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How to Reduce One’s Accent

By Published On: April 7th, 2016

You can frequently discover that English is a simple language to learn (especially from Uceda School), that it’s much simpler to get a foothold in English than in a number of other languages. You might likely require more attempts to become adept to exactly the same amount in Arabic, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese or the Slavic languages. And though it’s close to impossible to eliminate an accent unless you grew up speaking the language, there are things you can do to help with it.

Not that it’s distinct from some other language, but still, English is somewhat particular with this aspect; somehow even such fundamentals as composition of sounds stay elusive to numerous immigrants, even to all those who had previously been in an English-speaking environment for decades.

fill – sense, total – victim, dump – moist, black – block, colour – collar – caller.

All these vowels are, of course, natural and simple to a native English speaker, but a lot of languages don’t have them, they use different vowels, that’s why the native speakers of these languages often replace those sounds for other vowels. The bigger dimension of a sound chamber is what makes English so distinct from a number of other languages; the point of the tongue becomes ineffective as a device to control the air flow, when the mouth is opened wider.

A number of other languages are distinct in this regard, their sounds are articulated with an inferior sound chamber (the mouth isn’t opened wide), this makes the point of the tongue an all-natural device to govern the air flow. And in general, in order to really be competent to practice efficiently, we must identify the chief components, which contain the appropriate English phonetic environment.

bid – bead, bin – been, bit – beat;

The articulation of all these vowels could be described in simple terms, and following that a student would have the ability to practice in a significant way.

It is hard to make sense even of simple things, unless one is made aware of the unique phonetic articulation mechanisms. For example, speakers of ANY language can use, what might be called, a “throat pause”, it’s when the air flow is obstructed in the throat. That is also a phonetic articulation mechanism, that is extensively used in English, but we can take action when breathing, without saying anything, just block the air flow. It’s used, among other things, to divide the blend of words, so that people don’t wind up breaking them apart and “reassembling” them in the “wrong” ends.

In a number of other languages the “throat pause” is not a conspicuous articulation mechanism, and the significance of the exact same blend of sounds wouldn’t change, no matter should you pronounce it with or without a throat pause. As an issue of fact, it’s a regular part of the frontally articulated languages to split up the words and to “reassemble” them in the “wrong ends”.

When you understand that, everything becomes straightforward, but one is unlikely to help you to work it out by going through demonstration – repetition exercises. A wider open mouth again determines everything, and the front portion of the tongue becomes ineffective as a device to manipulate the air flow. By the same token, a wider open mouth is the reason the English language can naturally articulate an “unidirectional” combination of vowels; many other languages, on the flip side, can articulate ANY combination!

And overall, the sole method to turn your practice purposeful would be to understand what’s concerned here! Those that don’t need to trouble themselves with attempting to figure it out would need to stay for a blind demonstration-repeat. But if one will do it this way, he can just as well tune in to the radio or TELEVISION, attempting to repeat what’s being stated. And although there’ll be no advancement, at least it is free.

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