- If you wanna get good at speaking in a certain accent,
do you have to live in that place?
(electronic crackle)
Good morning, good afternoon or good evening.
I'm Julian Northbrook from doingenglish.com.
Recently one of my extraordinary English speakers
asked me a great question.
Julian, she asked, if I want to master,
if I wanna nail a certain accent,
is it necessary to live in that place
for a long period of time?
It's a great question and the simple answer is no.
It is neither sufficient nor necessary,
or perhaps even preferable to live in the place
where the accent is used
in order to get really, really good
at understanding and speaking with it yourself.
Now, let's talk about this a little bit.
It's not sufficient to simply live
in an English-speaking country or in an area
where a certain accent is used.
And this is the same for English in general.
Just being there isn't gonna get you speaking
with that accent perfectly, or indeed, speaking English
like a native speaker.
Because you actually have to do the work.
Being in an area or an English-speaking country
is gonna give you more opportunities
to be exposed to the language and that is a good thing
but unless you are actually consciously learning
and pushing to improve, you won't improve.
'Cause that's not how your brain works.
Your brain is lazy.
It's gonna get by with whatever it's got
and if you don't force it to get better,
it ain't gonna do it, as simple as that.
Not only this, it's not necessary
or indeed even perhaps preferable to live in a place
where that accent is spoken.
Recently I interviewed accent expert Amy Walker of 21Accents
about her methods when it comes to mastering
multiple accents and she speaks with loads
and I mean, like perfectly.
When she speaks with a British accent,
I would never know that she's not a British person
but she told me that she mastered the British accent
or British accents, plural,
long before she ever actually went to the United Kingdom
and she actually says that in a way that is preferable
because if you are living in a place,
it can be quite hard psychologically speaking
to suddenly change to a different accent
when people are used to hearing you speaking
in a certain way.
If you are a Polish person and people are used to
hearing you speak with a Polish accent
or with say a Chinese accent or a Japanese accent,
or whatever accent it is that you speak English with
and then all of a sudden,
you start speaking like a British person,
it can seem a little bit weird.
It's like, oh, suddenly this person has changed
because accent is so deeply entwined with our identities.
And for a long time, I guess I had quite limiting beliefs
about accents and identity
and how people should go about learning them
and actually my interview with Amy Walker
changed my mind about this quite a lot
because what she says is that you should learn
multiple accents, retain your own accent
but add to it and make that a part of your identity
which I thought was brilliant advice.
But the point is, it can be psychologically quite difficult
to make that switch.
And of course, you've also got the,
the messy period where you are still trying to learn
and still trying to nail the specifics of an accent
and that can also be psychologically quite hard for people
because they don't want people to hear them
before they are really, really good.
So, no, it's not necessary.
It's not perhaps even preferable
and it's not sufficient either.
Simply put, with the right methods,
you can nail any accent or accents plural,
that you want from the comfort of your own home,
wherever you are, and it's actually not that difficult to do
it turns out.
If you wanna learn more about this,
you're gonna wanna check out my new,
or I say new, soon to come out new book.
Nail Your English Accent, this is a book
that I've wanted to write for quite a long time
and it's a little bit different to other books
that I've written, in that this one,
I've actually interviewed quite a few people
about the topic of accents and accent learning
and I combine that with my own knowledge,
what I know about accents from psycholinguistics
and from how language is processed, used in the brain
and the linguistics, or I guess I should say
the historical linguistics of accents and accent types
and all of that good stuff
and I've combined everything that I've learned
from other people with my own knowledge
and I've come up with a full length book.
It's not a short 40-page job like a lot of my Kindle books,
it's a full length book and it's coming out
on September the 1st and if you wanna preorder your copy
which you can and should do,
'cause you're gonna get a slight discount on the price
that it's gonna be when it's actually released
you can and should head over to nailyourenglishaccent.com
or click on the link in the description.
And this is me Julian Northbrook signing out
from another video.
If you've got any questions about accents,
pronunciation, accent pronunciation,
learning, leave them in the comments
and I will do some future videos on those questions
and I'll also try and integrate them
into the new book as well.
The first draught of the book is already written
but I'm now going back through and adding and removing
and cutting and you know,
doing the final edits and all that good stuff.
Right, this is me signing out.
Take care, don't get caught doing anything
that I wouldn't do and I'll see you soon, buh-bye.
(rock music)
What's the hardest English accent to understand?
Good question, watch this video right here for the answer
and if you've ever wondered why
there are so many different accents in the United Kingdom,
you're gonna wanna watch this video right here.