As with any skill, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to learning accents. There are, however, three distinct learning modalities. While most of us use a mix of all three, you may have a preference for one in particular. Knowing your style can help you find the most effective inroad to accent work.
The three learning styles are:
Auditory
Visual
Kinesthetic
How do you know yours? We usually teach to our preference, so imagine you’re going to teach a toddler to tie their shoes. Do you tell them how to do it? (Auditory.) Show them yourself? (Visual.) Or take their hands and guide them through the motions? (Kinesthetic.)
Here are some tips for learning accents in each modality—remember, you’ll likely want to use a combo.
Auditory
Find native speaker audio
You can find it on dedicated dialect websites, such as IDEA, or by searching YouTube (you’ll sometimes get better results omitting the word “accent” and instead focusing on terms like “Russian lady” or “Brooklyn guy”). Try to find a speaker who is your sex, race, and roughly your age. Once you’ve found a clip you like, close your eyes, listen and murmur along. Let the speaker’s voice pass through your head—in through your ear, and out your own mouth.Have a native speaker friend (or a dialect coach) record your lines for you
This won’t work for everyone, and you want to be sure you don’t get locked into a line reading, but it can be a helpful method if your learning style leans auditory—and if you’re on a tight deadline. It can be especially useful if the dialect has a lot of special pronunciations (how do Brits say “schedule” again?).Listen to native music
The music of a culture sometimes resembles its language, in rhythm and timbre. Learning an Appalachian dialect? Throw on some bluegrass and practice your accent as you bop to the banjo.
Visual
Use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
Love it or hate it, the IPA is a powerful tool to make your accent work more specific, especially if you’re a visual learner. You don’t have to learn it all at once—get a good dialect guide (something like this or this), then pull up an interactive phonetic chart where you can click and hear the sounds. Little by little, you’ll get the hang of it.Use “faux-netics”
I use what I call faux-netics all the time with visual learners who are IPA-averse. Just write the sounds as you hear them. For example, in Standard British, “I can’t get this basket to France” becomes “I cahnt get this bahsket to Frahnce.” It’s not nearly as accurate as IPA, but it may work for you in a pinch.Draw intonation patterns
Put on native speaker audio and draw what you hear—does the intonation look jagged or smooth? Are there big jumps, or is it fairly flat?Watch a native speaker
Head to YouTube and watch an interview with a native. What do you see them doing with their articulators? Do they move their jaw a lot? Are the lips a little retracted? This brings us to…
Kinesthetic
Use oral posture
A term coined by Knight-Thompson Speechwork, oral posture refers to the “home base” position your articulators use for any given accent. You’re looking primarily at the moveable articulators—the jaw, lips, tongue, and soft palate. Find a native speaker on YouTube and try to identify some specifics. Does the jaw hang low? Can you hear a lot of nasality (low soft palate)? Are the lips a little pursed? Then try these adjustments on yourself (sometimes even one small shift makes a big difference).Go 3x through
Muscle memory definitely comes into play in dialect work. Try each line 3x through—once for accuracy, then for fluidity, and a third time for a feeling of ease.Remember the rest of your body
Accents aren’t a neck-up experience. They affect your whole sense of self, including your posture, physical rhythm, sense of body weight, and how much space you take up. Speaking in the accent, move around, dance to native music. Your tongue is connected to your toes via your fasica! Can you feel your accent in your feet?