We’ve all seen it. Accents that make you want to cringe (apologies to poor Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins for using him as an example here). But how amazing it is when we are completely fooled! How glorious to be engaged with a character and story that uses a dialect to enhance the experience. How do the Meryl Streeps of the world do it?
Of course there are many factors that go into convincingly altering your speech patterns, including innate affinity for it, training, practice, and experience. My post How to be your own dialect coach goes into detail about learning accents.
This post, however, is about a few extra tips to make it really sound authentic.
1. Immerse yourself
Most people have an easier time nailing accents they are familiar with than ones they have rarely heard. This makes sense, because we already have a feel for the target. It makes it easier for us to assess whether we are in the right ballpark. And since part of dialect learning involves imitation, having lots of samples in your mental database is helpful.
So find a few great recordings of the accent you want to perfect, and listen over and over. Repeat after the speaker. Shadow speak with them (try talking at the same time). Imitate. Feel what is different in your mouth.
2. Feel more, listen less
We typically use our ear to assess voice and speech tasks. But the kinesthetic sense, how we feel physically, can often be more reliable. How are you moving/holding the muscles of your mouth differently than you habitually do?
Is your jaw more open? More closed? Are your lips more spread or rounded? Is your tongue moving and landing differently? How much space is in your mouth?
All of this falls into the category of “oral posture”, or how you choreograph the movements and shape of your mouth. This results in what is called “placement” of an accent, or where it feels like the sound lives and vibrates in your mouth.
3. Feel the music of the accent
Intonation, stress, inflection, lilt, cadence, rhythm, pitch variety — all of these terms pertain to the overall musicality of an accent.
Some accents are rapid-fire and monotone. Others are slow and drawn out. Some move all over the pitch range, others stay in a small segment. Some accents have salient inflection features (like many Australian speakers using rising inflection at the ends of sentences, like a question).
When we teach dialects, we spend a lot of time getting the specific sounds right (like the difference between how a Londoner versus Californian would say the word “ask”). But that isn’t the only important part.
The truth is that while the specific sounds are important, the music and mouth shape can be even more important. So focusing on those as you watch and listen to native speakers will up your game.
There is no substitute for professional guidance, so if you’d like to hone your accent skills, reach out to schedule a session!
