Learn An Accent

Is It Difficult To Learn An Accent?

The most important thing to remember is, to learn an accent, however bad you think might be at this, it is a matter of internal engineering which you can learn from me ie tongue and jaw positions and obsession 🙂

Obstacles to ‘Learn An Accent’

There many be many obstacles hindering or even stopping your attempts to you learning a particular  accent,  but you can traverse them, or go round them..  and I’ll tell you how…

My History and Developed Strategies

Being very shortsighted and dyslexic when I was a young child,  the quickest way for me to learn from my older siblings and impatient parents, was for me to simply mimic whatever they did.

Hence, although I couldn’t spell, I could read: no one could hear the snail speed voice in my head.

And my reading every paragraph 3 or 4 times to understand what I had just read, just made me look keen and a bookworm, which was very convenient for my parents!

Although I couldn’t see things, I learned to develop my auditory memory, even now I can quote phrases said in a casual conversation, on say, the Tuesday before last!

I can remember the first time I saw the Georgian mouldings on the ceilings of our home, the blades of grass and the feathers on birds – it was all a marvel! 🙂 And I was 7 – because luckily the school had intervened 🙂

But by this point my survival techniques were well entrenched on how to cope in a high achieving, less than sympathetic family and I’m telling you this, because I do believe my developed skills of copying, can be learned.

Copying and How You’re Better Than You Think

Copying someone is a universal human skill, hence the huge success of the YouTube ‘How To’ Videos.

BUT  there can be blocks to learning things, sometimes physical but often mental and the latter is especially true when attempting to learn an accent.

There are numerous different types of mental and emotional blocks, and  yours will be personal to you, your circumstances, and your previous life history as mine have been to me.

How To Overcome Your Blocks to Learn An Accent

I’m going to describe one huge block of mine and how I overcame it…

What I did, to Learn An Accent

It used to take me on average,  by listening and listening, to learn an impersonation and not just a general accent but a specific impersonation,  if I really concentrated – about 2 hours – for the character/actor/famous person,  to be recognised.

Then,  I would need to spend more time finessing it to become more accurate.

Discovering My Block

But, when I was employed to teach an actress who was auditioning for the feature film, Invictus, I discovered how overwhelmingly efficient and stubborn an emotional block really is!

If you haven’t seen  Invictus – and I recommend you do – it’s about South Africa when Nelson Mandela was president  – and the Springboks – the white Afrikaans South African rugby team.

During Apartheid Mandela had been imprisoned for 27 years on a small isolated large rock, called Robin Island, just off the coast of Cape Town.  The film is very inspiring and about a true story.

In order to avoid a bloody massacre of the white supremacists, when he was voted into the presidency, Nelson Mandela established a regime of truth and reconciliation, which was utterly remarkable and avoided a bloodbath.

The Springboks were the national rugby team and predominantly white as the skills had been taught to the whites only, for several decades. He let the white team stay, as was but he wanted them to represent EVERYONE in South Africa and bring the broken society together.

Instead of  blame and annihilation of the oppressors, he wanted to bring ALL his fellow country women and men, together:  he wanted integration which was an incredible act of forgiveness.

He didn’t want to punish the whites whom had enjoyed privileged supremacy over a subjugated nation of black folks and his attitude towards the Springboks, really helped to illustrate his vision of a nation of different races, being one community…The Rainbow Nation.

To help bring about social cohesion, Nelson Mandela enlisted the help of Francois Pienaar the captain of the country’s rugby team. Mandela knew how sport could unite people and so Mandela and Pienaar worked together to create a winning team that went all the way to the World Cup!

So in 1995 the Rugby World Cup was held in Johannesburg, the newly freed from Apartheid, South Africa

At the beginning of match Mandela walked on to the pitch in a Springboks shirt (Pienaar’s number) which had been a symbol of white privilege for decades –  and shook Pienaar’s hand. A winning optic as we now say!

What a great show of unity.. 🙂

And they won.

Hooray! 🙂

How To Learn An Accent You Don’t Like

Because of the way of the way I had been brought up and had heard of the terrible atrocities of the  of Apartheid regime, the white Afrikaans accent,  encapsulated the very worst of humanity to me..

I was brought up to hate racism and still do.

The white girlfriend of the captain of the team had a strong Afrikaans accent.

In order to teach the accent I had to first learn it myself but despite my immersion with films and audio files, I could not pick up this particular accent.

My own predjucies and deep emotional bias against a sound that felt aggressive and cruel to me,  meant I just could’t absorb the sounds.

Unblocking The Block To Learn An Accent

I had started learning the accent on receiving the booking, the Thursday before the appointment on the following Monday and by the Saturday I was desperate.

I still couldn’t do it!

Never had an accent defeated me like this and I was frustrated, worried and deeply unhappy.

So, I made a collection of all the audio files I had amassed,  including recordings from films, but mostly from IDEA – a wonderful site for learning accents, I highly recommend – and made a cd.

I made a cd to put on a player that would repeat and repeat endlessly until physically stopped.

I put it next to my bed, next to my pillow and went to sleep that night with it playing all through the night.

Success!

I woke up being able to talk like that! 🙂

I had literally brainwashed myself!  I was so relieved and realised a lot of the time, it is our own subconscious or conscious biases, that prevent us from absorbing the correct accents for learning new languages or particular accents, for work.

By listening when I was totally relaxed – fast asleep – I had managed to transcend or go round my emotional and mental blocks to ‘learn an accent’.

Remember, If You Find It Hard to Learn An Accent…

Kids always change their accents when they are moved by adults, to different countries or regional areas etc to assimilate as quickly as possible – this is a human survival technique.

Children’s or young peoples’ lives literally depend upon sounding like their peers, in the classroom and school grounds.. so they change and they change quickly.

Help To Learn An Accent

I urge you to not berate yourself if you are finding it difficult to learn an accent or make your English accent clearer.

To learn an accent, you have to overcome your blocks, which may be very deep-rooted.

Help yourself by making a sound file that you can play endlessly while you relax sunbathing, snoozing or even sleeping through the night as I did,

It really does work!

For your pleasure: the new anthem brought in by Mandela – beautiful.. Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika

© Rachel Preece, 2023. This material may not be copied or shared without the written consent of the author