I am brown guy.I have been in usa for 2 years.One problem I have is that i got this thick south asian accent and also get fluent speaking english because during internship at the end thats only feedback i got from my manager that you are techinaclly sound but you do lack communication skills.So reason for asking the question here is to get advice and resources to solve my problem:)
Ask HN: How to Do Accent Reduction?
1–10 of 44 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to Do Accent Reduction?
#2are you certain that "lack of communication skills" == "your accent is hard to understand"?
other than that, i recommend watching English-speaking news, reading up on enunciation, copying what you hear, recording your voice and comparing it to what you're repeating, etc.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Re: Ask HN: How to Do Accent Reduction?
#3are you certain that "lack of communication skills" == "your accent is hard to understand"? other than that, i recommend watching English-speaking news, reading up on enunciation, copying what you hear, recording your voice and comparing it to what you're repeating, etc. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Well both actually.
Re: Ask HN: How to Do Accent Reduction?
#4I know of a language learning app that specializes in accent reduction: https://www.bluecanoelearning.com/
Re: Ask HN: How to Do Accent Reduction?
#5This could be a startup idea. I’m sure there are lots of tech companies that would pay lots of money so that their employees could master English and improve their accents.
Re: Ask HN: How to Do Accent Reduction?
#6Accent is one thing, but mastering the language is helpful as well.
Nouns in English require an article unless they are:
- proper nouns (names)
- pronouns (he, him, her, it)
- indefinite plural nouns ("nouns require...")
- collective nouns ("pizza is delicious" "foliage is best viewed in autumn")
Re: Ask HN: How to Do Accent Reduction?
#7Nearly everyone on my team is ESL: Russian, Korean, Chinese, German. Meetings can be a nightmare as everything gets repeated a few times. The Indian guys usually have the best English as they learn from young but accent can be strong. Congrats on working on it no one else seems to try:) .
Re: Ask HN: How to Do Accent Reduction?
#8I know a speech pathologist (think speech therapy for kids) who also does accent reduction for adults. It's a lot of the same type of thing: learn to make this sound with a different part of your mouth, then practice until you can do it without thinking, and since adults tend to be less cooerced and more engaged, it can go quite quickly.
Without trying to be mean, your writing could use work too. Practice writing more formally: have instead of got (mostly); capitalize things that need capitals, like English and I; spell check; full sentances with subjects and verbs; a space after sentances.
Re: Ask HN: How to Do Accent Reduction?
#9I actually worked on a startup to help with this. (We never got off the ground, unfortunately).
There are 2 main factors to focus on: Pronunciation, and tone.
Pronunciation is fairly straightforward; you can look up or listen to how words are pronounced to get a better understanding.
Tone is the tricky one. You need to learn how to correctly raise and lower your voice for individual syllables. Most native speakers have this hardwired in their minds, so you need to practice (a lot) to get the hang of it.
As an exercise, listen to some YouTube videos or podcasts with transcriptions. With one colored pen, highlight the syllables where the speaker raises their voice, and with another pen, highlight the syllables where they lower their voice. Then, practice speaking the sentence with the same tone.
It's a lot of hard work, but it's a skill that can indeed be learned.
Re: Ask HN: How to Do Accent Reduction?
#10It's not so much that you need to reduce your accent but that you must acquire a different accent, the one that happens to be mainstream. I don't know if that helps, but that is what a linguist would say. Everyone has an accent. It is just a matter of which is considered standard.
It seems like it would be hard for someone new to a language to even discern an accent. You have my congratulations for even becoming conversant in more than one language. I took several years of Spanish and still cannot carry on a conversation or read much of anything in it.