Accent Training Podcast

#074 How Accents are Formed, and Controlling your Own Sound

• Patrick • Season 3 • Episode 74

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Speech involves many aspects, and accent reduction takes dedication and patience. However, when we consider the sounds of the American accent, connecting our speech, and intonation, we can break speech down into categories to be better understood. 

Tune in to learn how you can improve your understanding of spoken English, and ultimately improve your communication skills and confidence!

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the English Out Loud Podcast, a podcast where I give you tips on how you can enhance your spoken English. My name is Pat and I'm an American accent coach from Toronto, Canada. Here to give you all the top tips you need. Now, it is truly a pleasure to be talking with you here today because I've got some advice to bestow upon you that I hope will change the way you look at language learning in general, possibly even change your approach with language learning. I wanna explain to you the way that we make the sounds of our language, what makes the accent what it is, and how can you identify and overcome this particular obstacle. Because the tricky thing about accent is that it's all hidden. It's all things that you don't know, that you don't know. I'm here to tell you some of the things that you need to know but you don't know. And so I'm gonna make sure that you know that you need to know these things that you currently don't know. And so what I'm gonna get into today are three of the main components that make our speech what it is. Explain to you how you can identify them and how you can use them to enhance your regular English communication skills. Honestly, knowing the fact that these rules exist helps. It helps quite a bit. Whether you use them or not, you benefit from just knowing about them. So sit back and relax cuz I've got a great show for you here today. Let's consider this today. Let's talk about what are the three main elements that make up speaking and how can you overcome them? Because are they terribly difficult things to overcome? Yeah, kind of. It's a matter of looking at language in a completely new way, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Now, is it? Because when you wanna learn something new, you've gotta look at it in a brand new way. So let's do that exact thing today with your English, and let's consider for a moment here just what makes your accent and what are you even capable of doing about it? Because that's the tricky thing, you know, is getting yourself to actually do something for myself. Sometimes it's just recording these episodes. I gotta think to myself, make the effort and spend the time to do it. And that's a tough thing to fall short on because of course I've got many people out there who wanna learn from me, and so that's what motivates me to do it. And for you, you've got your own motivations that have you sitting here listening to me right now. And so let's take advantage of this time that we're together and let's jump right into the knowledge. I wanna talk about accent learning difficulties and how you can overcome them. Now, I've spoken a little bit about this in the past, talked about four key factors that often impede on your ability to change your accent. Now what I'm reading off of is a blog post that I've written up and it's going to be posted on a website called Intrepid English. Make sure that you take the opportunity to check that website out, intrepid english.co.uk. Anyway, so on to some accent learning difficulties and how you can overcome them. First off, I wanna mention that learning in accent is something that we are all capable of doing. However, our age has a profound impact on how easily we can reach that goal. You see from infancy, your brain began regularly absorbing information and using it to develop the skills needed to speak. This started by first learning what sounds to listen for, then repeating the mouth muscle movements required to produce that sound. Children do this effortlessly, and for that reason, kids' speech changes depending on where they live, who they live with, or what languages they're exposed to. So from about four months until 13 years of age, this linguistic marvel gives us unbounded speech skills. But it gets much harder as we get older. By the age of 13, your brain focuses on other developments as you can imagine, and your muscle movements become fixed on what they've learned to do over those first 13 years of your life. This is how they can make sure that you can speak effortlessly and quickly. Your ears, they start to filter out unknown speech sounds and your ability to reproduce new sounds fades after the age of 25, you're an adult, your speech is fully developed and you're only now beginning to recognize the real value of speaking many languages. A common denominator I see in my students is that by the time they think to work on their accent, they're already fully grown adults. Now, unless time travel is on your list of English learning resources, truly nothing can be done about your age. Of course, the language filter learned through your childhood, however, can indeed be understood and molded to your own desire. Retraining your muscle memory requires commitment. But if changing your language skills is your goal, there are three elements of your language filter that I'd like to direct your attention to. Now, these three elements are the sounds of your native language, word linking or connected speech and intonation. So first, let's consider the sounds of your native language. Now, there are sounds in your native language that may not exist in English. The first thing that we we wanna do is pinpoint what those sounds are because then we can identify exactly when you are using these sounds in your English speech. So do you get what I mean there? Maybe it's a little bit confusing. I'm saying that if there's a sound that exists in your language that there isn't really something equal to it in English, chances are that particular sound is kind of seeping its way into your English speech. So the first thing that you can do just to get the ball rolling, just to get moving on this is identify those sounds and when you're using them in your English speech, because these sounds, if you choose, can be eliminated and can be replaced by English sounds. Whether that's the American accent, like I teach Australian accent, the British accent, or even the Jamaican accent. Whatever you like, it's up to you. Now, next we wanna consider what sounds are made in spoken English that do not exist in your native language. We want to learn to identify when these sounds are made and then we've gotta repeat them. We've gotta repeat the movements of them. Countless times. You've gotta teach your muscles new movements. Your muscles thought that they were getting an easy ride for the rest of your life. They thought that now they can just chill your muscles, thought that it's just a free pass here on out. Well, I'm here to wake them up and tell you to put your muscles to work because if you want to get an American accent, you have to teach your muscles to be molded again so that they can learn to repeat new sounds. Now how can you learn about new sounds? Well, hey, of course the English Out Loud podcast is a great resource for hearing important sounds of spoken English and kick starting your American accent learning progress. The, that's the podcast you're listening to right now, so you're in the right spot. The fact that you're listening to this means you know what you're doing means that you're, you're someone who's not messing around. You wanna know about the sounds and you wanna repeat them. That's what we're here for my friend. That's what we're here for. Now, the next thing that we're gonna consider is connected speech or linking how we link our words together. You see spoken English links words in a way which is not seen in written English. Practicing and understanding word linking is no walk in the park. But once you get the hang of it, you'll find that your listening skills improve dramatically. Many people, in my experience, many students of mine have told me that after they knew to listen for linking, they began catching word combinations that they would've missed otherwise. For example, saying Put it up, put it up. If you don't know about the flap T linking, then that put it up might sound like it's all one big word, right? But if you know about the flap T linking, then you know that the phrase, put it up consists of three separate words. Put it up, put it up. So connected speech, linking your words together. This is the second thing that you wanna adjust with your speech is why I like the flap tea so much. Because hey, when you learn about the flap tea, you learn a little bit about the sounds. We learn a little bit about connected speech, as I just pointed out there. Put it up, put it up. Okay, so we got sounds and connected speech, and then it also touches on the third factor that we're going to consider today intonation. Intonation. Because as I've pointed out, flap teas come in, unstressed syllables, unstressed syllables. So this is to say that flap teas are in the weaker parts of the words now, aren't they? And here's how that relates to intonation, because intonation is the rise and fall of English speech, the factor that makes it sound so bouncy. This bouncy sounding speech is imperative to your accent as pronouncing. Strong sounds too soft, or soft sounds too strong, may change the meaning of a word. Not to mention English, stress is contrastive, which is to say that we will have our words rising and falling, rising and falling in stress in order to convey subtle shades of meanings in our words. So how can we overcome intonation difficulties? Well, we wanna start by picking a few short grammar words, some words like of ah, can the, you know, function words is what we call them, function words. And so we wanna focus on how native English speakers say these words. You see, if you listen closely, you'll notice that the voices of English speakers goes a little bit quieter when we get to those function words. Nouns and verbs on the other hand, are pronounced stronger and a little bit louder. Spotting the differences of intonation is the first step to overcoming it. Notice how I said this right here. Spotting the differences, spotting the differences. Spa was strong, ding, unstressed. But then I didn't even say the full word the, and I didn't say the, I said the differences. The differences. I just pronounced it quick and quiet. The the differences, because I mean the word the isn't giving a whole lot of details in the sentence, is it? It's just a grammar word. It's just for structure. And so my point is to say that through spotting the differences in intonation, you can overcome it. Which by the way, this podcast is a place that you wanna stay tuned in for if you're interested in learning about the differences in intonation. So, so once again, you're in the right spot, aren't ya? So you see, once you get the ball rolling on changing your spoken English, you'll be looking at language learning in a whole new light. My free recommendation is to use the free resources available to you on the internet, use language apps, listen to podcasts, and repeat what you hear people say. A great resource. One of my favorites is ish.com. On this website, you can type in any short phrase, idiomatic expression or individual word, and it'll sometimes leave you with thousands of examples of people saying those words. glish.com, fantastic resource paid services are extremely helpful as well. And they truly do kick things up a notch. A coach gives you feedback on how you sound, what changes you can make, and gives you a bit of direction on how you can practice them. And then of course, it's up to you as the student to practice them. Whatever level you strive for with your language learning is up to you and us. Teachers are the ones who are happy to help you get there. We're just the guide, but you gotta build the bridge and cross it yourself, you know what I mean? But we'll show you how. Anyway, this has been a fantastic episode. I'm really happy I, I took some time to just get this one done and over with. Make another great episode for all of my happy listeners to enjoy. Thank you very much to my good friend Lorraine at Intrepid English for giving my blog post a home. And I look forward to working together on some stuff in the future. But anyway, if you're not already reading this blog post@intrepidenglish.co.uk, then you are missing out on a great free resource of where you can practice your English because this website, intrepid english.co.uk, I'm looking at it right now. I've got it up right now. Fantastic website. I haven't even clicked on anything yet. Haven't even clicked on anything. So there's blog, you just clicked that blog and then right here they've got boom color idioms. You wanna know about color idioms, modal verbs and negotiations, Poetry must reads. Are you a poet but you don't know it? Here are some must reads for you. A world of walking. I'm telling you folks, I'm telling you this website intrepid English before you're even through the door, there is a great learning experience. Something I like is the name of the website, the name of the school, because Intrepid. What does intrepid mean? Intrepid. Intrepid means fearless. Intrepid means fearless. It's not a common word altogether, it's not a word that you hear all the time, but it's something that's forcing you to learn as soon as you see the name. So that's one you know that you can count on some good educational content from Intrepid English. Make sure you check it out. Anyway, I've gotta get to wrap this puppy up for today. I've had a lot of fun recording this one. I've made a funny little studio here between two couches and a blanket because I didn't really have a great spot to shoot. I didn't have a, a perfect room to shoot in, so I just had to make something with what I could find around me. Two couches and a blanket and some chairs and a little table. So this my studio for today. Anyway, I'm to have had the to with you today. Thank you for tuning on in and have a good one.