You will never ‘get rid of’ your accent… but you’re not stuck with it

‘Get rid of your accent’: peel it off and throw it away like a banana skin

…you can still sound the way you want to, when you want to.

What do I mean by this??

Here's the truth: you will never 'get rid of' your accent.

This idea, and this language of 'getting rid of' an accent - as though it were something you can just put in the bin and never think of again - is very common among people I work with, and in the discourse about accent reduction online.

There's even a series of books and online courses entitled 'get rid of your accent'. (I won't link to it - there are enough of their search keywords scattered throughout this article already!)

The trouble is, it's false advertising. I don't believe it's possible to get rid of an accent, and replace it with a new one.

I do believe it's possible to learn a new accent - and to choose which one you speak with.

You can sound the way you want to sound, when you want to sound that way.

Which is not the same as 'putting on an accent'.

This philosophy underpins my whole approach to the work of accent reduction and to my role as your accent reduction and public speaking coach - not teacher, coach.

Let me explain.

Is this what you think of when you hear a Spanish accent? Why don’t you think about spreadsheets and tax advice?

What is an accent?

 For some thoughts on what an ‘RP’ accent is, read more here

It's a set of habits. That's all an accent is.

It's a set of positions we adopt with the jaw, lips, tongue. Sometimes these speech organs move, sometimes they don't. We learn them in infancy and early childhood by mimicking the habits of the people around us, and if we keep speaking in this way as we grow and reach early adulthood, those habits, those muscle memories, stay with us for the rest of our lives.

Does that mean we're stuck with one accent for life? The accent that, by the time people get in touch with someone like me, has been frustrating them for a long time - sometimes years?

The classic things people say to me when they come for a free online taster session are:

'I get asked to repeat myself'

'My accent causes misunderstandings sometimes and it's embarrassing'

'Colleagues and clients can't understand what I'm saying'

'Sometimes people treat me like my English is not fluent. But English is my first language!'

'I'm always being asked, 'where are you from?' or 'what's your accent?' I'm tired of it'

'People make assumptions about me because of the accent'

(This last one reminds me of a former client who said, with deep seriousness,

'people assume I'm fiery, and passionate, because I'm Spanish and I sound Spanish… That is not my personality. I am an accountant.'

I was amused (privately) but she made a totally valid point!)

When you're feeling these deep frustrations on a regular basis, I can see why some people describe it as wanting to 'get rid' of their accent - they want to be free of these feelings, and they've given up expecting listeners to catch up and get used to the way they sound. (This process is happening, in British society, but too slowly for some).

But I don't think it's possible to lose the ability to make certain sounds - to 'get rid' of them. It's false advertising.

What we need to do is actually not 'reduce' your accent, but develop a NEW sound - a new set of habits - that will co-exist with your current accent.

Then you can CHOOSE how you sound: in situations where you'd prefer your accent not to be an issue, you can choose the new sound, that's closer to the British-English sound that your listeners are probably more used to.

And in other situations, like with family and friends, you can choose your original accent - the sound that THEY are used to, and have no problem understanding.  

In both cases, it's your accent, your sound. It's still you, just different aspects of you.

I'll give you an example of how this can work in the real world: me.

Canadian/British: artist’s impression of what I looked like as a kid in Canada. Scarily accurate

I was born in Canada, to British-born parents. As a child, everyone around me except my mum and dad had a Canadian accent. So that's the accent I learned and the one I spoke with until I was seven. 

We moved to the UK. Again, as kids do, I wanted to fit in, so my accent changed to a British one.

Then we moved back to Canada when I was eleven. My accent reverted to Canadian.

Then we moved AGAIN - this time back to Britain permanently, where, after some time and some mockery from other teens (some of whom are still my best friends, so no hard feelings) I developed the idiosyncratic not-quite-one-thing-or-the-other British accent that I have now, and that I now consider to be my 'normal' accent.

But here's the thing: I can still sound Canadian. If I choose to. And it doesn't feel like 'putting on' or 'faking', because it's my set of habits, my accent.

I mean, I can 'fake' other accents: I'm an actor, after all. I can put on an American or London or Yorkshire accent temporarily. But that's not 'me'. I'm playing a character.

And you, in your daily life, are not acting, and I'm guessing you don't want to feel like you're acting. (I do work with actors, on accents, by the way. Everyone's welcome!)

What does this mean for you - for your current sound, and the way you'd prefer to sound?

Like me and my Canadian sound, you will never lose your original accent. You will never reach a point where you physically cannot speak with a Russian/French/Polish/Chinese accent.

We will learn the sounds of what I call the 'BBC' English accent by treating them as just that - sounds.

Individual vowel and consonant sounds are just noises that we make with our mouths. They have no meaning, no context. They're just noises.

So if we're going to make a new sound, we treat it as a noise, and get really familiar with making that noise. For example, the short 'a' as in 'apple': we spend a long time just making that 'a' sound.

NOT saying words like 'apple', 'average', advert'… that comes later.

 Why? Because we're not trying to CHANGE your existing accent. And in your existing accent, words - like 'apple' - have a specific feel and a specific sound. If we start by trying to change the way that word sounds, we will fighting your existing accent, and trying to bend it out of shape.

This is an epple. Epple. Epple. Ahhh-pple. Ahhh-pple. No? Epple.

Example: a Russian client might say 'apple' like 'epple'.

Trying to say 'apple' is hard: I hear people go

'epple. Epple. Epple. Ahh-pple - wait, no. Epple. Ey-pple. Better? Epple. Argh!'

I get them to just make the 'a' sound: short, with the big wide-open mouth: 'a'!

Then I get them to do it over and over again. No meaning, no context; focus on what that FEELS like, not on whether it sounds 'right', because it can't sound 'right' on its own. It's just a noise.

Then - try adding the '-pple'.

'A - a- - a-pple'.

This is how we build a new habit.

Once we have the new sound that we decide we need to make, we get really familiar with it before we put it into words and sentences.

Think about how we acquire language as infants: we start by making sounds - 'a!'

We copy the sounds we hear, until we 'get it right'.

Well, think of what we're doing here as a sped-up version of this process! It won't take as many years as it took you to acquire your first accent. But on the other hand, like any physical action, it takes practice for it to become second nature.

In a sense, even though we call it 'accent reduction' - and I sort of have to use that term because that's what people search for online - it's actually more like 'accent addition'. We're ADDING to the repertoire of sounds that you can make, so that you can consciously and deliberately speak the way you want to speak.

I hope this is all making sense! Join me for a totally free-of-charge 1hr taster session online, and let's get into the detail of your existing habits, and start learning the new sounds you'll need in order to build a new accent.

So you won't have to 'get rid of' your first accent at all - just put it aside now and then.

Thanks for reading ;)