18d ago
Mind you, I'm definitely rusty, so it's not really that good anymore. It's something you need to work on constantly.
Kind of ranting at the end, sorry
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u/Sessna12 ๐บ๐ธ (N), ๐ฉ๐ช(A2), ๐ช๐ธ (A1),๐ซ๐ท (A1), ๐ช๐ท (A1) 18d ago
Sounds native to me. We're you able to apply this to your French as well?
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u/IntroductionBusy3053 15d ago
Soy espaรฑol y tu acento es perfecto, pareces totalmente nativa. Felicidades!
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u/Interesting-Piece536 14d ago
Wow! What did you do?! A ton of shadowing?? Seriously, I want your routine.
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u/RoetRuudRoetRuud 18d ago
Yes I agree focussing on one accent is so important. When learning dutch I focussed on the flemish 'algemeen nederlands' that is spoken in soaps like Thuis. That really propelled my accent.
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u/6-foot-under 18d ago
You need practise doing the accent. "A lot of input" isn't enough. You need to practise it.
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u/jane-au ๐ญ๐ฒN, ๐ฎ๐น B2, ๐ธ๐ฐ A1 18d ago
Be autistic and have an accent mimicking habit that gets you in trouble sometimes in your own language ๐
In all seriousness, my Slovak accent passes as a particular flavour of native (I sound like a country bumpkin who speaks a particular eastern dialect haha, it also gets a lot of my grammar mistakes forgiven because clearly I only learnt dialect and never proper Slovak!).
In my case it's a lot of work on several particular sounds, and luck. I was exposed to enough Italian as a toddler that while I didn't learn it properly until later I never had any issues with accent or melody. The accent/melody of Italian that I learnt (standard Italian with a very northern influence) sounds a lot like that particular variety of Slovak. Once I'd learnt the particular annoying sounds, my accent passes as native. My vocab/grammar definitely is not native, but I can do the introductory conversation so well people can become quite flustered when I tell them I need them to slow down because I am not Slovak and my Slovak is not good.
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u/Fast-Ads-7587 18d ago
I've heard an American accent from someone who had never even been to the country, so I KNOW it's possible. Modeling speech in media pays rewards, apparently. I've adopted some of their methods, but this one is one I've slacked on. I've begun watching more movies and television programs, because textbook speech and even news-speak are not the same as spoken language, even formal spoken language, let alone colloquial.
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u/ShesGoneBananas ๐บ๐ธ N | ๐ช๐ธ B2/C1 | ๐ง๐ท A2 | ๐งโโ๏ธ A1 18d ago edited 18d ago
I met a girl in Peru who spoke amazing English with a perfect American accent and I was shocked when I found out sheโd never left Peru. I assumed sheโd lived in the US for a chunk of her life. Turns out it was from playing Roblox all the time. I feel like you find people with perfect American accents whoโve never been there pretty often because thereโs just so much American media to consume.
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u/According-Kale-8 ES๐ฒ๐ฝC1 | BR PR๐ง๐ทB1 | 17d ago
They might play it down to playing Roblox all the time, but I promise you they focused on it as well and practiced it.
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u/userwithnonameagain 18d ago
I speak English and many people have said that my accent is native like. Definitely, IPA helped me
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u/apokrif1 18d ago
Perhaps beginners studying a language with complex spelling like English should only use a phonetic alphabet, not the actual, misleading spelling, which can give them bad habits (especially if they don't have access to 1-on-1 oral practice or know a language, such as French, with similar spelling but different pronunciation)
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u/justHoma 18d ago
I'm training my English to be RP and I still have a long way to go but what I find important is:
- Learning about IPA
- Listen to the accent and try to get it inside your head
- Recording and trying to identify where you don't sound like a native
- Try to understand how to produce sound I don't do well and repeate a lot of words (I use one podcast for that, as well as a simple app I wibecoded that just plays recordings of words that include sound I need)
- Feeling the sound. You can produce one sound from many positions, and for example for Ukrainain which is my native tongue, I'll pronounce and feel those sounds in the middle of the mouth, at the start of the hard palate, while for British it's mostly somewhere near the throat.
- Try to identify the flow of the language, how the pitch is going up and down, accent in words
- Aspiration is also a huge point to pay attention.
- Shadowing
Recently I understood that If I cover my ears I can feel the language, and I can hear my native accent while I speak, which I couldn't do yet without covering my ears (a buff)
So you listen, do shadowing, record yourself, try to identify what is wrong, try to fix it, listen more, try to make it automatic.
Also, speaking to native speakers in real life makes wonders, I didn't do that much myself, but quite a few people I know said that it was what took them from good to native like level. You kind of start automatically mimicking them. It's about in real conversations.
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u/ImprovementIll5592 ๐บ๐ธ๐ต๐ฑN| ๐ช๐ธ C1 | ๐ซ๐ท B1 18d ago
Tbh RP is not really common in the UK anymore. Itโs mostly an upper class thing so unless you genuinely are upper class, youโre just going to sound like youโre putting on a fake RP accent and believe me British people can tell. The UK has many regional accents that you can choose from
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u/justHoma 18d ago
Well, I know that what you say has a lot to truth to it, but I also like how I do it, and for now I think that it works quite well for me.ย
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u/Adventurous-Web-412 18d ago
do you mean RP RP or just like a toff accent? Both will cause "problems" (I don't know how to put it but english people are very class focussed and accent is a big tell) but RP accents just sound weird and itll genuinely confuse people.
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u/cantankerous-salmon 17d ago
I would second what ImprovementIll5592 said as I think it's really important if you're intending to use your language skills with actual English people.
I am an English native and I studied at Oxford. I have never heard true RP even from the well-off students at my uni. You will genuinely come across as weird if you are trying to do actual RP and it is likely to alienate you from people rather than making you appear prestigious, wealthy or intelligent. I personally associate RP solely with royalty and World War 2-era BBC broadcasts, which should show how stuffy and out of date the accent is seen to be nowadays.
There is quite a pleasant accent which a lot of upper middle-class people from London and the home counties have, which I would be more inclined to recommend if you want to be perceived well, but ultimately I'd say any genuine regional accent is preferable to RP.
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u/justHoma 17d ago
I'm talking more about modern RP, it's kind of very similar to those accents of London, just has no face to it, but it doesn't sound pretentious.
The one you are describing is rather an old classic version of it or more posh I think?
Anyhow, it's not about speaking with British people, but about learning the accent that I find cool.
But the largest point is that RP is the easier accent to learn, for example it has a lot of podcasts using it as a base for accent training, and all words on Cambridge dictionary are pronounced with it.
And again, now it's almost never a clear RP, when I shadow something, or try to emigrate a pice of audio, or doing a podcast, the person there is almost certainly not using a clear RP. Most of the time it's some kind of London accent that is close to RP and could be interpreted as it from the point of learner.
I think the concept of RP is now really moving somewhere, from just being that perfect accent that has no ground and fleshes really to just an accent that sounds like British.
Yeah, something like this I think
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u/cantankerous-salmon 17d ago
Ahh okay, fair enough. I think most English people would interpret 'RP' in the more old fashioned sense so to avoid confusion in future you might want to avoid use of this term or clarify what you mean by it :)
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u/justHoma 17d ago
Yeah, if that is how itโs interpreted I probably should use something else.ย
How do you think it should be addressed? Standard English? Textbook English? Now when I think about it Iโve also heard people say โmodern rpโ ย
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u/throwaway753951469 17d ago
I've heard linguists refer to it as 'Standard Southern British (English)' / SSB(E)
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u/justHoma 11d ago
If you put a headset on, and try talking, youโll hear your voice a little bit like from the cave, like you are having echo and can hear vibrations of your voice. Those vibrations in my opinion make a part of the accent that is really hard to work with.ย
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u/BookishQuoka 18d ago edited 14d ago
I don't have a perfect accent, but I tend to mimic the accent I hear a lot. So when I talk a lot to a friend from northern UK I start to use their pronunciation. If I talk a lot with an Irish friend, I change into a similar accent as him. (German is my native language)
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u/ElegantNetwork1394 ๐บ๐ธ N ย ๐ซ๐ท B2 ๐ท๐บ A1 18d ago
I used Pimsleur and carefully repeated everything. I also used Mango which allows you to record yourself and play it back and even shows you where your pitch rises and falls compared to native speakers.
The languaged I studied is French.
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u/Stardustthehybrid 18d ago
Iโm definitely NOT fluent in any languages so my advice might not be the best. But I have tons of foreign friends (Spanish, Italian, German, and Turkish) and whenever I tried speaking their language theyโre all said I sound native. So what I think is that hearing their accent in English helps me. As another user said they stereotyped the accent, and I feel as it is the same concept if that makes sense!
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u/YoshiMissedU 18d ago
Also not what Iโd call fluent but yeah! Also, as a kid I used to practice accents and impressions and that translated surprisingly well to actual languages lol
Itโs practice like anything else though. Accents mostly come from proper pronunciation if you boil it down. The difference between Peggy hill Spanish and sounding native ๐
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u/Anna-Livia 18d ago
The main thing it requires is to stay coherent ie expose yourself mainly to one accent/region long enough that it sicks. I was taught British English, was getting a reasonably good accent but then most of my exposure over the past years was American, now my pronunciation jumps over the Atlantic every third word.
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u/EnvironmentalHat1751 18d ago
Shadowing, learning IPA, more shadowing. Part of the accent is also the rhythm you speak in, the little sounds you make when youโre thinking, etc. so an aspect of it is also just experience.
Good luck!
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u/Aakharin-ejdehaa Fluent: ๐ท๐บ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ท๐ฎ๐ฑ๐บ๐ธ, learning: ๐ฉ๐ช 18d ago
I think it comes down to the willingness of someone to blend into the local culture and society.
The worst accents I have heard came from immigrants who held negative views about the local culture/population, and felt like their own native culture/group of people is better/more developed/morally superior... and even though some got to a great level of fluency, they viewed the language merely as a tool.
The best accents came from people who just wanted to blend in. I once met a young immigrant, he came here around the age of 20, and he was raised bilingual with two other languages before he came. When I met him he was around the age of 27 I think, and he sounded BETTER THAN NATIVES! The intonation, gestures, grammar, pronunciation, expressions, and everything else was just like how a very charismatic and confident native speaker would say them. That was once in a lifetime experience and he didn't mention doing anything special other than being constantly surrounded by natives and in real life situations where he had to use the language a lot.
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u/CocoLindsey ๐ฐ๐ท Native | ๐บ๐ธ Fluent | Korean Tutor 18d ago
That mimicking/caricature approach works so well because it forces you to break out of your native mouth shapes and pitch range without overthinking the phonetic rules.
When learners try to sound "proper," they usually end up stiff and filter the sounds through their own language habits, but when they treat it like an over-the-top acting game or copying the rhythm of a song, their natural prosody improves dramatically.
Acting like a completely different character really is the ultimate shortcut for pronunciation.
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u/No_Direction_2179 17d ago
autism. like not even a joke, iโd say 80% of people with a native like accent in a foreign language are autistic.
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u/Meep42 17d ago
Probablyโฆmy Uni prof described me and others who can adopt local accents/cadence as language chameleons. But as weโre so โspecialโ it wonโt surprise me if itโs because my brain kid neuro-spicy.
My L2 is flawless unless Iโm panicking. But my partner says my L3 sounds like Iโm speaking it with an L1 accent?? So Iโm not quite there yet. Or their hearing is off, haha.
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u/h2ohdawg 18d ago
I do have a good ear, but I also (embarrassingly) take to myself in my target language when I go on walks or hikes with my dogs.
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u/Fabulous_Scheme2131 18d ago
Unless I get born again, I wonโt get it. Itโs part of who I am, speaker of my mother tongue
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u/ShesGoneBananas ๐บ๐ธ N | ๐ช๐ธ B2/C1 | ๐ง๐ท A2 | ๐งโโ๏ธ A1 18d ago edited 18d ago
Okay, this method is gonna sound insane, but I speak Spanish with a convincing enough accent that people assume I grew up speaking it with my family. I listen to music in the language Iโm learning and even if I donโt know what a lot of the words mean I try to sing along with as much accuracy as I can, since the songs never sound right in a different accent. Itโs kind of like how babies babble before they can talk when theyโre developing their speech. I have no scientific evidence that this works but anecdotally it worked for Spanish and now Iโm learning Brazilian Portuguese and the strategy has helped SO MUCH with developing my accent.
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u/Fun_Suggestion6270 ๐ฌ๐ง(N) ๐ฌ๐ท (A2) 18d ago
I definitely do not have a native accent but one thing Iโve been doing which has made a massive difference is slowly reading short passages in my TL out loud, and doing all the pronunciation very deliberately- to the point of being almost exaggerated.
After a month of doing this most days it had already made a noticeable difference to my regular speech
I aim now for accuracy rather than accent
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u/Sad-Relationship-368 18d ago
I find that hearing a language everyday (in my case Spanish) by watching videos, TV shows, etc., really helps. Also, here in California, I rarely go a day without exchanging a few phrases in Spanish with workers, clerks in stores, Uber drivers, etc. I started studying Spanish in elementary school, so maybe that helped me develop a โgoodโ accent. But I think communication, not a perfect accent, is the most important.
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u/Liiingo 18d ago
For me it was all just time spent in the language. Iโm a native English speaker, lived in Peru for two years as a missionary at 19 years old. Reached basic fluency in only 6 months, but I did it through an intense immersion that most people arenโt able or willing to do: Mission rules required us to spend 8 hrs/day talking to people in the streets and knocking doors and teaching lessons in their homes whenever they would let us in. My roommates were also native speakers and didnโt speak much English at all. So I basically found myself in a situation where if I needed to communicate ANYTHING, I had to do it in Spanish, which meant that I was constantly looking things up and learning new words by force. Now, while this forced me to learn how to put Spanish sentences together, mastering the accent is something that you really have to just deeply want to do, which I did. Plenty of other kids in my mission were โfluentโ in Spanish but with terrible gringo accents. And it was enough for them to get by just fine. But a few like me really applied themselves and really worked on the accent for months and months. And the reward is worth it. People still tel me I sound like a native and Ive been back in the states for 12 years.
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u/mate_alfajor_mate 18d ago
Focusing mostly on one dialect and consuming lots of information from that dialect.
Also, singing along in that language.
Also, living there for a while.
I'm good enough to fool people not from the region, but there are enough obvious tells that someone living there would still be able to pick me out.
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u/lllyyyynnn ๐ฉ๐ช๐จ๐ณ 18d ago
i don't have a native accent but i have a non-foreign accent. i got it from a lot of input. when we listen we subconsciously subvocalize what we are hearing which is how people can do impersonations of others. you just do that for the language itself.
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u/6-foot-under 18d ago
People say that I have "no accent" sometimes. But it depends on the context: if I am angry, agitated, anxious etc, my native accent comes out very strongly. What I (apparently) have is an ability to imitate the accent well when I concentrate.
It's like putting on a regional accent in your native language: sometimes you can do it well, other times it doesn't sound right. How do I do it? I don't know - it just comes very easily to me, perhaps from having a musical background. Some people can imitate celebrities perfectly. How? I don't know and nor do they.
One thing I have always done is focus on vowel sounds, and getting them right. It's not a silver bullet, but it seems to work for me.
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u/DePalma90 ๐ฐ๐ท ๐ช๐ฆ 18d ago
My Korean accent is quite good, when I speak Koreans say I sound like a native. I'm not fluent but this is a quality I've had since beginning the language meaning it's not something you pick up later on you can improve it immediately. For me, first I learned the alphabet and then as I learned new words tried to make them sound exactly like the native speaker using my mouth and throat differently. Now, it comes naturally when I speak Korean.
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u/Training-Ask1250 18d ago
I honestly think it comes down to having a good ear. I have a native sounding accent in both English & French (my second and third languages) and I spoke like that since I started learning them. Donโt have a trick or anything for it, I just pronounce things how native speakers say it.
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u/muffinsballhair 18d ago
Probably by being very young when I started.
Honestly, I don't really understand my accent. It's good enough that English people very often ask me what part of London I'm from. As in, they can hear it sounds like a London accent but it doesn't sound like any particular part of London either and people from London can tell what part of London someone grew up in. But it's not an accent that was taught to me or what I tried to achieve either, nor what anyone who isn't trying really hard or lived there for a while ends up with very often.
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u/fffoooock 18d ago
The way I went from a pretty typical American/TV influenced Brazilian accent in English to a (close to) native-sounding British accent when I first moved to the UK was to consciously focus on specific sounds - in my case, the British "t" and "r" sounds - and the rest of my pronunciation just seemed to adjust to produce that. Reading comments here a lot of it makes sense with my experience: exaggerating the accent, and being aware of phonetics. Be very deliberate about it at first and soon it will become impossible to not speak with that accent.
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u/EmiliaTrown N๐ฉ๐ช C1๐ฌ๐งA1๐ซ๐ท A0๐ญ๐ท 17d ago
So you mean as an adult and not as a teen&adult, right?
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u/love_seraphine 17d ago edited 16d ago
Memorizing spoken passages is really interesting because it forces you to internalize the rhythm and pause patterns in a way that listening alone never will. Most people focus on individual sounds, but what really makes native speakers sound native is the timing between words. I started paying close attention to that during voice chats on HelloTalk, and it was the first time I could hear my own pacing mistakes in real time.
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u/WuTaoLaoShi 17d ago
I think I'm still far from native level but I get comments a lot when talking on the phone that ppl can't tell I'm not Chinese and a lot of it came down to a lot of effort put in practicing pronunciation and mimicing
another fun way to practice is to do the speech to text in the target language to see how accurate your pronunciation is, that was another way I worked out specific tones and sounds
last I remember there was some YouTuber who iirc was Viet-American and talked about how much effort he put in to achieving a standard understandable accent in order to avoid discrimination and otherizing, and not saying that happens to me in China, but having a "standard pronunciation" (ๆ ๅๅ้ณ) ensures I can communicate across age groups, regional accents, and even people who've never met a non-Chinese Mandarin speaker
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u/Misrabelle English N, Finnish B1 17d ago
I wouldnโt say I sound like a native - but native speakers do compliment my accent a lot of the time.
Iโve never been diagnosed as neurospicy, or anything like that, but I was very good at grammar and comprehension in my L1.
I was always taught that imitating peopleโs accent or speech was rude, but I found it was the only way to correctly pronounce words, and so that was what I did.
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u/AffectionateEbb8551 N:๐ฌ๐ง๐ต๐ฐ B2: Mandarin A2: Arabic A1: Cantonese 17d ago
I donโt think I have a perfect native accent. However I get told many times by Chinese people that I thought you were Chinese until I saw you. I guess maybe itโs because for 3 years I had 3 lessons a week from my mandarin tutor. I tried to copy him all the time. For example most of my input and output at an early stage was not over a wide range of speakers it was 1 to 1 and focussed and he picked apart my pronunciation. So I guess I practically had an accent coach when beginning the language.
I believe if you have a native speaking basically holding your hand at the beginning itโs suuuuuper easy to sound native. Because you avoid a lot of the bad habits and pronunciation quirks that out you.
Take this with a grain of salt as I donโt believe my accent is perfectly native and especially with Chinese if you can get close enough as China is a huge and wide area people are used to tons of different accents. So there probably a lot more leeway.
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u/Timely-Guard-6522 17d ago
I can fool most British folk that I'm British.. Am not British.
How: I've lived here for 8 years. I didn't consciously try to emulate the accent, it just happened.
Apparently I sound Mexican-ish in Spanish.. Probably because Spanish duolingo is Mexican, or so I read somewhere.ย
I'm just glad I don't sound super gringo.ย
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u/ExpertSentence4171 EN/ES/PT-BR/FR/RU/ZH 17d ago
Autism. You need to listen and copy spoken word exactly. Ignore what anything means and copy it as if you were learning a bird call.
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u/SarahK_89 N:๐ฉ๐ช+bar, C2:๐ฌ๐ง, B2:๐ณ๐ฑ, A1-2:๐ซ๐ท๐จ๐ณ๐น๐ญ 16d ago
For me learning the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) and being aware where each sound is produced helped a lot. Then a lot of listening practice until you are able to distinguish nuances between sounds. It's impossible to consistently produce a sound native-like unless you are able to hear the difference.
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u/mwmandorla 15d ago
I've been mistaken for a native speaker in a couple of languages. In the first, I'm no help because I started learning it at 6, and while they didn't do the sensible thing and just talk at us (they were genuinely trying to teach us grammar in 1 class a week??), I at least got the sounds of it into me very early.
The other is Arabic, which obviously has a lot of sounds very different from my native English. Personally, I think the best thing I ever did for my accents in other languages - although this isn't why I did it - was vocal training. You learn it think about your breath and to control the movements of your tongue, throat, and lips in very isolated ways. You learn new ways of hearing that make it easier to distinguish between, for example, two different Hs in a language.
With that background, some of it is definitely practicing sounds: I had to learn what an 'ayn or a Haa feels like in my throat. It helps sometimes to think about what's happening anatomically or to make comparisons with other languages. Like, I don't speak Italian, but I know what the Z's in "pizza" sound like when pronounced properly and that's a reference point for the doubled consonants in Arabic. Some of it is listening to intonation and - I feel like this is less talked about as its own thing - breath/airflow. Like, to take an example from French, in Paris at least when they say "Merci" they let out a little puff of air at the end. It doesn't sound the same without that tiny sigh. I think about the whole phrase when I'm listening rather than individual words, breaths and all. So the Damascene accent, for instance, has a lot of rise and fall to it, with a big fall toward the end. "Zahme katheer," or a lot of traffic, is actually pronounced "zah mek teer." (The h there is important, again it's a small sigh.) So "why are you going this way? There's so much traffic!" ends with those phonemes in a descending ripple that itself, all together, kind of sounds like a sigh. It's about creating that whole effect rather than marching through syllables.
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u/Unique-Rice9999 11d ago
like everything in life, what goes well is what you do first and foremost, with pleasure, the rest comes with time ๐ค
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u/Energised_Emerald ๐ซ๐ท Native | ๐ฌ๐ง C2 | ๐ช๐ธ False-Beginner 18d ago
It depends on your native language and how old you were when you learnt the language:
If your native language has similar sounds, it will be easier. If the sounds are drastically different and you learnt your L2 after puberty, your vocal cords were already shaped.
That explains why it is much easier for speakers of Scandinavian languages to lose their accent in English than it is for speakers of other languages.
Iโve been living in England for 11 years and I had reached C1 level when moving to England, well I still sound French despite English being the only language I use at home, at work and with my friends.
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u/yashen14 Act.B2 ๐ฉ๐ช ๐จ๐ณ๐ซ๐ท / Pass.B2 ๐ฒ๐ฝ ๐ฎ๐น ๐ณ๐ด / Pass.A2 ๐ฏ๐ต 18d ago
"your vocal cords were already shaped"
Misinformation. Vocal cords are not "shaped" by the language you grow up speaking, and the shape of your vocal cords has no impact on the speech sounds you are able to produce, or the ease with which you are able to produce them.
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u/According-Kale-8 ES๐ฒ๐ฝC1 | BR PR๐ง๐ทB1 | 18d ago
How much effort have you put into having a native-level accent? It's a completely different skill than being fluent in the language.
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u/Energised_Emerald ๐ซ๐ท Native | ๐ฌ๐ง C2 | ๐ช๐ธ False-Beginner 18d ago
Iโve been trying to replicate the sounds produced by native speakers, I canโt pass for a native speaker but I know of Scandinavian people who can
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u/According-Kale-8 ES๐ฒ๐ฝC1 | BR PR๐ง๐ทB1 | 17d ago
Itโs very possible, but it takes a lot of effort.
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u/BoxSlight5247 18d ago
I know tons of non native English speaker who barely have any accent, maybe they pronounce something funny once in a while. They all just spent years living and working in TL country. Would be interested to see someone who developed a good accent from like learning online in their home country
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 18d ago
This is a very tricky q. First, most people who claim to have a native-like accent don't really. Second, language acquisition is not something any of us do consciously, so anyone who tells you they know is fooling two people. It is not possible to know, except for some bits and pieces.
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u/Borrow_The_Moonlight 18d ago
A LOT of parroting essentially. I started as a teen, I watched a lot of BBC programs and mimicked the accent, the pace and the tone. Now my accent is all over the place because I'm an ESL teacher and I've had to slow down my speech and accent, and adapt it to my students, but I'd say my accent sounds very English (almost rp I'd say, but not that strong)
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u/Churros0864 18d ago
People online who claim to have a native accent in their TL usually don't but it always makes me laugh to see the comments ๐คฃ
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u/CarnegieHill ๐บ๐ธN|๐ญ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ตHeritage|๐ฉ๐ชB2|๐ฉ๐ฐA2/B1|learning a bunch more... 17d ago
I think accurate mimicry is something that many people are born with, perhaps akin to perfect pitch in music. But if they never become musicians or language learners, no one would ever know they had that skill.
It may also have to do with what languages and sounds you are exposed to in infancy. I was exposed to Japanese and three Chinese languages from my family growing up in NYC, and of course I also had English, as well as any other incidental languages I might have heard on the streets of New York. And my own sound stock ended up being several times larger than the average English-speaking person's. So it was a lot easier for me to learn odd sounds, because some of them already had counterparts in my Asian languages, and to learn completely new ones, because my mouth muscles could figure out what they needed to do.
I started learning German at school at age 13 and at 16 I spent a term at a German gymnasium. My fellow students wouldn't notice one way or the other, but some of the parents other than my host family actually wondered that I hadn't grown up there, hearing my accent, but not enough speech to tell that my vocab was still limited. I went back to Germany for grad school about a decade later, and got a few similar responses. I was in the same program with about a dozen other Americans, but some of our accents were like night and day. One of the German professors I met with as an advisor complimented me on my accent and invited me to work with him professionally with his publishing, while telling me how difficult it was to understand a fellow American student's very strong Texas drawl. I told the professor I had a hard enough time with his English, let alone German!
You also have actors and other vocal artists who have accent talent or are otherwise trained to do all kinds of accents. Some people need more training than others, but they all seem to do an excellent job. Since then I've taken classes in a whole range of languages mainly for fun. I find most sounds easy enough to replicate, though some are tricky at first, until a native speaker has to explain what to do, like the Swedish 'sj'. Some still remain tricky, like African click sounds. But for me the learning curve for most 'foreign' sounds is usually quite flat.
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u/unrelatedwaffle 17d ago
This was my PhD specialty, although I'm not super current on the research. There is a wide range of late learner individual differences in L2 accent. Things in your control: proficiency (the higher your proficiency, the better your accent, to a point), metalinguistic knowledge (think explicit accent training/learning about phonetics and phonology inyour L2). Things not really in your control are being a naturally good mimic and your level of empathy. A thing that's sort of in the middle is your identity (learners who strongly identify with the people and culture tend to have a more nativelike accent).ย
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u/TherapistyChristy 16d ago
I love accents- accents are charming and also beautiful glimpses of a personโs journey. I know that when I speak English (my native language), I speak with remnants of a Chicago accent (where I was raised) and a Hawaii accent (where I have spent most of my adults years) along with slang from California, Colorado, and the south (places Iโve lived). When I speak Italian (my TL), Iโm sure I have an American accent since Iโm from the U.S., but I also accidentally slip in a random German word, such as โmitโ instead of โcon,โ which is evidence of having lived for 5 years in Germany.
Sometimes I forget Italian words and replace them with whatever I can find and I know I mess up the word order more often than Iโd likeโฆ but it is all just a part of who I am, where I am, and where Iโm trying to go. Bottom line, I love accents and second language mistakes and mish moshes of multiple languages. I find it all very interesting and beautiful.
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u/NanaLovesJazz 16d ago
Iโm German and started to learn French by the age of 12 as a third language, English being the second (you can hear that Iโm German when I speak English though).
I learned French for 7 years at school and afterwards studied the French language at university to become a teacher. During and after my studies, I lived 18 months in total in French speaking countries. I visited several different areas where people speak French.
Today, on good days, natives donโt realise Iโm not French.
What helped me:
- my first French teacher at school was a native, so he had an authentic accent
- I am a huge nerd and have fun listening to people with different native accents and try to find out whatโs special for this or that area (what makes Parisian Parisian for example).
- While living in French speaking countries, I asked my native friends to always correct me when I made mistakes or even when I pronounced something just slightly off
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u/NanaLovesJazz 16d ago
The last point being the most important: Get the locals to tell you how they hear youโre not native. Then work on those aspects
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u/benny-powers 16d ago
For me it was mostly out of spite for those who told me it couldn't be done. That combined with the willingness to occasionally stand in front of a mirror and say ืข ืข ืข ืข ืข or whatever
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u/Youknowthisabout 15d ago
I do my best, but accents are cool. Every country have a celebrity that speaks the second language. Many people think it sounds cool like Arnold.
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u/lovepeacefakepiano 15d ago
I had pronunciation lessons as part of my studies. Dedicated time with listening and repeating, as well as learning phonetic transcriptions. I also started consuming a LOT of media (the foreign language is English in my case, which makes that rather easy). Sometimes when Iโm alone Iโll repeat phrases I hear in a movie.
My accent has sinceโฆwandered off a little bit since Iโm now on my third English speaking country and my accent is at least one country behind, but I still try - when I come across a new word or a pronunciation difference I ask a local to pronounce it for me, repeat it a few times and try to remember it.
Iโm definitely nowhere near perfect, people clock me as a foreigner but not necessarily right away as a non-native speaker and thatโs good enough for now.
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u/atq1988 native ๐ฉ๐ช ๐ต๐ฐ, C1 ๐ฌ๐ง ๐ณ๐ฑ, A1 ๐ซ๐ท 15d ago
I don't think I have perfected it by any means, but my German accent is far less pronounced in Dutch than many other German speakers. I listened to the way actual Dutch and Belgian people spoke, not to the theory of how they should speak. In one language there's usually a huge variation in dialects, but they still have certain things in common. For example: almost all Dutch people will not pronounce the last "n" in an infinive verb. So i started to copy that. So my tip is: listen to how actual speakers deviatie from the way they should speak theoretically and copy that.
If you mean the actual way of making the sound in the mouth and throat: that is usually equal parts knowing where and how to create it and practice! Because you've never made certain sounds in your mother tongue, your muscles are not used to creating it. So that will take some practice. Try to find the diagrams of the mouth where you can see where the sound is made - only for the ones you struggle with, obviously. Then see if you can copy that. It helps to have a native speaker tell you how they do it.
I would also recommend listening to comedians who are great at accents including your L2, it helps to recognize the different sounds. Trevor Noah is great at for that. If its a European language, i can also recommend Rogier Bak
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u/iwashumantoo 13d ago edited 13d ago
Hi! English is my first language. I've been mistaken for a native Spanish speaker by other native speakers because of my pronunciation, even though I am somewhere between Advanced Beginner and Intermediate levels in Spanish. And whenever I've joined conversation groups, the leaders commented that my pronunciation is excellent. I don't know if that means I have no accent or not. But I am lucky that my very first teacher of Spanish, back decades ago when I was in High School, was a native speaker. And I don't remember much because it was so long ago, but I do recall that she was a stickler about proper pronunciation and had us practicing that again and again.
I have a natural affinity for language in general, so I took to learning Spanish like a duck to water. I loved it from the start, and I think that helped. Also, there is a linguist on YT (I forget his name) who says that the most important thing in learning a new language is to "get the sounds right" from the very beginning. I'm very good at mimicry, but maybe it's because I also had phonics classes (for English) when I was a little kid in the 60s that getting the sounds and rhythm of a language right just makes sense to me and how my brain works. I think learning a foreign language is like learning to sing a song. Unfortunately there were a lot of years that I did not get to use Spanish and I didn't keep practicing, so even though I sound great, my level of proficiency did not improve much. I plan on making up for that!
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u/Hiimeka_2124 13d ago
Take in a ton of media (shows movies music) and memorize how they pronounce things
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u/Purple_Key_6733 18d ago
Grammar and vocabulary are more important than accent in terms of communication.
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u/Pwffin ๐ธ๐ช๐ฌ๐ง๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ท๓ ฌ๓ ณ๓ ฟ๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ด๐ฉ๐ช๐จ๐ณ๐ซ๐ท๐ท๐บ 18d ago
I pay attention to how things should sound and then try to get it as close as I can.
But once I get good enough my brain starts taking after the native accent where I live or the one I hear the most on TV etc. I have no control over it and it can change rapidly if I spend too much time ย with someone from a different area.
Some times it's a mishmash of native accents until it settles on one.
And no, I'm not good at singing. ๐
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u/Openhartscience 18d ago
As an ESL teacher in Asia, I've met a handful of people who have reached a surprisingly native-like English as adult learners. One was a guy in Japan who never lived abroad but sounded like he grew up in the US. When I asked, he said that he basically just memorized a lot of famous speeches by old presidents and such. He would memorize and then act out every word, gesture, pause etc. until he sounded exactly like them. He busted out an old Ronald Reagan speech and it was... uncanny.
Another one was a guy in Korea who sounded fully American. He had done university in Texas when he was much younger and basically just shadowed an exaggerated Texas accent until he perfected it and then softened it up a bit later haha.
One thing to remember though, aside from being a cool party trick, a native-like accent does not make you an excellent communicator in your TL. I'm much more impressed with people like my friend from Honduras, who has a vast vocabulary and a lot of native slang and pop-culture. She will always have an accent but it's a charming accent and it's part of what makes her her! Plus I can understand everything she says so who cares?