> Nobody learns to speak any language as an adult without an accent.
Nobody speaks any language without an accent. However, I've managed to convince native Spanish speakers that I was from Spain (later I had trouble convincing them that Spanish was my second language).
Most people don't get rid of their foreign sounding accent because they don't work on improving their accent.
"Most people don't get rid of their foreign sounding accent because they don't work on improving their accent."
Taking on enough of a local accent to be understood is good. Losing your accent is a terrible cost that requires hard work to achieve. Why would you work hard to hurt yourself?
I find it super difficult to find the tools to do that. There are no courses for it no books, and people don't tell you that you're pronouncing something wrong because they think it would be unpolite.
I'd love to hear some tips on how to work on improving my accent. I moved to Sweden 10 years ago and Swedish is my 4th language.
The first tip is to learn to listen to yourself. If someone ever corrects you, that is gold.
1) Focus on the vowels. They will help you get the resonance right (the resonance is how you hold the muscles in your mouth, so the sound seems to come from the back of your throat like in Russian or the front of your mouth like in Korean)
2) Focus on the rhythm of the language. I'm sure you know what I mean here.
3) Focus on the intonation: what pitches do they have? Scottish has kind of a lilt, for example.
4) Try to notice "phonemes", and I put it in quotes to expand the idea to mean "what native speakers consider important". For example, Mandarin speakers can't hear a vowel change to save their life, but if you get the intonation slightly wrong they glare at you.
5) Focus on details, listen to how letters change when they are between other letters, etc. (Watching to how people respond to your speech can be helpful, especially if they don't understand. Small words especially. For example, a listener might get confused and not understand the world "Lip", even though they would understand "Literally", if your "L" is slightly off)
6) Don't underestimate the value of correct grammar in improving your accent.
Incidentally, I learned of the existence of this as formal theory from David Stern (although his focus is on stage accents which is a little different)
Also, if you have any tips I'd love to hear them too :)
One thing that helped me avoid a German accent while speaking English, was to imitate a heavy German accent and observe what was really the essence of it, then just avoiding these "mistakes".
For example, here are the things that make up most of the German accent of English:
- pronouncing "th" as "s" (Germans apparently don't know how to put one's tongue tip on the upper teeth)
- pronouncing "w" as "v" (like the German "w") instead of as "u"
- sharper pronounciation of initial vowels (i.e. when a word starts with a vowel) and "h"
Yeah, I guess the only tip I have is to make a concious decission to want to improve on that, that at least is the first important step as far as I can see.
I'll try to integrate some of the things you point out into my daily life, we'll see how it goes :D
Thinking about it some more, I think it is essential to get the resonance right. And when you do get it right, it fixes a million other small problems along with it.
Focusing hard on the vowels is the easiest way I know to get the resonance
In Spanish culture correcting someone miss-pronunciation is quite common. It's one of the reasons why it can be quicker to master the language by immersion that in an ultra-polite society found in English speaking languages.
The best way to work on your accent is to record yourself and listen to it. Ideally you would have a native say it in a native manner. Movies, TV shows, and particularly audiobooks (with the printed copy) can be a great sources to work on it.
I have encouraged my co-workers to correct my English lately (12 years in Australia). They've been teaching me some of the local sayings, and correcting my pronunciation etc... Things that in Spain would have been picked up and addressed much sooner.
Most people don't get rid of their foreign sounding accent because they don't work on improving their accent.