
How to Master an Accent - Thevet
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/theater/how-to-master-an-accent.html?_r=0
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GuiA
Since many comments in this thread converge towards language pronunciation:

When people are learning how to draw, they typically have to learn how to
"unsee". To quote Betty Edwards:

 _students beginning in art generally do not really see what is in front of
their eyes — that is, they do not perceive in the way required for drawing.
They take note of what 's there, and quickly translate the perception into
words and symbols mainly based on the symbol system developed throughout
childhood and on what they know about the perceived object._

Learning how to pronounce sounds in a new language is the same. A lot of
people will pronounce foreign words with how their brain thinks it should
sound, using their native language as a baseline. The trick is to try to get
rid of any phonetic preconception you might have, and pronounce sounds as you
hear them from native speakers. It takes practice, but it's a learnable skill.

(Which is why romanization of Asian languages, for instance, is a trap for new
learners: if you're learning Japanese, the latin alphabet should have no place
whatsoever in your learning. It's a tempting, but false path)

For drawing like for speaking, kids are naturally good at this. (except while
language acquisition happens naturally for kids, deliberate drawing practice
rarely does)

~~~
emodendroket
> (Which is why romanization of Asian languages, for instance, is a trap for
> new learners: if you're learning Japanese, the latin alphabet should have no
> place whatsoever in your learning. It's a tempting, but false path)

I don't really believe this. Spanish, French, English, and Swahili are all
written in the same alphabet, but have wildly different pronunciations.
There's nothing magical about using Roman letters (and I have a chip on my
shoulder about this after studying Japanese because, while converting Japanese
to a romanized system has actual sound arguments against it, "it would sound
like English" is trotted out constantly even though it's nonsense).

~~~
55555
I'll use Thai as an example because I speak/read/write Thai, but the following
is also true for most other languages...

If you were raised speaking english, then the roman letters of the english
alphabet have distinct pronounciations/sounds to you. They make these sounds
in your head when you read them. Someone born in mexico will have a different
alphabet, and heck even australians and British people have different sounds
for their letters than Americans. Heck even Americans from different regions
have different sounds.

The point is that Thai people make different noises when they speak. They do
not have an "z" sound. Frankly, none of their sounds match up exactly to any
of our sounds. When you spell thai words using the english alphabet, you will
then tend to read the word back as you have written it, in English, and thus
incorrectly. Thai letters have Thai sounds, so you should learn this second
alphabet and then you can read thai words by making the correct thai sounds.

If a language has an official transliteration system, such as pinyin for
Chinese, then it may possibly work, but you are still essentially learning a
second alphabet, merely one with the same shaped letters. For languages like
Thai though, there is no official transliteration, and making your own and
using it consistently would be more difficult than simply learning the Thai
alphabet, and infact would more or less require learning the Thai alphabet.

For an extreme example, consider that African language that has the clicky
sounds. How would you even begin to remember how a word sounds if you were
storing it in your brain as text after transliterating it into the English
alphabet? "Click clack click clack" is not the correct pronunciation.

Edit: I re-read your comment and see that you speak Japanese. You are using
roman-looking letters, but you are surely being very careful to read the
letters using Japanese sounds. Given that an alphabet is a set of letters that
represent phonemes, are you really using the English alphabet or have you
created a second, phonetic Japanese alphabet that happens to have identical
shapes?

~~~
NikolaNovak
But we don't make people ignore Latin alphabet when switching from English to
German, Spanish, etc.

Why would this predisposition of seeing alphabet as connected to own sounds be
worse with languages that don't use it natively?

If anything, English speakers have it easy - most English language has very
loose connection between letters and sounds, i.e. most letters can be
pronounced in wildly different ways depending on word or context. As such,
English speakers should be used to constantly re-interpreting what a letter
sequence sounds like - unlike those of us with phonetic language background,
who are frankly constantly irked by English in this way ;)

~~~
Declanomous
Hey now, English was phonetic when we codified our spelling 500 years ago.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift)

~~~
emodendroket
English spelling wasn't really fully codified 500 years ago.

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bkgunby
As someone who learned to speak fluently in a different language, I believe
the trick is to study the IPA of both your native language and the one you
want to learn. This is especially true if you come from a language like
English which isn't a phonetic language.

It sets a common ground for you to work with. There may be some vowels that
may be undistinguishable for both native speakers. However, you'll likely to
come across some that requires a developed ear to differentiate the two. This
is the reason why you probably have an accent. Focus on tongue placement,
emphasis, change in pitch, etc.

Of course, this won't help much to actually speak in a different language, but
for accents I found this method incredibly helpful. It's the micro side of
things that most people overlook.

~~~
vinay427
As someone who is currently learning to speak in a different language, I would
agree with this wholeheartedly. I learned IPA in a university course and have
found it very useful for learning languages, especially because most native
speakers of the target language may not be aware of the phonetics of that
language.

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wallflower
On the subject of accents, in case you missed her viral video the first-time
around, the absolutely astounding Saara from Finland.

"What Languages Sound Like To Foreigners"
[https://youtu.be/ybcvlxivscw](https://youtu.be/ybcvlxivscw)

~~~
laurieg
That is a wonderful video. The gibberish she speaks in Each language sounds
pretty convincing, although I noticed my relationship with each language
affected how it sounded a lot.

French and Spanish: I've heard them around but never spoken them. She sounded
perfect.

Swedish: I used to be able to speak it but have forgotten. She sounded even
more convincing than in French.

Japanese: I speak it now but not natively. She sounded pretty rough and not
all that Japanese to me.

English: My native language. My brain tried so hard to make sense of it and
pulled out snippets of words but there was no grammar there.

~~~
sundvor
As a Norwegian, who grew up with a plethora region specific accents _in my own
country_ , then moved to Australia, I love this.

In her next video, she completely _nailed_ the (female version of the)
Australian English. Really had to laugh out loud at how she captured that
essence. Genius.

Edit: It's certainly not the only one, all Australian females don't sound like
this; it's just that she got this particular version of the Australian ones so
right. I'm actually somewhat confused as to how to place it; back home you'd
have the geographical regions and that's it. So I wonder if this Australian
one is more of a "sociolect". If anyone has any info / pointers I'd love to
learn more.

~~~
GuiA
_> So I wonder if this Australian one is more of a "sociolect". If anyone has
any info / pointers I'd love to learn more._

Similar maybe to the "valley girl" American accent. Once perhaps a California
only thing, now something you hear from teenage girls/women in their 20s all
around the US (probably due to Hollywood, in part).

~~~
icebraining
Inadvertently helped to spread by the Zappas:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb21lsCQ3EM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb21lsCQ3EM)

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mysterypie
If you want to also see her while she does the accents, this TED talk is
great:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_jones_as_a_one_woman_global_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_jones_as_a_one_woman_global_village)

~~~
apendleton
For a later TED she also did an excerpt of the play this article is about (so,
more accents!): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAK1UIb-
Fio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAK1UIb-Fio)

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xiaoma
I always loved Robert Greene's story of when he was young and living in France
he got hired at a hotel while he was pretending to be Irish. He talked about
it in an interview that got a little into how much of a method acting exercise
it became. He actually took the job and got sucked into an alternate identity
for years!

[https://youtu.be/vLXAZsCwGwM?t=9m54s](https://youtu.be/vLXAZsCwGwM?t=9m54s)

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laurieg
Does anyone have any advice on how to hear the distinction in sounds that
aren't in your native language? For example an English speaker learning
Chinese tones or a Japanese speaker learning L and R differences. It seems
like this is a huge wall to learning accents.

~~~
xiaoma
Yes. Do a lot of listening and do minimal pair drills. I don't think Chinese
tones are that tough, but it can take a long time to train the ears when the
actual sounds of the language are different, e.g. Taiwanese where there are
aspirated, plain and voiced versions of a bunch of consonants. Basically k/g
of English mapped to 3 different consonants, as did p/b, t/d, etc.

This drove me nuts when I was learning: [https://toshuo.com/2010/the-hardest-
thing-about-taiwanese-ph...](https://toshuo.com/2010/the-hardest-thing-about-
taiwanese-phonics/)

~~~
zhte415
I know nothing about Taiwanese pronunciation other than I probably know it
when I hear it. :)

I agree. To add: The most useful advice I read, which I found useful, is stop
caring about tones of individual words. Listen to the flow of sentences,
correct own pronunciation of words that are wrong with some drilling, and
focus on communication. Like English, speaking word-by-word (or, character-by-
character) doesn't sound natural.

And also stop caring if you're met with an unfamiliar word. As long as you're
focused on the sentence, it should be pretty obvious if it is a noun, verb,
pronoun, or any other part of speech. Does it have material impact? If so,
take a note and remember it.

Basically, stop translating what one hears. Just understand it.

~~~
xiaoma
I'll be honest. I think that's _terrible_ advice for improving your accent,
though it might be okay advice for improving your comprehension at an early
level and maybe picking up some vocab and grammar along the way.

For improving pronunciation, it's much more useful to pick a _short_ passage
that includes pretty much the full phonetic set of the language and drill it
repeatedly. In years past, famous hyper-polyglots in Europe tended to use _The
Lord 's Prayer_ for this. Now, there are a lot more options and you can also
record yourself reading the passage and listen and compare your own sound with
a native recording. Spend half an hour a day doing this for a month and it
will have a dramatic effect on your pronunciation and accent in the target
language. At least it has with every single person I've seen who has had the
discipline to do it.

~~~
zhte415
Yeah, I agree short passages are great. Because they focus on the flow of
sound, not on the individual word.

Lords prayer as something to read does not fit well for Chinese. Chinese
cannot sanely be read using pinyin. Chinese must be read by characters. I
guess you know this, as your username is xiaoma.

Speaking and listening doesn't need remembering a lot of what are to early
learners, symbols, and to later learners a collection of particles that
sometimes make cute sense but are more often a sense of time waste and pain.

Learning characters one-by-one however makes no sense. Unless on wants to
sound like a CCTV1 7pm news announcer reading a script, words need to be put
in to context, and for that is the need to relax, and just say things as
they're said.

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Singletoned
It's a bit weird for an interview titled "How to Master an Accent" to start
with the quote:

> “For me it’s not an accent. I know people who do brilliant accents. But I
> don’t know how to do that.”

~~~
Shorel
I think that's her way to explain that she doesn't try to use her own words
with an accent (like most people would do), but she memorizes the sounds
(think IPA) and mouth positions and tries to reproduce that as exactly as
possible, even if in some cases the sound means another word in her own
accent.

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mrkgnao
> a doctor who uses homeopathic medicines, massage techniques and energy work

I wonder if there are any people who market homeopathy targeted at vocal
training. How would that even work (I mean, in terms of _similia similibus
curentur_ or whatever)?

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sethammons
I love accents and flavors of speech. A couple of thing I noticed when I was a
bit younger. In California, words that end with "-ty" are pronounced "-dy."
Eternity -> Eternidy. Also, In Southern California at least, you measure
distance in time. "How far away is the store?", "about five minutes."

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Rzor
Wow. This is really hard. I like to play a Russian accent for fun and would
like to improve it, but I guess I'll stay with YouTube channels to do that.

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oxplot
* Listen to a lot of radio/movies/shows

* Record own voice speaking passages of above material

* Play back, compare, adjust and repeat

Do above for countless hours

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dominotw
the window of mastering an accent closes once you hit your late teens. After
that your brain cannot hear the correct pronunciation and merely maps it to
closest sounding sound in you mental library. Once you can't hear it, you
can't speak it. It is much easier and useful to learn the "flow" of the
language than trying to make new sounds .

People always use colin Farrell as an example of adults who mastered an accent
but forget that his native language is phonetically close to the language he
is supposedly mastering.

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tatotato
Error 503 Backend is unhealthy

Funniest one I've seen in a while.

