Karen Van Hook, Ph.D.

Learning a New Accent is Like Driving On the Other Side of the Road

When you learn a new accent, you learn new muscle habits: new ways of moving the tongue and jaw and lips, and even the muscles in the throat. But the new habits don’t become automatic right away. Speaking with our first accent is automatic. Naturally, we want the new accent to feel effortless—and it can. But we need to give the new accent a chance to get “rooted” in our muscle memory.

The first time I went to the UK, I thought that driving on the left side of the road should feel just like driving at home—except “mirror image”. But the first day of driving on the left was a nightmare. I hit a curb and burst a tire.

A good driver has an automatic “mental map” of the shape of the car. You “just know” how much space the car needs. It’s like being a fluent speaker of a language: the mental processing is unconscious and automatic. When you drive on the other side, the steering wheel is on the “wrong” side of the car. Suddenly, everything that feels natural and easy is wrong. It’s confusing and overwhelming. But I made one big attitude change that made everything better:

I stopped impatiently trying to *make* it feel automatic. I stopped looking for mental shortcuts. I opened up my mind to a new experience. I took in all the sensory details: how things looked, how the car felt, how I heard the passenger’s voice from my left, everything.

Within a few days, I could feel that driving on the left was becoming automatic. Soon, it felt almost as easy as driving at home.

Learning a new accent is very similar. It will take more than a few days, but there’s no danger that anyone will get killed—or even that you’ll burst a tire. 

Often, a client finds exactly the right tongue position for the American accent and says something with good American pronunciation. And then they will suddenly look worried and say, “But I can’t talk like this all the time!” Actually, they can—but it will take more than 30 seconds of practice. It won’t feel automatic *right away*.

There’s a deeper parallel here. When we’re impatient for things to feel easy and automatic, the brain turns to things it can do automatically: our old habits. When I accepted that driving on the left was simply going to feel very, very weird for a while, and that I needed to fully absorb the experience—that was when my mind opened up and I began to learn how to drive on the left. 

To learn a new skill so well that it becomes automatic, we need to step away from our well-known habits and fully experience something totally new. If we surrender to the unfamiliarity, and stop worrying about “When will it feel easy?”—that’s when we get on the road that really leads to things becoming easy.


Successful parking on the left
Me showing off my triumph in England: neatly parking on the left (with no more burst tires)

Online Workshops for Japanese Speakers

I’m now doing online intensive workshops for small groups of native Japanese speakers. Information in Japanese is available at this link.  Information in English continues below.

Larynx

This workshop presents several core skills for English pronunciation, using techniques that I’ve developed over several years of working with native speakers of Japanese.

How the throat is different for English and for Japanese: Speakers of American English hold the muscles in the throat differently than speakers of Japanese. We explore ways to change the feeling in the throat to make it easier to pronounce English clearly.

The mouth movements that are key to smooth English: We’ll learn how the mouth moves for English differently than for Japanese. The basic mouth movement for English is different from the basic movement for Japanese. When you learn the new mouth movement pattern, it is suddenly much easier to pronounce words with complicated sound combinations. It also gets much easier to join words together smoothly, the way native speakers do. 

How to use your breath for English: English uses the breath very differently than Japanese. We will do breath exercises and learn how to use the breath to support the sound.

Difficult sounds and words: We will cover some of the more confusing sounds of English, such as the difference between ‘l’ and ‘r’, and difficult words such as the difference between ‘walk’ and ‘work’.

This will be a fast-moving, intensive workshop. By the end, you will have a new understanding of how English works and a plan for practicing to continue to improve pronunciation.

When is a Foreign Accent an Asset?

Some speakers of English as a foreign language want to retain aspects of their own accents, and there are good reasons for them to do so. The key is knowing when and how a foreign accent becomes an advantage.

A foreign accent isn’t always a handicap. In some cases, it can even be an advantage.
 
A light foreign accent can actually help you to speak with greater authority. When a speaker sounds completely competent in English but still foreign, they sound worldly, sophisticated and knowledgeable. They sound as if they have access to a broader range of experience than an ordinary native speaker does. The same is true in many languages – not just English. Imagine someone speaking your language clearly and fluently, but with a detectable foreign accent. Do they sound intelligent? Interesting? Impressive? That’s how a soft foreign accent sounds to many native speakers of English.
 
Yet there’s no denying that sometimes, a foreign accent can be a disadvantage. What is the difference between an accent that causes difficulty and an accent that’s an advantage? Some of it depends on specific circumstances – such as the field you’re working in or which native speakers you’re dealing with. But a lot of it is actually the character of the accent itself. There are a few characteristics that make an accent serve as an asset rather than a liability.
 
All the important distinctions between sounds are made clearly. With very few exceptions, a foreign accent that makes a good impression never involves mixing up sounds or blurring the distinctions between sounds. All the consonants are pronounced clearly. All the vowels of English are pronounced distinctly—listeners never have to guess whether the speaker meant “this” or “these,” “nut” or “not.” There are audible differences from the way natives would pronounce the sounds, but the differences are small enough that they make the accent sound interesting, not confusing.
 
Rhythm and tone are close to those used by native speakers. Again, there are some differences, but people don’t often misunderstand the speaker’s meaning because of a mistaken tone cue. One element is especially important: the key words in a phrase or sentence stand out. Native speakers highlight the important words in a message by slowing down, emphasizing the individual sounds in those words, and changing the pitch. Most languages signal distinctions between key words and less important words, but they don’t use all of these signals. A foreign speaker who doesn’t use all the signals native speakers use may be hard to understand, or may sound uncertain or insecure. In contrast, a foreign speaker who makes the important words stand out in the same way native speakers do sounds confident and competent.
 
The voice qualities and resonance are partially similar to those used by native speakers. An accent that sounds good to native speakers doesn’t have to have exactly the same voice qualities as a native accent. In fact, the voice qualities that foreign speakers bring to English are often a large part of why their accents sound interesting and appealing to native speakers. But a foreign accent makes an especially good impression if the speaker’s voice has some elements in common with the typical American voice. One such element is what is called “voice placement” – loosely speaking, where the voice seems to “come from”. Some accents sound as if they come from deep in the throat; others as if they come from high up in the back of the nose. The neutral American accent comes primarily from the front of the throat and the roof of the mouth – roughly in the middle of the mouth. When speakers have strong voice resonance in these areas, they sound as if they truly have command of our language—as if they really “get” American English. Other elements of voice resonance that they may retain from their native language then add interest and depth to the voice.
 
In summary, an accent that’s an advantage is one that shows command of the aspects of American English that native speakers respond to most: the important distinctions between sounds, the use of rhythm and tone to make key words and ideas stand out, and the basic voice resonance that signals to listeners that the speaker feels “at home” with American English. There can still be many audible differences between the foreign accent and the native accent in all of these areas, but those differences will tend to make the foreign speaker sound interesting and impressive. 

American Accent Setting: Foundation for an excellent accent.

Some accent reduction programs focus only on correcting individual sounds. Why a more comprehensive, integrated approach gets you better results.

The “setting” for an accent is the way that speakers typically hold the muscles in the tongue, face, throat and back of the mouth. The setting shapes the overall sound of the accent. You may have noticed that when an American speaks a foreign language, even if their pronunciation is pretty good, there’s usually still something American about how they sound. That characteristic sound comes primarily from the American accent setting. The American quality may sound funny when it’s mixed in with another language, but when you’re speaking American English, the American accent setting makes the pronunciation sound right.

Everyone speaks with a particular accent setting—it’s part of your native language. A large part of a “foreign accent” comes from speaking one language with the accent setting for another.

What are the elements of accent setting? A lot of it is the position of the tongue: how far forward or back the tongue is, how high or low. The tongue feels slightly different for a different accent as well. English uses what is called a “tapered tongue”—the tip of the tongue is thin and light, and the weight of the tongue is shifted slightly back. You may wonder how on earth someone learns to shift the weight of the tongue back. We do exercises to explore the ways that the weight of the tongue naturally shifts, so that you become more aware of what your tongue can do. We also do exercises to increase your control over different muscles in the tongue.

Another aspect of accent setting is the tension in the muscles of the throat and the back of the mouth. We usually don’t think about these muscles when we’re speaking, but they have a powerful effect on the quality of the voice. Some languages sound as if the person is speaking from deep in the throat; others, as if the sound is coming through the nose. These characteristics are controlled by the way the speaker holds the muscles in the mouth and throat.

Some accent modification programs focus only on mastering the individual sounds of English and don’t address accent setting at all. But there are some very good reasons to practice the American accent setting as part of your pronunciation practice. Taking on an accent setting closer to that of native speakers makes you sound more fluent overall, and it actually helps you to master the individual sounds of English. Here are just a few of the specific benefits:

It’s easier for your tongue to reach the right positions. Many of the sounds of English are easier to make quickly and correctly if you already have your tongue close to the right position. The standard American mouth setting puts your tongue in the right position to quickly pronounce all the sounds, from the “th” to the “ng”. If you have to reach the right positions from a very different starting point, it can take a lot of time and effort. Most people feel frustrated when they have to work hard to make a single sound. It’s natural then to start taking shortcuts—simplifying the sounds in order to speak quickly. Unfortunately, some shortcuts make it hard for the listener to understand. If you have your tongue in the same position as a native speaker, you can make the sounds quickly and correctly.

It’s easier to hear fine distinctions. Having a more native-like setting for the accent actually makes it easier to hear the language accurately. If American English is very different from your native language, everything about it sounds exotic. When you listen to sounds that are very similar to each other—like two vowels that sound almost the same—all the “foreignness” is distracting. It’s hard to identify the crucial details that change the meaning, when so many things feel strange. As you practice speaking with mouth and tongue shapes closer to those of a native speaker, you get used to hearing a more American sound in your own voice, and the characteristics of that sound become more familiar and less distracting. There’s less of a feeling of confusion or being overwhelmed by background noise. It becomes easier for you to focus on the same subtle details that the native speakers are listening for.

It’s easier to form the space inside the mouth correctly.  Some pairs of vowels are distinguished mostly by changes in the shape of the back of the mouth. (If you’ve ever had difficulty hearing the difference between “sheep” and “ship,” or “won’t” and “want,” this is the kind of distinction I’m talking about.) You don’t have to have your mouth shaped exactly like a native’s down to the last micrometer, but the closer you get, the easier it will be both to hear and to pronounce the important details. The American /r/ is another example. The distinctive American /r/ sound is made by creating three “chambers” in which the sound resonates—two in the mouth and one in the throat. It’s much easier to get the sound right if you always practice holding the muscles in your mouth and throat close to the way a native speaker does.

Can a person simply focus on learning individual sounds such as “th,” without learning the General American accent setting? Yes, usually a person can make progress by that route. But some of the sounds will be more difficult to pronounce correctly, as explained above. You can think of it this way—you can play golf without learning the right stance, but you won’t end up playing like Tiger Woods. You can practice a musical instrument without learning the right way to place your fingers, and you may even be able to hit all the notes, but it will take more effort and it will be hard to play difficult pieces smoothly. I do work with clients who just want to polish up one or two specific sounds quickly, but for those who really want to master the sound of American English, it’s better to work on the foundation of the accent and the individual sounds.

Schedule a Free Consultation Now

Schedule a free half-hour meeting online or in my office. We will evaluate your pronunciation and talk about your goals. No obligation.


karen@chosen-voice.com
857-523-1999