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applicable even, and especially, when spoken. Singing it helped emphasize the differences even more.
It was very hard to push myself to try to sing like a native, and I wasn t completely successful, but in
aiming toward something as hard as that, I pushed my spoken abilities up several notches and had
much more convincing Portuguese pronunciation because of it.
There are even accent trainers who specifically help second-language learners. I like how Idahosa
(Mimicmethod.com) does it by taking recordings of his students. He then plays them back to the
students, highlighting the particular sounds that betray them as foreigners, and plays them beside the
native examples for comparison. If you have a native friend online who you think can help you with
precisely recorded phrases, you can practice consistently, then upload it to SoundCloud.com (an audio
equivalent of YouTube), and comments can be made at the precise point in the audio where your
pronunciation requires a change.
Pronunciation or Intonation?
At first glance, it can seem that the differences between a native accent and a foreign accent are all in
the pronunciation, but intonation takes a much more critical role. When I had the chance to chat with a
very interesting Italian polyglot, Luca Lampariello, this was made very clear.
Luca can speak a large number of languages and was studying to be an interpreter when I met him,
but what really struck me as the most impressive thing about him is that he has almost no noticeable
accent in several of his learned languages. When I first heard him speak English, I would have thought
he was American, if it weren t for his YouTube channel being called poliglotta80 (the Italian word
for polyglot ). Natives of other languages, such as German and Spanish, have confirmed that he is
incredibly convincing in these languages too.
But he did not grow up speaking these languages. When I asked him about improving
pronunciation to have a more convincing accent, he made sure the conversation quickly focused on
intonation.
He considers intonation to be like the network that holds a sentence together. The example he gave
me was to notice how the word France sounds different in a sentence like France is a beautiful
country versus I would like to go to France. In the first sentence, when we are not emphasizing
particular words, we tend to say the word France with its intonation rising upward, but in the second
sentence, our intonation tends to go down on the word France.
As another example, he said, I want to talk to Mark and John, and if we listen carefully, we hear
that we put different tonalities on Mark (going up, indicating that the sentence hasn t finished yet or
we are giving the first item in a list) and on John (the end of factual sentences in English tend to
have a downward turn).
Rather than learn these intonation rules individually, Luca recommended that people try to see the
general picture of how these rules apply to a language. Appreciating this network allows you to step
back, see the whole picture, and truly appreciate how a sentence sounds and conveys meaning beyond
just its individual words.
He has his own approach for trying to appreciate this visually as well as audibly. You can imagine
certain types of sentences that serve a particular purpose (presenting a fact, giving an order, asking a
question) following particular prosody patterns (prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation in
speech), then represent these patterns as waves going up and down and try to hum these mini-tunes to
yourself before applying them to actual words.
This is also what I do when I am trying to apply these changes to improve my accent; many
languages have these kinds of patterns, and I try to learn them outside of saying words. I may bring
these up with my accent trainer, as I mentioned just previously.
One issue was pointed out to me recently that would help me improve my French prosody; my
musically inclined teacher told me that changes in tones (such as those cued by the commas in English
lists) occur less frequently in French. For instance, in English, the middle of sentences don t tend to
have rising intonations, such as What I m trying to say . . . which is relatively monotone. In French,
on the other hand, the equivalent phrase Ce que je veux dire . . . tends to be said with a slight rising
tone toward the last word. I had naturally picked this up through lots of exposure and was actually
overdoing it when I spoke French, going up at the end of mid-sentence pauses and at the end of
sentences, where you actually should have a downward intonation. Because of this, my sentences
actually sounded more like questions, all the time. When this was explained to me and I made the
correction, I was told that it was a dramatic change to what had previously been a very strange
sentence rhythm, and it sounded much more naturally French.
Intention
When a person has an accent, it means he can speak one more language than you.
FERNANDO LAMAS
Don t forget that, while a convincing accent can help you sound like a native speaker, appreciation for
a local culture and its customs is what really wins over locals of a country you are visiting. Each time
people have seen me try to adapt to these aspects as well as improve my language skills, they have
warmed up to me much faster.
Speaking with no accent is not as important as people make it out to be; in many cases, an accent
can give you a charm that makes you even more interesting to get to know. This also reminds people
that you are still a learner, and they will go easier on you, which helps you enjoy the learning process
even more.
With this in mind, when you are ready to improve your accent, and you combine it with cultural
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