konnichiwa ppl, i have been looking into the wonderful world of accents and i would like to know if anyone has any tips on how to speak with different accents, at the mo its just a little thing im working on, i cant do the french accent but i tried earlier and my new friend i met today thought i was from a different place cos i used a weird accent all day lol that was fun, but how can i practice different accents?

i have the abillty to have a french, mexican spanish, chinese, german and russian accents

Oyasumi nasai!
I think it is a little silly to try to learn accents, you might insult a person by doing so!

Accents aren't an ability to learn.

The best you can do is mimic them, and not everyone can......my younger son is a natural mimic (I think he's part parrot/part mockingbird )

This is one of my biggest pet peaves. It freaking drives me bonkers when someone I know speaks with a fake accent. Its like nails on a chalkboard.

Unless you really have the accent, don't do it. Don't even try. You'll sound stupid to everyone who knows the truth.


[edit: for example... I live in Detroit. people here seem to think its cool sometimes to mimic the Canadian accent, since we are so close to Windsor. Sure the Canadian accent is cool. But Americans don't sound right when they try to copy it. So STOP!!]

Some people learn how to lose their accents through practice. There are tapes for it, and the same goes for actors when they want to imitate an accent.

I'm british, but i moved to canada and now after 7 years my accent is barely noticable at all. People will gain the accents over time from the people they listen to speak. If i went back to england now, i'd be full on british right away.

And yes, actually when i was in theatre i was doing a western and had to loan out some tapes from the library to learn the accent. Worked well.

I can pick up any accent anywhere very easy...but when I am home my irish accent kicks in straight away

I was watching Richard & Judy once they had X Files star Gillian Anderson, she spoke with a London accent, those who saw it said they where really surprised she spoke with a London accent...thing is she is orrigionally from London but lives in the USA and can adopt to any accent anywhere.

I'm from all over....midwest & south mainly....I'm in PA now....every now and then, if I get excited....my southern accent gets real thick.....usually though, I just have this funky southern-yankee thing going on.....

Meh, born in the North, raised in the South for a while. Just a Standard American Accent here, no real spice to it.

How can you learn a different accent on the internet without actually hearing it?

LOL where did you read that Rowan?

^ You can learn the words and how they fit together. From being on the forums for a while I understand more Uk and Aussie speak.

I already knew a bit of Aussie speak.

My Grandma went back to Scotland late last year and before she left I talked to her and when she got back it sounded like she never left.

I inherited a voice impressions ability from my father. so after listening to a person from a distant land on TV. after awhile I can usually mimick. I'm Fairly good with

-a standard British accent

-standard East Indian accent

-French accent.


as for my own accent.......well I'm from Texas and then moved to PA then back to Texas. so I have this un-holy hybrid of the Texan accent and the Philly area accent. which results in this very plain accent.

From here BM

hey ppl, i really only wanted some tips at doing this, i finally figured out the french accent, it just came to me (while i was drunk)..... i annoyed every1 with it!!! haha, well that wasnt my actual purpose and from now on ill only use my powers for good lol....(that was a joke!).......also, is there any sort of phonetics thingy i can use like when u see a word for example "Now" this word in ireland appears to be pronounced "nigh" so is that any good for trying to mimic these accents

Yep well in New Zealand they say I's like E's and vise versa. For example... Pin is said as Pen, and Pen is said as Pin. And Fish is Fush.

But when I went to Canada, they say both Pin and Pen, as Pen.

Just a mindless piece of information...

Unfortunately I wasn't granted a neat Italian accent like my relatives (I was one of the few to be born in America) but a very dull northern accent ...

And I suggest if you'd like 'another' accent, I would go to a different country - erm, or if you'd just like to mimic an accent, listen to the sentence structure and endings of certain words in a specific accent. Good luck.

well i was born a bonnie wee scottish lassie, and mum says i had one of the thickest scottish accents ever (shes scottish too) and when she got married to dad (an aussie) and we came over here (to aussieland) I lost my accent within 6 weeks, because i went to school here, and i was taught the australian way of speaking...

I think when Actors try to imitate a Texas accent, they try too hard and then watching the movie becomes sickening.
I recommend, blow it off and rise above it if it's offensive when the situation is watching movies and other people trying to be funny.
Too bad we don't have Voice-Chat here on UM

oh thats right "aussie aussie aussie!!!!"


lol

oit oit oit!!!

Hey! The actor who play Capote was great, I liked his interpetation

My former Spanish teacher claims I have a Castillan sounding accent when I habla the Espanol...basically its just a minor lisp because I don't enjoy speaking the language and therefore don't try so my mouth is lazy....

I live in the South.. have always lived in the South... and I have a strong Southern accent, some words stronger than others.. but I love being a Southern Belle!

I have an accent , that most people can't figure out... its ususally thought to be Russian or form some other Eastern European place...the closest people pointed out was Brazil...

Accent can't really be learned, like someone said before...you can mimic them..but not really LEARN them..

has anyone ever notice how much it is involved in speech ? breathing technique, tongue twisting, jaw moving ?? its amazing...something we take for granted and if you really think of it ...speaking in itself is a work of art .....BRILLIANT !

I noticed that is was very hard for most of my English teacher to pronounce Portuguese correctly... it was really very funny, to see them try. there are sounds such has "lh" and "nh", another one that is pretty "ðe", and â or ãe ..these are just some examples... It seems to me that it may be easier for Portuguese people to learn hot ot PRONOUNCE other languages, because ours already has such tricky sounds to start with... some of them require that you briefly stop air from coming trow your nose... because they are very nasal sounds... and nasal sounds are very tricky... nevertheless i find EVERY speech technique and sound..AMAZING !

I'm told that I have a light Canadian accent. It's not like a Newfie accent, but it's there.

Yes, I say eh.

I'm from the part of southmost Sweden known as Skåne (Scania in English), and though I moved here to Stockholm last summer I still speak differently. In Skåne we pronounce a lot of words with triphtongs event though there aren't any in the spelling, the R's are nice and rolling and there's quite a few words that don't exist in the rest of the country.

An example: Toilet.
In Swedish: Toalett, toa for short, pronounced the way it's written.
In Scanian: Pronounced "teoualett" or "teoua".

A li'l English - Swedish - Scanian dictionary for ya:

Wheelbarrow - Skottkärra - Rullebör
Comorant - Skarv - Ålakråka (="eel crow")
Sh_t - Skit - Mög
Potato - Potatis - Pära
Bucket - Hink - Spann

As for mimicing accents, I'd like to think that I'm quite good at speaking Swedish with a German accent, and English with a Russian accent. But I haven't really tested it on anyone, so I can't say for sure...

We prefer to be called Newfoundlanders.


I don't have much of an accent at all, but sometimes when me and some friends are talking, the accents get pretty hardcore.

there is this crazy coincidence between English and Portuguese, that keeps making me look like an idiot everytime i have to open a door...

In English to "PUSH" a door means to move it away from you, in order to open it.

but in Portuguese to "PUXE" (spelled different, but pronouced the same way), means to pull it towards you....

So 99% of the times I find the door, it takes me a couple of seconds to figure out why the door doesnt open. Because though i know PUSH means to move away, i automacally registered to pull it towards me...

I should know by now, but its one of those things that its just engraved deep in my brain.