Comments on: Getting rid of your English accent when speaking a foreign language

By: Br. Francis Therese Krautter

Br. Francis Therese Krautter — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:52:00 +0000

Exactly the same experience I had! I thought they were mocking my Portuguese, but São Paulo uses a more or less English sounding R.

By: Sara

Sara — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:26:00 +0000

I’ve had a huge issue with rolling my Rs now that I am learning Arabic.

My #1 best tip:
-Lie down with your head laying over an edge
-Put two fingers in your mouth, pulling in two different directions so your mouth is stretched out
-Make a gurgling noise (from the back of your throat, hopefully your spit will begin to vibrate – yes I just said that, and that is what we want cause eventually your tongue will vibrate too!)
-Lastly, involve your tongue and try and touch it loosly to the roof of your mouth while doing all these above things.

This sounds incredibly stupid but this was the thing that first allowed me to roll my Rs, as in actually get my tongue vibrating like it should. After you get it you can eventually stop lying on your back and sticking two fingers in your mouth (don’t worry).

After that I have been practising so I get it right but I am still having trouble, not with rolling it on its own but using it with other letters.

By: Lala

Lala — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 17:14:00 +0000

In my accent of portuguese(sometimes called “caipira”) we use the english “r” in the Rs in the end of the syllabes( porta, cor, mar…)

By: Agent 755, gender offender.

Agent 755, gender offender. — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:28:00 +0000

I’m kind of proud of my accent, although being able to slip out of it would be amusing.

By: Henry Raymont

Henry Raymont — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:13:00 +0000

I am fluent in German, English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. And I am very good at imitating accents in Russian, French, Norwegian, Finnish, and, believe it or not, ‘Puelto Lican’–not to mention Cuban and Guatemalan. So if you have any movie sound-overs or some such thing, pls let me know.

By: Henry Raymont

Henry Raymont — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:13:00 +0000

By: Mark Evans

Mark Evans — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:11:00 +0000

Interesting blog. I’m really loving the Irish twist on things. You know, there is at least one other language that has the same “r” sound as English (I should say North American or Irish English). Maybe you came across this while you were in Brazil. In some parts of the state of Sao Paulo you’ll find that the “r” some positions sounds very similar, if not identical to that odd English “r” we have. When I was staying in Itu, about 1 hour from the capital, I kept thinking my Brazilian friends were making fun of my English accent until they explained that it’s the way they always pronounce their “r”s.

By: Mark Evans

Mark Evans — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:11:00 +0000

By: Mark Evans

Mark Evans — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:11:00 +0000

By: Mark Evans

Mark Evans — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:11:00 +0000

By: Joanna

Joanna — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 19:44:00 +0000

Just about an English-like “r” in other languages: I am not perfectly sure but I think there is an “r” like that in Albanian.

By: Joanna

Joanna — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 19:44:00 +0000

Just about an English-like “r” in other languages: I am not perfectly sure but I think there is an “r” like that in Albanian.

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 04:13:00 +0000

Thanks! I’d love to spend some time at a ski resort some day! Touristy areas like that are actually great for practising multiple languages

By: Benny the Irish polyglot

Benny the Irish polyglot — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 05:38:00 +0000

“Actually”, I don’t know who you are arguing with. I never said the Hindi R was like the English one..

By: Christophe Clugston

Christophe Clugston — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 05:33:00 +0000

Actually the Hindi ‘r’ is nothing like the ‘r’ in English. The English ‘r’ in the North American variety is rhotized and the Hindi ‘r’ is retroflexed. The Spanish ‘r’ is trilled only in initial or final position–it’s flapped in medial positions. Costa Ricans, however, flap ‘r’ more than trill ‘r’ The French ‘r’ is uvular and gives Anglophones the most problems. As Berlitz said, “IF you are multilingual you will always be judged on how well you speak French.” As for Spanish consonants–they are dentalized. French uses a different point of articulation than does the English which accounts for the overwhelming aspiration English speakers have in other languages (since it is not distinctive in English they are never aware of this–hurts them greatly in languages like Thai where it is distinctive)

By: Loz

Loz — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 23:28:00 +0000

Actually we do roll our ‘R’s in Welsh, so it’s not the same as in English!

By: Lienwenli

Lienwenli — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 06:32:00 +0000

Hi. My name is Mindy, and I’m a polyglot studying in Taiwan. (Languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Mandarin, some German, French, Italian). I would like to talk to you about language learning. This semester I learned a lot of helpful stuff about collocations, corpora, and vocabulary in L2 language acquisition. Maybe I could share some frequency information and my research. I was very interested in your comments on pronunciation.
Have a nice journey!

By: ewan

ewan — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:37:00 +0000

Great post, I’m just disappointed that you don’t speak Swedish so you could give me some tips on losing my accent. I’ve gotten rid of my English ‘r’, so I’m going to try thinking about my vowel consonant relationships. Thanks for the tip.

Also, I learnt French with the total immersion method (worked in France in a French speaking holiday resort for 6 months). Although I spoke fluently by the end, my accent was a terrible English one. I heard your french accent in your video – it’s great! congratulations.

By: Benny the language hacker

Benny the language hacker — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:39:00 +0000

Thanks! Glad to see you are enjoying the blog!

By: Audrey

Audrey — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:38:00 +0000

These are actually pretty good tricks Only now if they would work for losing my french accent it would be great haha I dig languages like you, currently learning my 3rd, which is german. And since I discovered your blog (about 2 days ago) I have been devouring your articles!