this is an aller's English podcast episode 1982. should you try to sound American [Music]
welcome to the all ears English podcast downloaded more than 200 million times
are you feeling stuck with your English we'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by
focusing on connection not Perfection with your American host Aubry Carter the IELTS whiz and
Lindsay McMahon the English Adventurer coming to you from Arizona and Colorado USA and to get
your transcripts delivered by email every week go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe
you may have wondered if you need to change your accent and we're here
to share that your accent is beautiful and you should celebrate it however if
you need to imitate an American accent we'll share three tips to pull it off
hello Aubry how's everything going today I'm great how are you Lindsay I am excellent fantastic
excited to be here what are we talking about on today's episode we got a really interesting
question from a listener about American accents and I think it's going to be interesting to talk
about you know do you need an accent can you keep your accent because there's a lot to say about
this and a lot of different viewpoints right oh my gosh accents are huge right as soon as we hear
someone I think that we as human beings we connect deeply with the voice that's why podcasting is so
popular so powerful right popular and powerful and so accents they do matter right and so we're
going to get into that today yes it's going to be interesting I've actually had a lot of people tell
me they love my accent which seems so strange to me because I don't feel like I in my mind I don't
have an accent right I'm sure this is how it is for a lot of people like wait I have an accent of
course we all do right depending on where we're even in English there's so many accents within
the United States yeah there are a lot and some of them are more distinctive than others but do
we have a listener question should I go ahead and read that question today yes I got this
great question from Sumit ramdas yeah go ahead and read it for us all right so Sumit says how y'all
doing don't worry about me I'm fit as a fiddle so awesome great idiom I started listening to your
podcast six months ago and I fell in love with it in the first go um since then I've been listening
to your podcast every single day I think a lot of listeners have fallen in love with Oliver's
English Aubry not surprising it's just so fun I love the energy level the quality the articulation
and the intricacies you ladies bring to the table keep up the great work my question is how to
acquire an American accent people like me who are 30 or older have have a slight or strong mother
tongue influence it's hard to do voice modulation and pretend to have an American accent any tips
for that I appreciate y'all and your team thanks a zillion to meet ramdas so good great question
such a great question so meat send in a bunch of other questions some of them will save for another
episode but the first thing that's interesting is you know of course it is okay to have some
mother tongue influence as long as you can be under easily understood and communicate I love
an accent I honestly would rather speak to someone who has like an accent very different from my own
than like my neighbor no offense to my neighbors me too me too I mean we're I guess this is a good
place to mention this we are seeing a trend which I love which I think is really refreshing in this
industry the language learning industry to just Embrace who you are a little bit right to not try
to sound like a native speaker or sound like a British person or an American instead what if we
could speak clearly but sound like ourselves and focus on that connection right Aubrey yes I love
that exactly and what's interesting is intimate's question where he's he's saying it's difficult to
pretend to have an American accent I felt like the question was more about how do we imitate
another accent it made me think about actors who have to sound like they are actually from
another country they have to imitate it they have to pretend that that is their accent and that's a
different thing entirely right yeah we actually now that I think about it we had someone on the
show last summer Ron Carlos who that is his job he works in Hollywood and he helps actors build their
accent he worked with a woman Caitlyn Devers an actress who was on a show where she was in
a deep southern kind of rural Louisiana which is a very different accent right and he worked with
her to develop that accent so go back and search for Ron Carlos's episode guys for that so there
is a whole industry where people focus on this in Hollywood alone exactly and just like Sumit
said it is more difficult the older you are the longer you have had your own accent that you're
used to making phonemes a certain way and so we are going to give you guys today three tips to
pronounce words like an American there are quite a few things that are different and this is for like
sort of the general American accent right because like we were saying it's very different if you're
in the South or in Boston or there are so many accents within the United States even but this is
um there there's a sort of a general American accent that these sounds will mimic yeah it's
a good question right if you're from another country would you consider the deep southern
accent to be as American as like the Midwest Minneapolis accident which is a whole other game
uh I think they're so different but maybe you know we hear those differences more so than someone who
doesn't necessarily speak as a native speaker I don't know it's really interesting probably
the case right because I I will hear someone imitate several different British accents and I
sort of feel like oh they all sound the same deal exactly the same but pretty similar right and it's
probably the same within the United States like you might hear some difference but it's probably
more glaring to us exactly exactly and you know I want you guys to keep in mind as you're listening
today no one is saying you need to sound like an American again I just want to re-emphasize that
we are flipping our values here in this industry and I personally love that operate because then
we can like I said focus on what really truly matters which is our philosophy connection
right I agree absolutely your accent is beautiful don't try to get rid of it I I would say Joe try
to sound like an American except if there are cases like this where you need to imitate that
accent right you want to maybe he has a joke as like a party trick show you know people make them
think you're American for a few minutes let's have these actors like Renee Zellweger right
where we all thought she was British after doing Bridget Jones diary or right now Bella Ramsey on
the Last of Us I saw an interview with her and was shocked that she's British because her American
accent is so impressive I thought she was American interesting and Keira Knightley what was she in
was she in Last of Us or Game of Thrones well no she was in a Pride and Prejudice and she's been
in a lot of films and she is British but she does an excellent American accent got it or maybe it's
flipped of that I'm trying to remember now because she I've seen both like in Pride and Prejudice she
had a brand accent in a lot of movies she's had an American accent they're right like who
knows is she British is she American I bet the average American on the street wouldn't be sure
it's kind of amazing because as an actor actress you not only have to be great at just acting but
you also have to be great at Linguistics and pronunciation and bringing in that accent is
just incredible exactly right there are specific sounds that are very different depending on the
accent so we're going to go into three of these today and these are things that you will want to
practice you'll want to folks if you're wanting to imitate the American accent there are more
than this right there are quite a few and if you're Googling this you'll see there's like
there are different ones depending on if you're wanting to sound have the southern accent or
depending on the accent you're going for right and then it'll always have sort of this General
American accent which these three will help you create I love it so let's get into these tips I
think our listeners are ready they understand our philosophy on this so if you do decide for
a day or for a year that you want to speak with an American accent here are three ways to do it
right what is the first one Aubry this first one is all about the short a sound as in the word cat
and in American English it's raised we make it into a diphthong which means there are two sounds
there before every nasal consonant so for example when we say man you can hear how the vowel changes
and and same thing right we're creating this double sound there whereas in a lot of accents
England you know it might be like man can't like it would be one sound there's no diphthong there
right we don't lose so it becomes more nasally would you say that Aubry we make that a sound
very nasally all up in the nose yeah yes and more so depending on where you're from right it might
be more extreme depending on where you are but most Americans it's definitely more nasal than
British very interesting okay so that is the one thing that we could do that we'd be recognized as
being as speaking like an American as an American accent regardless like anyone would recognize that
anywhere in the world yeah exactly right you can create these short a sounds create give
that diphthong and you're automatically going to sound more American I love it
okay Aubry let's move into the second thing that we can do the second tip what is it so it's the
letter R this we focused a little bit on this in a recent episode if you missed it 1966 which was
called are you pronouncing R correctly in English and we were mostly talking about how our changes
depending on where it is in a word but it's definitely different in the American accent
as opposed to some other accents in English it is pronounced before consonants like in the word hard
it's a harder R and at the end of words like car and mother maybe not in Boston but not in Boston
most American accents it's a harder R yeah and if you want to get a sense of how it's different in
a place like Boston or even New York in some ways uh watch Goodwill Hunting that is a great example
of just native Boston accents yes absolutely right but depending on where you go you might
almost not hear that r at all at the end of words or like in the word hard right I must be like hard
that's just a very soft R in other accents right do we have another episode where we talked about
the r pronunciation Aubry yes that was 1966 that I was just mentioning right where we it's all about
how R is different depending on where it is in the word so definitely you guys search in on
our website on the app for 1966 if you missed that one go back to that one guys all right let's move
on to the third one what is it Aubry what is this unrounded vowels what does that even mean so words
like lot and Rod are pronounced with an unrounded vowel in English so it sounds like ah ah whereas
in some countries it would be like right it's a rounded vowel so the sound is you would almost
say flatter right unrounded kind of means the same thing as flatter so these a lot is a lot
about vowel sounds right I know I was listening to a show and there was an Australian and there
were so many words she would say where I'm like oh okay you know um yeah there's like almost an
R sound at the end of some vowels yeah so yeah it's interesting how much it changes depending
on where you're from oh that's so good I love that I love the Aussie accent by the way it's
definitely my favorite uh yes it just at the end of a note when they'd be like no
I love it it's hard for me to create it you know but it is it's a beautiful accent where does it
come from and we have done interviews with Aussies we've done a few interviews with Pete Smithson so
if you come back to our blog allersenglish.com you can type in Pete Smithson and you'll get two or
three episodes with him yeah yes absolutely and of course there are many more sounds that that change
in the American accent right the schwa sound voiced and voiceless th so be sure to follow we're
going to be doing more pronunciation episodes coming soon yeah that want to miss any of them
yeah I love that idea and we've been focusing more on our fluency courses Aubrey in really dedicating
a lesson or multiple lessons to pronunciation sounds right really helping our listeners level
up their pronunciation to be clear absolutely because it's one thing to be aware of these
sounds it's another thing entirely to really be able to figure out how to make your mouth create
these different phonemes and then be able to do it in conversation to connect with others it's so
true it's so true all right what do we have next here do we have some recommendations yes right so
of course it's useful to be aware of the different sounds but the best way to be able to produce an
accent is to hear it a lot and do some mimicking shadowing watching TV shows movies listening to
podcasts audiobooks that have American accents so I think we should give some recommendations
what do you think all right let's hear what your recommendation is for a podcast Opera do you have
something to let our listeners know about yeah so there's one called crime junkie this is true crime
but most True Crime podcasts take like several episodes many many hours to cover one case this
one it's like each episode is one case so it's a sort of a summary but what's great is the hosts
are two women from Indiana so it's that Midwestern accent every now and then I'll hear sounds that
are slightly different from my accent but that's a great podcast that's interesting and really fun
American accents oh I love that I love that okay anything else yeah and how about a TV show this
is one my daughters love it I started watching it with them it's called Ginny and Georgia on
Netflix Georgia has a very strong southern accent and then she moves with her kids to New England so
the accent is a little bit of a focus of the show because her accent is so different from everyone
else who lives there that I think this is a great way to hear the difference because you hear them
speaking to each other someone with a Southern accent and then someone with an accent in New
England yeah oh my gosh that can be very very different in the way the rhythm of speaking not
just the way of creating the words but what we say the guys we did interview we've talked about this
before Aubry um the ladies from Steel Magnolias podcast and they're awesome uh-huh and they're
also from the Nashville area and so if you want to hear those accents and just hear those differences
go there and look up uh steel Magnolia's podcast in our search bar on our website allarsenglish.com
I like these recommendations Aubry one from Indiana one from Georgia yes do you have a couple
recommendations Lindsay I do I'm debating which one to share but I'll just throw this out there
so I listen to podcast more as an information gathering and education thing so my podcast deck
probably looks a lot different from yours up yeah probably mine's more entertainment and language
learning right I have the French and Spanish language learning podcast too well the one I would
recommend for a podcast is the money guy podcast which these guys are from the Nashville area from
I think uh yeah near near Nashville and Tennessee and they just have accents that you'll totally be
able to understand it's not so deep south that you won't get it at all guys but you know you can hear
the accent for sure especially for the older guy it's a an older man like in his 50s you know more
senior in his work as a financial advisor and a younger guy in his 30s and so it's a nice Duo
um just information about money and how to manage your finances right interesting I'll have to check
that out I can probably use some advice in that realm yeah we all could we all could so that's
the first one and then for TV show I like the show ghosts and the reason I like this for accents is
that you do hear a few different accents because you have these ghosts that died on this property
from all different eras in time and so you have Hedy I think she was from the 1800s um and so
there is a different speaking Rhythm when we go back in time there's a guy from the 80s uh Pete
who also kind of speaks with like a very up and down sort of it feels 80s to me so we can think
about Accents in that way too we have to think about how they've changed over time and just even
within a few decades that's fascinating okay a lot of that is about the vocab choices and the topics
they bring up and their references but there is a layer of speaking Rhythm there and accent too so
check it out guys so awesome great recommendations guys I think the takeaway is of course you can
have an accent in English you know I will always have an accent in Spanish and French it's it's
okay right it's so much more important to be able to communicate and make that connection every
accent is beautiful totally I 100 agree with that focus on being understood and understanding others
and that connection moment always look for that connection moment if you want to try to sound you
know speak with an American accent here are three tips to get started but come back to your core
values and come back to who you are to be clear right exactly right awesome I love this Lindsay
it's fun to think about imitating other accents and how you could do it but also to celebrate our
accents that that whatever your accent is it's beautiful and that's the goal is just to connect
yeah I think broadly our culture is kind of coming back around to let's celebrate who we actually are
Beyond just speaking right in in how and how we look how we dress just what we want in our lives
let's come back to what we who really we really are so yes right to celebrate that yeah so good
good stuff Aubry thanks for hanging out today I'll see you very soon awesome see you next time bye
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