You’ve been studying this language for a while now. You are beginning to feel comfortable when writing, you know more and more vocabulary and syntactic structures. You understand better and better the spoken language and you express yourself in an ever more natural way… but there is still this accent!

You would so much like to be able to speak the language like a native speaker and now the sounds of your mother tongue are imposed against your will in everything you say. Impossible to get rid of that accent!

What can you do about it?

Are there any solutions to speak a foreign language without accent?

Is that possible?

1. An accent: what is it?

An accent is “the set of articulatory features specific to the members of a linguistic community”. That means, it includes pronunciation, intonation and accent, which vary according to countries, regions and even sometimes social classes.

Foreign languages therefore each have their own specificity and “sing” in a different way. Nearby languages, such as French and Italian, will tend to have more common features than faraway languages.

In addition, some sounds, such as [ θ ] English “th”, or [ ɛ̃ ] French “in”, or [ x ] German “ch”, are also specific to some languages and do not even exist in others: it is therefore very difficult to hear and reproduce a sound that you do not know in your mother tongue

2. Is it possible to speak without an accent?

It seems that a baby at birth has the ability to learn and speak any language without accent. His ear and brain are still open to all the new sounds possible. As the child’s brain grows, it will naturally favour the sounds of his mother tongue and also “forget” others with whom he is not confronted and that are not useful to him. Its ability to distinguish all sounds will therefore diminish when time goes by. It is estimated that beyond the age of 25 it is no longer possible to learn a new language without an accent. It is therefore necessary to start learning languages as early in life as possible in order to be able to speak them without accent.

But if you’re over 25, don’t despair, though! What is a “good accent” basically? In all countries of the world, the natives speak their language with different accents according to their regions or even their city…

The English accent is different from the American accent and also from the Australian accent. Watch this short video in which British actors have difficulty speaking with the American accent, while English is their mother tongue!

So, you see? There’s no need to panic if you still have a small accent! The most important thing in a language is to be able to communicate.

Besides, did you know that having an accent is often considered as sexy? Some people cultivate this accent with great care! So if you want to be charming, keep your accent!

The French accent has the reputation of being among the sexiest in the world…

Here is a short video to judge for yourself: “when French politicians speak English”…

So? Charming n’est-ce pas ?

That said, if you still want to work on it, it is still possible to improve your accent over time with perseverance; I give you some ideas….

3. Some tips to improve your accent

Use the international phonetic alphabet

There is an International Phonetic Alphabet (API) that transcribes the sounds of most of the world’s languages in a phonetic way. As its name suggests, it is international and therefore common to the different languages that have established it.

A sound is encoded by a sign written in square brackets that will be the same in all languages that use this sound, even if they write it in different ways.

Here is an example for sound [ ʃ ]

Exercise your ear

You have to immerse yourself as much as possible in a language bath that you learn so that the ear gets used to the new sounds and trains itself to discern the more difficult sounds.

Watch movies in foreign language, listen to podcasts on the Internet, watch videos on Youtube, listen to the radio, watch TV… This will allow you to immerse yourself in the rhythm and intonations of the language. Don’t hesitate to listen to the same excerpts over and over again: we often understand much better at the 2nd or 3rd listening!

Also to be read:

List of resources to learn English easily

Resources for learning French

Practice speaking

To improve your accent, you have to practice. The more you practice, the more you will progress. Read exercises or books aloud (and record yourself to listen to yourself afterwards!), communicate with a native speaker through oral correspondence, register in a Whats’App discussion group,… the key word to progress is DARE!

Coliglote accompanies you…

With the Coliglote application you will be able to practice both speaking and in writing with a native speaker, whilst receiving corrections and personal advice!

Also to be read:

Sneak peek to some application screens

Five reasons to love Coliglote!

Coliglote how does it work ?

Release planned very soon!

4. And now … just for fun!!

When a frenchman calls an indian call center

The Italian Man Who Went To Malta

Article written by Ingrid, Coliglote