There seem to be a lot of people interested in learning how to speak with a certain accent. I only really have observations to share about this. I studied lin

There seem to be a lot of people interested in learning how to speak with a certain accent. I only really have observations to share about this. I studied linguistics at university in both the US and Germany. I'm a native English speaker. I studied Chinese, Japanese, French, and Spanish to some extent in addition to German and English. I don't consider myself fluent in any, unfortunately, but I can actually sound like a native speaker in any of these languages, when I focus on it. I've known people who didn't focus on English who still had barely-detectable or undetectable accents, and I've known people who dedicated their lives to learning languages and never lost their accents. My observation is that there are some people who can hear and imitate easily and naturally, some who can if they focus on it and try hard, and some who probably can't at all. There is a direct correlation with music, I believe. If you can hear a pitch and sing it, there's a good chance you can also imitate a native speaker relatively easily. I'm not here to discourage anyone though. I tell my children that their brain is just as good as anyone else's. Even though some people are naturally better at certain things than other people, if you work harder than they do, you will be able to exceed them in most cases. So the final word, the TLDR: practice, practice, practice is the way to learn to speak with or without an accent.