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from the we-uns-are-just-a-bunch-of-blokes-eh? dept.
Let's say you're an acting student with your eyes on a Broadway revival of "Oliver!" Maybe you're a restaurant critic who needs a Southern drawl to match your updo when you eat incognito. Whatever your role-playing dreams, acquiring an accent can be a difficult, but rewarding, task.
Nobody knows her way around a patois or a flat A quite like Sarah Jones. In "Sell/Buy/Date," her new solo show about the lives of sex workers, Ms. Jones transforms into several characters — from a feisty elderly Jewish woman to a seasoned black rapper — with the kind of dialectal veracity that would make any linguist swoon.
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Let's say you want to sound like a Trinidadian woman, as Ms. Jones does in her show. She recommends you watch YouTube clips of speakers at council meetings in Trinidad until you find the person you most want to sound like. If you can meet your subject in person, it will help make your goal much easier to reach."I ask them to speak something very slowly three times in a row and then I have them say it at normal speed the way they'd say it three times in a row," she said. "I have them say it the way they'd say it in school as compared to how they'd say it to a friend."
Ms. Jones said an important step in her development of a character is writing out how someone speaks. The written version of a word or phrase may often look nothing like its spoken companion. The word "girls," when spoken by a native Arabic speaker, might look on the page like "gez." Write it down to better understand how the word forms in your mouth.
"Phonetically break it down so you can let it go," she said. "It helps to get out of your own speech patterns and how you understand words to appear and sound on a page — and in your head — so you can get into how it sounds coming out of that person's mouth."
Other ways to acquire accents: A) Learn from the political masters, or B) watch Russell Peters sketches every day for a month.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday December 13 2016, @12:40AM
Just to add to the list of "other ways to acquire accents," I'd suggest being younger than 8 years old or so. At some point in our development, we actually stop differentiating between phonemes that aren't important to our native language(s), making accent acquisition significantly harder. (The actual period where native-level language acquisition ends is debated quite a bit: some studies say as young as 3 or 4, others more like 10-12. Whichever it is, it's likely long before most U.S. kids start learning foreign languages in school... which is an issue.)
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday December 13 2016, @03:51AM
That's not because we can't, that's because we usually have other things we'd rather do.
I don't generally have much trouble with that, because I got used to mimicking random non-word sounds when I was younger. Being able to make sounds like a cat, a chicken, a cow or just random beeps and boops really helps a lot when it comes to trying to make sounds in a foreign language.
There is no maximum age for acquiring native like language in a foreign language, the apparent limits are mostly a matter of time and energy. Children don't have any other priority in their first few years and they already have an accent by the time they can say their first words. I've literally heard babies that have already developed the basis for their accent.
But, if you want to develop a proper accent in a foreign language, the first step is developing the ability to hear it. Which mostly involves a bit of training with minimal pairs to tell the difference between phonemes in the foreign language that aren't in the languages you already speak. Once you can hear the difference, then you can take a look at the way in which the sound is produced and start experimenting until you have it.
Personally, I don't think it's a good idea to eradicate the accent completely as a lack of accent is a marker that you're in the in group and if you don't know the relevant cultural knowledge, you aren't going to get any leeway for being a foreigner.