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When I started learning French, a native speaker told me to exaggerate the sounds. It turns out that I was softening the sounds that are uniquely French because
by faster 8y ago
When I started learning French, a native speaker told me to exaggerate the sounds. It turns out that I was softening the sounds that are uniquely French because I lacked confidence in my spoken French.
I imagine that the same thing would work for learning to speak English with less of an accent.
That obviously doesn't help you learn the language, but I found that it helped me to speak better (or at least more confidently), so I spoke more. More practice is definitely helpful.
- evincarofautumn 8y agoYeah, I totally agree about exaggeration, but I think it can also have a positive impact on learning the language. A big issue I see with non-native speakers of languages I know is that they stick to the comfortable sounds of their native language, approximating the foreign sounds instead of trying to really imitate them. If you haven’t done it before, it feels ridiculous to try to put on what feels like such an exaggerated “fake” accent. But what you’re doing is getting a handle on the phonetics, which increases your ability to recognise and distinguish those sounds when listening, and be easier to understand when speaking. It also helps you cope with phonetic variations and different accents, which may at first sound totally different from the “standard” language you learned—but if you understand the phonemes as a native speaker thinks about them, your comprehension will be much more resilient and adaptable.