Can You *Actually* Change Your Accent?
Here's the research on whether you can "speak like a native" in a second language.
Scroll through some learn-English content on Instagram or Youtube, and you’ll be suddenly bombarded with ads that promise that you can “speak like a native” or “lose your accent” in a short period of time.
From a linguistics perspective, these claims are insane (to say the least). Today, we’re diving into why they’re so insane and what the research tells us about whether we can change our accents in a second language—not in an hour or even a week, I’m talking after extensive periods of intensive training. Next week, we’re going to be covering how to teach (or learn) pronunciation effectively, and the following week we’re going to look at the accent reduction industry through a social lens.
What Is An Accent?
The best definition of accent I’ve found is short and sweet: an accent is a different way of producing speech. Whether we’re talking about regional accents or foreign accents, the key idea is that when you hear an accent, what it means is that you think the speaker’s way of speaking is different1.
But to really understand whether pronunciation instruction in a second language is helpful, we need to learn three ideas:
accentedness: what we just talked about…how different you sound from the standardized pronunciation
intelligibility: how much of your message is understood
comprehensibility: how difficult you are to be understood
These three elements of pronunciation are all important. And it’s important to remember that you can be really easy to understand and express your messages well while still having an accent because all three elements are more-or-less independent.
What Causes A Foreign Accent?
If we ignore intelligibility and comprehensibility for a moment, what causes accentedness when learning another language?
A foreign accent is made up of several factors all happening at once. For example, when you’re learning a new language, you might be exposed to new sounds. Your mind will likely hear the new sounds and say one of two things. The first option, is your mind says, “This sounds exactly like the sound you have in your first language; let’s use your first language sound.” And your mind might say this even if it’s not true. It’s saying it because as adults our ability to differentiate between new sounds is limited. But, there’s also a second option, that your mind hears a new sound, knows it’s different, and says, “Oh, this sound is different, but it’s pretty much like this other sound you know from your first language. So, we’re going to use your first language sound for now.”
So, an English speaker learning Spanish will hear a word like rojo, and pronounce it with the English /ɹ/, whereas a Spanish speaker would use the trill /r/, which doesn’t exist in English. Using the English /ɹ/ is generally good enough; Spanish speakers will understand the English speaker even though using the different /r/ causes the English speaker to have an accent.
And that’s just sounds (phonemes).
Another factor that contributes to a foreign accent is that sounds can change depending on the other sounds surrounding it (allophones). Spanish speakers actually use two different /r/—either the trill /r/ or the tap /ɾ/— depending on where the sound is in the word. The English speaker knows that tap /ɾ/ sound because it’s used in English. But it’s used in different positions in Spanish. So, the English speaker might fail to hear that words like para use the tap /ɾ/, and they’ll just use the English /ɹ/ because again it’s still close enough.
But let’s say the English speaker really wants to learn to speak Spanish “without an accent.” They learn the trill /r/ and the tap /ɾ/ and the rules of when to use each one.
After all that hard work, they’ve mastered exactly one sound and one allophone in Spanish.
They then have to repeat the process for all the other phonemes and allophones that differ between English and Spanish.
Then, when that’s done, they need to focus on suprasegmental features, like stress, intonation, and rhythm, which are completely different in English and Spanish, and which also contribute to a foreign accent.
Finally to get rid of their accent, they’ll need to “perfect” all the sounds and suprasegmental features, and then use these “perfected” versions all at the same time.
I’m trying to emphasize how truly difficult—if not impossible—it is to completely change your accent.
But the alternative, of focusing on intelligibility and comprehensibility, is completely attainable through quality pronunciation instruction. When you focus on intelligibility and comprehensibility, you’re not aiming at acquiring each and every sound and suprasegmental feature. Instead, you’re choosing the ones that matter. Since most Spanish speakers would understand rojo being pronounced with the English /ɹ/, you’re not prioritizing learning that sound. Instead, you’re prioritizing sounds and intonations that would cause the communication to break down if you don’t get them correct.
But If I Really Try, Can I Lose My Accent?
Oftentimes when I’ve told students about how difficult it would be to lose their accent, they often reply with something like, “I know that it’s difficult. But, I’m willing to put in the work!”
There’s another side of the story that I then tell them, so that they’re aware of it before they make a decision of whether they want to put the financial and time investment into accent reduction classes. And this side of the story is one that I don’t hear many people talking about…
If we return to the definition of accent—a different way of speaking—then we see that accents only exist through listeners. Listeners, when they say something like, “Where’s your accent from?” are essentially saying “You sound different than most people here.” It’s relative to what the listeners think “most people here” sound like.
Keeping that in mind, here’s what I think most people get wrong when they think of losing their accent: they focus on what they—as the speaker—are capable of doing without taking into account the fact that accents only exist through a listener.
Here’s why that matters:
If we were to focus on the speaker’s side, I would tell you about all the studies that show that it’s extremely hard—if not impossible—to fully change your accent. If we instead focus on the listener’s side, we realize that there’s a whole other problem: listeners are extremely good at detecting a foreign accent.
There have been studies where they play participants a 30 millisecond clip of “native” English speakers versus French-accented English speakers, and the participants are highly accurate at knowing which clip belongs to which group2. Additionally, there have even been studies where they play participants a reverse recording of a single word (instead of hearing ‘water,’ they hear it played backwards, like ‘retaw’), and the participants all agree on which words were said by “native” English speakers and which weren’t3.
These studies show that in addition to asking whether it’s possible to change your accent, you need to ask whether you can change your accent so fully that listeners won’t perceive any part of your speech as different4?
And now, for some other FAQs about second language pronunciation:
Can I Learn Any Accent If I Start Young Enough?
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the relationship between age and language learning. The final conclusion was that language learning is not that much easier for kids, and that adults can absolutely learn a second language.
Now, let’s zoom in on accent.
Do all children who learn a second language grow up to speak it without a foreign accent? And do all adults who learn a second language have an accent?
It’s true that babies are born capable of hearing all the different sounds of all the different languages in the world. That means that I cannot hear the difference between the /t/ that we have in English and the retroflex version they have in languages like Hindi, but that an English-speaking baby could.
Linguists don’t know why, but by the time we’re one year old5, our sound system is set to the language we’re surrounded by, and our ability to hear all sounds starts to gradually get worse.
So, it’s no longer a natural ability we all have. Instead, it’s something we need to work really hard to learn again. But, the main thing to remember is that you can absolutely learn new sounds as an adult. It’ll just take more time than a baby.
So, if we return to our questions, several children who learn second languages after the age of one, do have a foreign accent. And several adults, like actors who are trained for hours everyday by professionals, can learn new accents.
Will My Accent Naturally Improve If I Move To An English-Speaking Country?
While the term English-speaking country makes it seem like everyone in a country, like the U.S, is surrounded by English, that’s not always the case. My grandparents who lived in Miami for sixty years, were mainly surrounded by Spanish, since there’s a large group of Spanish-speakers in the city.
So, moving or not moving to an English-speaking country does not necessarily affect your pronunciation. But, let’s focus on research about people who moved to an English-speaking country and constantly had to use English.
Consider these results:
Linguists have found6 that there’s no difference between the English accent of people who moved to Canada 5-11 years ago or 12-18 years ago. In other words, the people’s accent didn’t naturally get better when they were in Canada for longer.
At the same time, in similar studies7, as time went on, Canadian (im)migrant’s English naturally improved in terms of comprehensibility and fluency.
So, we have two ideas based on the above findings. First, pronunciation seems to fossilize. That means that your way of pronouncing sounds in another language becomes a habit; even if you hear the “correct” pronunciation all day, you might still mispronounce the sound out of habit. Second, if you’re constantly surrounded by or practicing your second language, your comprehensibility is likely to improve over time. This makes sense because you want to make sure you’re being understood.
The good news is that there have been studies that show that concepts like fossilization do not apply to people who take quality pronunciation classes. These adults are able to improve their intelligibility and comprehensibility later in life.
Are Some People Just Better At Accents?
We actually don’t really know: there hasn’t been much research done on second language learners who are “good at accents.” One interesting article8 showed that Finnish participants with high musical aptitude had higher levels of English pronunciation compared with the participants with lower musical aptitudes. But again, it’s one study. So, there might be a relationship between musical aptitude and accent aptitude, but we’ll need more studies to know for sure.
Conclusion
There are three main takeaways from this newsletter:
“Speaking like a native” especially in terms of speaking your second language “without an accent” is really difficult, if not impossible.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take pronunciation classes if you find that your message isn’t being received in your second language. Remember that intelligibility and comprehensibility are independent from accentedness. You can absolutely learn to be more easily understood in another language at any age.
The information from studies shows generalizations about learning pronunciation as an adult. Because there’s so many factors when it comes to second language pronunciation, it’s important to remember that there’s a lot of individual variability.
Next week, we’re looking at why pronunciation teaching is so difficult to do correctly and how to teach it (or learn it) effectively. The following week, we’re looking at the accent-reduction industry through a sociolinguistics lens.
Works Cited
Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (2015). Pronunciation fundamentals: Evidence-based perspectives for L2 teaching and research (Vol. 42). John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (2009). Putting accent in its place: Rethinking obstacles to communication. Language teaching, 42(4), 476-490.
Since accents are relative, everyone has an accent. The important thing to remember is that accents are judgments made by listeners who think “oh, you sound different.” Different is relative to the listener’s experience of what “normal language” is. (We’ll discuss this more in part 3).
Flege (1984)
Derwing & Munro (2009)
In part 3, we’re going to discuss how “sounding different” can be a result of race or ethnicity instead of actual language.
There are other studies that show that the critical period for pronunciation is around six years of age. Other studies show that it’s around puberty.
Oyama (1976)
Derwing & Munro (2015)
Milovanov (2010)