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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome.
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today, the subject is …
Am I Speakin’ Proper, Mate?
Or
How to Improve Your Accent in Your Target Language
We might all have a little bit of affection for Dick Van Dyke’s questionable cockney accent in Mary Poppins, but, honestly, no one really wants to end up with such a bad result, do they?
So, how do you improve your accent in your target language? I say improve, because it’s unlikely you’ll ever sound like a true native speaker.
Well, you have to speak, obviously, but that doesn’t mean that you have to speak to another person. There are plenty of ways to practice before you get to that stage.
Well, the first key to speaking is to listen. You cannot possibly know how to pronounce words in a foreign language without listening to people speaking them. And no, that doesn’t mean another non-native speaker speaking the language. You need to listen to native speakers. There are a tonne of things you can listen to, or listen and watch. Here are just some of them:
- Radio
- Podcasts
- TV shows
- Films
- YouTube videos
- Songs
Some of these will be more difficult to understand than others, especially to start with, but until you hear that language, you’ll never be able to produce it. And no, the speaking exercises on Duolingo are not a good example. In fact, no electronic voice is a good example. Yes, they’re getting better, but there are always tells that give them away. Try listening to one in your own language. You’ll know straightaway it’s getting things wrong.
You might be saying, but I don’t understand the radio if I listen to it. The thing is, though, to get the sounds right, you don’t necessarily need to actually understand all the words you’re hearing. You need to absorb the sounds more than understand every single thing. So, as far as I’m concerned, listening to something you don’t understand fully isn’t a problem when you’re working on accent.
Once you’ve done the listening - I don’t mean by that that you should stop listening - you need to start practising.
One of the easiest ways to practise is with songs. Spotify has the lyrics to many songs, so it’s not that hard to find something suitable and that you can bear listening to over and over. I believe the YouTube Music app is similar. Choose songs where the pronunciation is clear, though, for the best result. No one in your house is going to object to you singing along with songs, are they? What? You’re tone deaf? Ah. Perhaps, not, then. But for everyone else, I have done this, mainly in Italian, so far, and it’s worked well for me. I’ve kind of attempted it with Welsh, a tiny bit, but the pronunciation is not easy to follow, so hasn’t been so much of a success. Plus, most of the songs don’t have the lyrics, or synchronisation if they do.
If you don’t like music, you can also just read text aloud. So, if you’re reading a book, read a few pages in your best accent every day. I’ve done this quite a bit and I feel that it does help. Yes, you can’t be sure you’re getting it completely right, but if you’ve done enough listening, you should get pretty close and you need to start feeling comfortable with getting your teeth around all those words, because saying them in your head just doesn’t cut it.
Shadowing is another technique you could use, where you play some speech from a TV show, or video, or whatever, and you copy what’s being said, following on close behind the actual speaker. I’ve never tried this and different people seem to have different takes on exactly how to do it, so go and search those out if you want to give this a go. Make sure you choose dialogue where the person speaks clearly, though, or you’ll have a tough time doing this, too.
Of course, with all your practise, you also need to ensure you’re learning an accent that will be understandable to many people in the country. Each language has it’s own regional variations, or country variations, for that matter, so be aware of these and don’t go for something too extreme to imitate, or from the wrong country. You may limit your understandability in future conversations.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, hwyl and bye for now.