How to Learn ANY Accent

May 20

Whether your a VoiceOver artist, audiobook narrator, actor, or just an enthusiast here are five tips to learn any accent you wish.

Tip # 1 - Go to the Source

To reproduce any accent faithfully, honestly, and honoring the people who speak that way natively it’s vital to find and study the speech of a person who…well speaks with that accent natively. There are a couple great ways to go about this:

Phone a friend — if you know someone personally who has the accent you’re studying, ask them if you can pick their brain for tips and if they’ll mind if you talk to them for a while. This is probably the most direct route.
The INTERNET — YouTube is a fantastic resource to listen to people from all over the world. You don’t need to find an “accent specific” video, but this can be helpful in learning more about the culture/day to day lives of the region you’re trying to replicate. Another great resource is the International Dialects of English Archive or IDEA. Check it out here.

Tip # 2 - Break Words Into SOUNDS

By deconstructing speech into its building blocks, the little bits of sound that make up all words and language called Phonemes, you arm yourself with the flexibility to speak sentences and words that are novel to you. Two ways to hone in on this is to listen to:

Vowel Sounds ( a, ah, eh, ee, ei, o, oo, ou, ow, etc.)
Word Endings (-y, -er, -ch, -es, etc.)

By focusing on those sounds, you can transpose them into the rest of the dialect/accent. For example, the sounds in “GOOSE” also pop up in “BOOTS,” “LOOSE,” “MOOT,” etc. So if I listen to how “goose” is said in the accent I’m trying to learn, I can take “-OO-” and use that same vowel sound wherever else it pops up in speech. There may be exceptions, but as a starting point it’s a great way to go.

Tip # 3 - Practice, Practice, Practice

When I’m learning an accent, I’ll be honest I’m an annoying person to be around. This is because I’m constantly talking to myself and practicing. Here are some great ways to ‘get the reps in:’

Name Things - Look around your room and just start naming stuff. Stapler. Chair. Window. Cat. This is a great way to pull yourself a bit out of your head as you practice and it may also introduce unique words that could be helpful to know.
Read Stuff Aloud - Signs, books, articles, whatever. Again this helps to introduce words in unique ways to you, which just helps to learn more about this new accent and how different words feel.

Tip # 4 - Exaggerate

Go BIG. Like uncomfortably big. Turn the dial to 11 and then some. This helps do a couple of things really well:

Feel the Difference — The A/B comparison between how YOU speak, and how this accent feels will be different. Exaggerating helps to magnify those differences so you can better understand what’s needed in your body, muscles, tongue, lungs, etc. to make the ‘correct’ sounds.
Getting Stronger — Think of it like a workout. Learning a new accent uses the muscles in your speaking apparatus (mouth, tongue, soft palette, etc.) in a way that you’re not used to, but a native speaker of any accent has been using these muscles this way their whole life. This means it’s going to be much easier and efficient for a native speaker than you. Exaggerating helps to strengthen this new way of speaking as you practice.

Tip # 5 - Record Yourself

Listening to playback as you practice helps you to listen out for any red flags. Points where the accent is perhaps weak, or your own way of speaking slips back in. It also enables you to compare how you sound relative to whatever audio sample you’re using to learn this accent. More than once I’ve listened to myself exaggerating the accent only to find that I actually sound pretty close to the original speaker.

For more tips and trick, or if you have any questions about this or anything else, please feel free to drop me a line below or on my YouTube channel.