I know it can be done, not because I've done it but because I know especially one woman, who's German, and speaks Swedish at a native level. Germans are SUPER EASY to spot with the help of their accents. She might say one word in a whole evening with the wrong stress but if it's rare enough she might just have read it and never heard it pronounced (I don't pronounce all Swedish words properly either, because some words are just rare) and if it's a not so rare word, well it might startle you but you still would be 98% sure she's Swedish.
This video has lacked a pinned comment. It has one now. Here is a guy saying it can be done because he's heard it done in his native language and it wasn't HE who has done it (always a dubious claim). Also check out his channel!
@@daysandwords i watched your Steven Kaufman interview and you mentioned that thing about wanting your pronunciation be one dialect, for myself I'm gonna model my speach after certain people by buying transcripts off of Fiverr for example so when speaking German for example I have Till Lindemann, and Russian is not as diverse but the singer in shortparis sounds good and English I have tom hardy in peaky blinders, have you thought about this on modeling after certain people and like crafting your own audio and video studying material?
A couple of example to add to the list would be Alexander Skarsgård (And his brother as well i think, acting as the clown in 'IT'). And Malin Åkerman (although she did spend time in Canada in her youth). Not to brag (or perhaps seem weird), but whilst living in Spain for a few years I was staying at alot of hostels before i found a room/flat to rent. While doing so i obviously came across loads of travelers and different people from all over the world. At one hostel there were a couple of American back-packers. Just to see if i had what it took i decided to introduce myself as an American! (I'm Swedish and have never been in the US/Canada) They instantly believed me and started asking about me, where i came from etc. Stupidly I said Detroit, Michigan just before i realized I never really mastered 'east-coast' dialect. They both said they thought I was Canadian (haha) so i had to make up a Quick story about growing up in Canada before moving to Detroit at 14. Anyway, we had a couple of drinks and I said good bye, before it all got too weird. Sorry for the long story but I had to share it, being so relevant. Anyway I love your content! God bless!
I can give you several examples that many seem to forget are Swedish Joel Kinnaman, Rebecca Ferguson, Alicia Vikander and the Skarsgård family (only a few Swedes who played roles where they should be English-speaking) then in sweden we do not dubb programs so we learn by hearing english from when we were little but so do the rest of the nordic countries and the netherlands and that may be why we are relatively good at english. One thing that makes some people notice is that they confuse the word order that easily becomes when you think the sentence in a language and then translate it sounds grammatically wrong but many Swedes are used to some not knowing the language so well and it is possible to understand so many say nothing even
"Nobody can sound like a native speaker." "Here's someone who did it." "Yeah, but they're an actor" "Nobody can run a mile in under 4 minutes." "Here's someone who did it." "Yeah, but they're an athlete."
EXACTLY! Thank you. Also: "No one can learn a foreign language like a native." "Here's a non-actor who did." "Yeah but they are Swedish." "Ok so, is Swedish not a foreign language?" "It is but it has similarities with English." "So... That makes it not foreign?"
Gluhfunke - yes but the people saying "they are actors" are often responding to a clip you show them of like an interview of something. They are basically ignoring the evidence that disproves their argument. Emily Baldoni, for example, was most definitely not doing this just for the camera because this film didn't actually have a script with lines, so there'd be no way of doing it just for the camera unless you really could do that sans script, plus I follow her on instagram and in her stories and stuff she sounds completely American. Granted, she has now lived there are like 12 years.
It is a valid point though. Actors are not average people and have access to highly specialises dialect coaches and languages teachers that only those with money can afford. This video should be "Can the average person acquire a native accent?
Coherence was made on a budget of $50,000 and most of that was spent on the editor, and it is Emily Baldoni's only major role. I GUARANTEE you that she did not use a dialoque coach - and additionally, the film had no proper script - so she was adlibbing most of the time. It is not a valid point, nor is your telling me what this video should and shouldn't be. You're free to upload your own video.
OMG FINALLY!! Thank you for making this video! I HATE when people discussing language learning say a non-native can never sound native. Its simply a flat out lie, I am a native English speaker and on several occassions I have met people who I presumed were also native, later to find out infact that they weren't. The argument that non-native speakers may make mistakes with certain things is also a huge oversight; NATIVE speakers of any language also make mistakes and slip ups from time to time, we all do it. How can you tell me someone will never sound native when Ive been fooled several times into thinking someone was? I think the reason people say its impossible is because they don't think it should be a focus when learning a language, which is a fair point in its own right, you don't NEED to sound native to be fluent and get by, but saying its IMPOSSIBLE is a flat out lie.
the age of 20, I lived in Denmark for about 1 year. In the beginning, everyone heard that I was Swedish, but after less than half a year, they thought I came from a special Danish province. Yes, I am Swedish, but our languages differ enormously in pronunciation.
@@papasscooperiaworker3649 Yes, to hear and copy the characteristic melody, rhythm and emphasis (prosody, cadence) of all words and phrases in a language. And also the right tonal qualities of vowels (and consonants) as well as all their combinations. That's what makes it sound native.
I've had experiences of both. A landlord was Norwegian, and he was so proud of it that he had the flag everywhere. Otherwise, you would never guess. I also grew up with a lot of third and fourth generation Russians who had a detectable accent. As with everything, it depends on a person's motivation and time.
I completely agree with your 3 points. It was definitely the case for me when I was an exchange student in Germany at 18 years old. I knew no German to start with and I had a GOAL that when I met people at the end of the 10 months, that they wouldn’t know if I was German or not, aka me having a native-like accent. So I had a motivating goal/will, but on top of that, physically living in the country definitely gives an extra push or NEED for the language that pushed me more than if I was learning it for fun, I had lots of exposure to the language everyday by living in Germany and then I would also say that I have a strong interest & ability to do accents more than the average person. So will, time & talent definitely resulted me in reaching my goal by the end of the 10 months. My German wasn’t perfect & still isn’t, especially since I don’t live there anymore, but a German is more likely to figure out I’m a foreigner from a grammar mistake than a foreign accent. Everyone’s goals in language learning are different, whether you are learning in order to understand your favorite book or TV show in the original language, or to be able to be to talk to people in the language without problem, or to be able to talk without an accent, or all of the above. But I know because I focused on having a good accent, that created results. It is definitely possible, but like you said, very difficult to achieve. I had the privileges of the right circumstances to have the accent in German that I have.
I can relate to this a lot, I was in Spain as an exchange student and by the end people really took a while talking to me to ask where I was from/being surprised I was German 🥰 it’s such a great feeling 🤍 and I’m trying to repeat getting to that level in Arabic hahaha I’ll need luck haha
I have seen this with English from many foreign friends in college. I would argue it is possible in more than one language (as adult), though extremely rare. Next video should be about the deliberate practice of this (which very few actually do). Speaking is about accent & pronunciation, vocab & idioms, and fluency and expression, not just accent. My 2 cents: Shadowing everyday, Reading (Extensive & Intensive), Flash Cards (then reading again to soak it in), and spaced repetition speaking. I have a theory on this that you master speaking by topics if you keep returning to the basics before moving on. I feel like online you spend one or 2 sessions on a topic before moving on. It never gets mastered... anyway, love the topic!
There was a Slovenian actress whose name I don't currently remember, who moved to Italy when she was in her twenties and she used to be dubbed over when acting in Italian, but now sounds 100% like a native Italian speaker.
I assume all it would take is learning the accent. It wouldn't be different from an actor learning a different accent. If you learn a language, you could just work with an accent coach
As a Turkish speaker from Turkey i went to the US for the first time for working there and most of them thought i was american! I always tried fixing up my accent and my pronounciation but never realized native speakers wouldn’t point me out as a foreigner. I believe it really depends on the person. If one really focuses on its accent, eventually it’s possible for that person to sound entirely native.
@@thesmokecriminal5395 the question should probably be "who old were you when you first got exposed to large amounts of English?" because I've never stepped foot in the US but I speak it with a pretty much native accent (as far as I can tell), and it's because of American TV shows and TH-cam growing up.
coincidently, there's a twitch streamer named hasanabi who grew up in turkey and he has a completely native sounding american accent. he permanently moved to america when he was 18
This video is spot on. I'd point out one more reason that native(-like) accents are so rare: Most learning resources do not stress pronunciation. When phonetic training is integrated into language learning -- at the start and then continually reinforced -- the results are much better. If this were standard, we'd shift the entire distribution.
Lamont, I absolutely loved this video. A topic that definitely needed to be explored and you did it superbly. This could very well be your best video. One of the best language videos I have ever seen. Keep up the excellent work.
I absolutely agree. I've always disliked the common notion (even among linguists) that adults couldn't learn a native-like pronunciation and I have often argued against it. First of all, there are examples of people who did it which automatically disproves the "it can't be done" claim. The naysayers also never really dissect the language learning process and methods used to understand why native-like pronunciation is so rare among foreign language learners. When you analyze the usual language learning process with time and effort spend on the different subcategories of language, you will see that there is a huge disparity between time spent on pronunciation and the other aspects of language. Usually, people spend a bit of time on pronunciation at the very beginning of their learning process until the point their pronunciation is "good enough" to be understood and that's it. They rarely spend much more time later on while they will spend years on grammar and a lifetime on vocabulary (i.e. by checking unknown words in the dictionary). How do people expect their pronunciation to significantly improve¿
Rich Brian, Dogen, NIKI are just a few example of ordinary people that I can think of that can master their 2nd language to the native level before going popular. I also know some foreign people that can absolutely speak Indonesian without any foreign accent (some of them even speak in local accents), and when I tried to spot their mistakes it turns out they only make mistakes that we natives do too, and sometimes speak even better than some of us. So the only thing that is limiting oneself to do things like that is his own mindset. If you work hard and smart enough, that's absolutely not impossible
Well rich brian mispronounces words every now and then and his grammar is kinda meh, Niki on the contrary sounds much better. Joji also learned English as a second language.
Great video! Yeah I'm also a Swede and I could only hear a very minor hint of some Slavic accent in Claudia's Swedish. But her Swedish is so amazing that it almost feels ridiculous to bring it up, since there were only a couple times I could hear something being slightly off ... in a 50 minute interview :D And you are absolutely right about Scandinavians not being some omniscient Gods when it comes to English.. I myself speak English with a very thick Swedish accent because I have never made any good attempts to improve my English accent. Cheers!
The litmus test should be: if you hadn't KNOWN she was Polish before you heard her speak, would any of these 'faults' that you think you detected have raised any suspicions about her being non-native? (Also, would that "very minor bit of some slavic" have TRULY sounded 'slavic' to you if you hadn't already been told she was Polish?) I'm a bit of a contrarian by nature, and I listened to an interview with that Swedish actress Emily something that Lamont referred to, and I was trying very, very hard (I promise) to catch her out on something, and a couple of times I thought I did, but when I applied this litmus test, I could only conclude that, nope, I would have had ZERO reason to doubt that I was listening to a native speaker. In your case, perhaps your answer might still be yes even after the litmus test, and that's fine - I'm not trying to tell you what to think.
Really insightful & great examples! I get why people stress over having accents, especially if they're discriminated against or particularly difficult to understand. I always strive to hone my accent at the beginning of learning a language so I don't have to unlearn anything later. People never expect people from the US to speak any other language let alone have a good accent, so it's always a nice surprise when they see I've put in the effort. I get lots of comments from Brazilians that I have a good accent in portuguese, and I hope it's not just flattery. I think it's definitely attainable
Excellent video. You're exactly right that it's very hard to talk about a native-level accent without people getting emotional, defensive or critical. People never criticize someone learning more words or learning esoteric grammar, but very often working on one's accent is. Considering there have been soviet spies who had to learn English to a native level of accent, it seems obvious that a motivated person could do it.
although practically perfect, there was some tiny part of her speech that still gave it away, maybe some nuance in the amount of force she used when speaking or something. would probably never realize if i wasn't actively listening for it though.
It's absolutely possible. My mum learned swiss German in her 20's after getting married to my dad and now speaks accentfree. And it is worth it because the sad truth is, she faced more discrimination before she mastered the language to this degree because in Europe it's mainly important how well you are integrated in compre to what skin color you have in terms of discrimination. Not saying racism doesn't exist but as a rule of thumb, people are more acceptive of those who put in the effort to learn the local languages.
THANK YOU for making this video. Particularly as someone who just learns languages for fun and selects them almost exclusively because I like the way they sound, I've always striven to speak as much like a native as possible (I mean, if I wanted to sound like a foreigner I would simply just speak English?), so whether it was possible or not never came into question because it would've invalidated my reason for wanting to be able to speak German in the first place. Well... it "only" took like four years to get to that point, but that was long before I got diagnosed with autism and realised my ability to mimic accents is in part thanks to neurological predisposition. I think the fact that so many English learners in particular struggle to attain a native sounding accent has a lot to do with the fact that they don't get consistent exposure to a single type of accent for the overwhelming majority of the time they spend learning, as they end up mixing (chiefly) British and American dialects together in an clumsy sounding mishmash, but of course this goes for any pluricentric language with wildly differing varieties (and heck, even natives have problems with this from time to time).
11:32 this point here is very relatable. People say I have a knack for accents in different languages, and I myself am someone who loves to spend time learning languages. However, my experience is that I would learn for a month or two, but then would burn out, give up and start the next language. So I would always never get past the beginner stage. In college I was learning Hebrew first semester. At the same time, I was also learning the Telugu language, which I started learning a month after learning Hebrew. It came to the point where it was so hard learning the both of them, so I decided to drop Hebrew so that I could focus on just Telugu. My entire life I always felt like I was switching between things, becoming super passionate for a thing and then dropping it cold the next day. It made me feel like I wasnt able to accomplish anything, even basic commitments like doing homework or showing up on time. Which made me feel bad because I felt like I would let people down all the time that I was so bad with commitment, which is a virtue. I thought to myself, "Hey, what if I decided to stick to Telugu for four years?" Four years was the perfect time since Im a college freshman. And I decided, I would REALLY COMMIT to this for the next four years. Its a promise I made to myself, because I felt like I could go so far if I simply committed to something instead of dropping it, like I do with so many things my entire life. And so far I have not regretted this. The reason I was able to commit to this language was because of powerful personal experiences that I had with people of this langauge. I think its most beneficial to focus on one language at a time and get to a high level-- at least, thats my goal anyway. but Because my time is split between being a content creator for the language, as well as creating language learning resources for Telugu, I dont have much time to learn the actual language itself so the progress is slow. but all of this is definitely rewarding!
I'm Swedish, but my father was Norwegian. I talk exactly like the people from the place he grew up, Hardanger, so I speak 'haring', which is a dialect of Norwegian that is a bit difficult to understand for some people. I have never had anyone ask if I wasn't Norwegian whenever I was in Norway, unless I was speaking Swedish first. I'm also really good at copying pronounciation, so I have always been told by my teachers in French , English or Japanese that I have really good pronunciation, and that I sound like I'm a native. (I usually speak British English, but I have been falling into US English a bit more, and it irks me. :P We're taught British English and spelling here, so it goes against what I've been taught to sound like an 'american'. ) I have't spoken French or Japanese for a few years, and I guess that my pronunciation and intonation might be a bit worse now, but I'm currently learning Thai, and my goal, however long it might take, is to sound as native as I can. The key is to speak as much as you can, and not just speaking. I actively try to copy everything in the clips I hear, from intonation, to melody, to pitch and to which syllable is stressed more. Is it a glottal stop, or an aspirated consonant? Analysing the language as you learn, makes it easier to understand it, and it helps you to sound more native. I've gotten a few compliments that my pronunciation is really good for a 'farang', but I want to get to the point where it's simply 'really good', without the addition of me being a 'farang'. :P
@@GUITARTIME2024 I beg to differ. It really depends on your accent if you're understood or not, no matter if you're speaking British English, or not. I can name several US accents that a lot of people simply won't understand because of how they pronounce the words.
Dude your channel is seriously so underrated. I wish I had known about Emily Baldoni before I said "PEWDS" on the community post lol. I totally see what you mean now about "charisma vs actually sounding native". That little clip of him really put it in perspective for me.
Thank you! And honestly I find it nice that we can have a discussion about it and not just try to be "right" - I was actually pretty harsh when you said Pewds but you kept being respectful and everything - so my Sox hat comes off to you. 😄
@@daysandwords I didn't think you were being harsh lol. Just honest and explaining in a clear way why you feel that Pewds isn't a good example for non-natives sounding native! Plus its always cool when TH-camrs interact with their community in a meaningful and insightful way lol
@@peterfireflylund But you had FOUR people to choose from and she got the most screen time. Plus she looks European. It becomes obvious just from context. I have shown that movie to numerous people (because I love it), and have asked them afterwards and pretty much everyone says a different one of the 8 characters, including Americans. Anyone claiming they can "hear" her accent without any other clues, I believe is either projecting it or they can also hear the difference between the back and front tyres of a car going past.
I'm from New Zealand, there are Americans who have told me I sound like a non-native. I'm completely native I just speak a version of English that is so uncommon people don't even recognise it as English sometimes.
I am almost there with my American accent. I'll try to improve my accent deliberately soon, but right now my main goal is to improve my Japanese comprehension. Reaching a native or near native level in a foreign language is fun but I feel like the most enjoyable time period with a foreign language is when you slowly start to comprehend previously incomprehensible input.
I have the same experience. I could've done this with my English, but I switched to French instead because I found the process of starting to learn a new language really enjoyable. Then, when I reached a level in French in which most things were understandable, I just moved on to Japanese. I still practice them all and dedicate time and effort to them, but having a native accent is the least of my worries because, well, I am not a native so there's really no need in the short term.
Great video, I've seen several people who achieved native level in foreign languages, and I've never been suspected of being a Swede myself. It's important to want to improve your pronunciation too if you want to sound native. I think a lot of people are pretty much satisfied when they can communicate unhindered in their second/third/fourth language, getting from there to "absolute native pronunciation" takes a lot of effort for what could be seen as very little gain.
My wife grew up in the USA bilingual in English and Italian. She later became a French teacher, and when she speaks French, French people think she's French. We've visited France several times and I've witnessed this innumerable times. Eventually, someone French asks her where in France she's from and when she tells them she's American, they're astonished. However, when she's in Italy everybody knows she's American because she speaks Italian with an American accent. Why the difference? Because she worked really, really hard for years on her French accent and has never worked on her Italian accent.
A few things: 1. Great video production quality as always--I hope you know that the effort and skill you're putting into editing these videos doesn't go unappreciated! 2. Swedish accents in English are adorable 3. Australian English is definitely a challenge. I'm a yank and can do a pretty good imitation of English and Scottish accents, but Australian feels impossible. I've wondered in the past why that was, and your point about the very open vowel system makes sense. 4. Relating to point 2, sometimes mild accents in a language can be very charming, so that's something worth taking into consideration when deciding whether or not it's worth investing in a perfect accent. Good pronunciation is absolutely important and helps you connect better with natives, but not sounding identical to a native can have advantages too.
I juste wanted to say that Luca actually sounds like a native speaker in french and it's really impressive. At first I thought that he was french so I was confused about his nationality haha
Pareil, j'pense que je saurais pas dire qu'il est étranger, en tout cas pas pendant une courte conversation. De temps en temps je tilte sur des petits trucs, mais je sais pas si c'est juste un biais de ma part vu que je sais qu'il est étranger (genre si j'écoutais un enregistrement sans savoir que c'était lui qui parlait, est-ce que je tilterais pareil sur les mêmes trucs?). Un autre dans le genre bluffant en français c'est Akira Mizubayashi. Tellement bluffant que c'est limite déprimant lol ^^
@@bofbob1 Pour les moments où tu tiltes quelque chose j'ai eu exactement le même questionnement que toi ! Mais personnellement à la première écoute je n'avais rien remarqué, le fait que son accent soit aussi bon nous amène à penser qu'il est français donc dans ce cas là on ne se pose pas la question sur sa grammaire ou autres. Je pense que le fait que tu saches qu'il était italien a surement joué ! Honnêtement je ne comprends pas trop comment il peut dire que Luca ne sonne pas comme un français... Et merci pour la recommandation j'irai voir !
@@bofbob1 Il a une très bonne prononciation, mais il fait des erreurs que même un locuteur français natif qui n'a pas une grande connaissance de la langue ne ferait pas, mais en même temps ce n'est pas un problème. Personnellement j'ai un accent tellement prononcé dans ma langue maternelle qu'il faudrait d'abord que je l'efface avant de travailler une autre prononciation. Je me contente donc d'essayer d'avoir la bonne accentuation, et par exemple de prononcer un o 'o' et pas 'a'.
A logical and well argued piece Lamont. Having the désire and determination is as you say, a key factor in aquiring a native accent. That said, a slight or light accent is often charming! Thanks for all your videos.
I think motivation or cost/benefit plays a huge role in this. If I ever decide on living in a foreign country for a few years, I might deem it worthwhile perfecting my pronunciation, just for the heck of it. On the other hand, if I can already communicate everything I want to, or I'm only there for a bit, then why would I? Especially if the place is very accepting of foreigners and nobody cares that my accent sticks out. Heck, some might even appreciate my effort to learn their language and be interested in my background, but once I sound completely native, they won't even notice anymore. Not saying I need that, but anyways, except for my own satisfaction, what do I get for putting in the time and effort to hide my real origin, after I'm already able to communicate fluently?
But this is the “do I want to” topic, that, while is an interesting discussion, is not under discussion here. Meet you over in another video, my friend.
Thank you for mentioning talent. I happen to have some and managed to speak a foreign language I learned as an adult to a native level I actually got a bit tired of people assuming it was my native tongue. I also tried to sound less native, but it simply didn't work because my ears and tongue (and I guess eyes too) are like a sponge which absorb the language down to such details.
I‘m a native German and french speaker from Switzerland, and I remember my french teacher in high school was not a native speaker. He grew up in the German part of Switzerland and never even really came in contact with french before he started high school. Funnily enough he only told us (the class) about that two years into high school, and before that I would never have guessed that he isn‘t a native french speaker. Addition: I have yet to come across a non-native speaker of Swiss German that speaks like a native speaker. If the argument were true, that many Scandinavians speak good English because their language is so similar, surely you‘d think that native Germans could learn to speak Swiss German in an instance, but I know people who have lived here for over 30 years and don‘t even come close to sounding like native Swiss German speakers.
The equation is not the same : English = Swedish x 50 Swiss-German = German / 20 Those figures are vague estimates of population and langue gobal attractiveness. Lets be honest : no a lot of Germans fancy talking in Swiss-German (just like not many French fancy talking in French-Canadian). Native-English is a valued norm (a golden standard), native Swiss-German is not. Regarding your first point I have noticed that for Germans broadly speaking (including Swiss-Germans) picking-up a native French accent can be quite "natural" and easy (maybe a French native will perceive a hint of an accent).
@@jandron94 I think if you live in a country, speaking that countries native language is the ultimate goal (or the gold standard as you said it) for most people. And, I'm native in french, my Teacher had not the slightest hint of an accent.
I'm a native Arabic speaker who has made American friends online. My accent was so convincingly American that many refused to believe I am not American lmao.
3:55 dude i had no idea you were australian. i can tell the difference between someone from NYC and from Canada effortlessly but distinguishing australians from british people continuously baffles me.
We had a taxi driver in Honduras that spoke perfect English and he learned it completely of the tourists. For my own experience, I'm not that broad In vocabulary for Chinese but I'm so paranoid about accent that people think I'm better than I am at it. The positive thing is, a few times native speakers thanked me for bothering to use the tones because many learners don't and it's terrible sounding and makes the language awkward.
Not using the tones in Mandarin would almost be like skipping some vowels or consonants in English. They are part and parcel of the language, not an optional extra.
My mother and aunt came to the US as children from a Spanish speaking country (at 8 and 5 i think), and they both still have slight (but noticeable) accents. I'm sure it can be done, but i don't think most accomplish this
Interesting. I always thought children would naturally acquire it! I came to the US at 7 years old & accents always fascinated me! So I constantly practiced many. It was just a game as a child but now I’m researching more about this. I don’t have an foreign accent btw according to everyone :o
@@Aaa-fe7kc not if they grow up in an environment where most people speak English with a Hispanic accent - which happens a lot in the US. Had they been Swedes, they would probably have been accent free today. It is similar with the Arabs/Turks/etc in Europe.
What an interesting video! Thank you for talking about this, because there's definitely a lot of misinformation out there about whether or not it's possible.
You’re right that I wanted to discount her for being Scandinavian. Not because Swedish is close to English but because they get full on English immersion from a young age. But to completely change your speaking habits after all that time at age 28, I think I have to agree that she proves the impossible, possible. So how much talent and dedicated focused study is required now becomes the question. And do I have enough talent 😂 (I’m thinking not to get this good). It would be nice to know just what she did to achieve this. I’m guessing I could imitate what she did and not get the same results but still.
I respect people that wanna be as close as native as possible, but that is just not my goal. When learning a language what I want is to be 100% understood and not sound kinda odd to the point where it would be a distraction, other than that I'm happy having that "charming" foreigner accent.
It is possible but you have to actually try hard at it. Your accent doesn't automatically turn "native" after a certain amount of years. But if you practice and teach yourself, it's possible. Growing up I met lots of Polish people (mostly teens) who sounded completely native despite only having been in the country for a few years
Fascinating topic and video. Great channel. I am attempting something like this with Gaeilge. I am Irish but English is my first language. My great grandmother was a native Gaeilge speaker (there are about 60,000 native speakers left in the country). I have found a native speaker from the exact village she grew up in to help me (whatsapp calls, recordings, feedback etc) as well as listening to tonnes of content (radio shows, tv programs) from native speakers of that region and reading books on the phonology of that dialect. One of my main motivations is to pass on the language to my daughter (she is a newborn) as it is part of our heritage. I still have time to get to a high level and raise her through both English and Irish (I'm probably high B1 now). I feel that no matter what there will always be SOME tell tale signs that someone is a native speaker but with years of effort you can get to a really high standard that passes for native some or most of the time.
You really took on the topic in an educated and nuanced way. Great stuff! Klaudia is absolutely amazing, freaks me out listening to her. However, she does have an accent. I tried to trick my wife asking her to spot Klaudia’s Swedish dialect, and she could tell Klaudia is not native within 10 seconds. Klaudia is so good though, but there are just lots of very subtle tells.
Yes! I rarely see people talking about this but you did! What most people don’t realize is that languages may share the same alphabet, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the letters are exactly the same. Even if the letters sound similar, they are not the same. People don’t usually hear the difference, and not being able to hear that difference doesn’t allow you to pronounce things like a native. It’s not just about saying words, it requires physical abilities, different countries speak with different intonations, they flex different muscles when speaking, even if the letter is the same they might put their tongue in a slightly different position when saying it and people don’t realize that! You HAVE TO pay attention to how natives are saying it. How are they pronouncing that R? Are they rolling the R? Are they pronouncing it with the back of their mouth? or maybe their throat? Are those vowels supposed to be high pitched? And of course it requires a certain ability and a certain intelligence to be able to identify those details and perfectly reproduce those sounds, so of course it is totally okay to have an accent, but every time I get complimented by a native speaker and my friends ask me HOW? that’s what I always explain. I’ve sounded like a native english speaker all my life (with an american accent) even though I’ve only ever left my country once before. I still make A LOT of mistakes, of course, but natives still dont believe me when I say I’m a foreigner. People often tell me I have a great pronunciation in other languages too, but I’m not fluent in any of them. Anyway, that’s an important detail that people rarely talk about!! If you wanna sound like a native you have to focus on that.
It is not about sounding like a native; it is about the combination of sounding like a native and having indistinguishable grammar, prosody and diction such that natives think you are one of them; the sound part is just a small piece of the puzzle.
It's 100% possible lol, I don't understand the people who say it isn't. But I've got a friend of mine who speaks English as if he were a Brit. His accent is even a little Northern (I'm in Newcastle). Yeah, it may slip once in a blue moon - I've only heard that type of slip once when we were talking - but you wouldn't be able to tell he was Polish. Also, I should add, he came here when he was 19 and has lived here for 7 years.
It doesn't surprise me that he's Polish. Something about those guys is NEXT level when it comes to LL. Basically all the best second-language Swedish speakers I've come across are Polish.
its about exposure and whatever accent you learn. in germany we have to learn oxford english in school from german teachers (german natives i mean to say) and most of the english media we consume is american. you can already guess that this will mix up our pronounciation and accents a lot. i dont even know how i would consider my accent to be honest and it honestly changes over time if i speak it a lot. perhaps i start off sounding more german because it is my main language, but then i will shift in whatever direction i am interacting with... if its a brit it will be more british if its an american more american. is it native sounding, i dont think so. but english is a difficult language to choose, just because there are so many types of english and it depends on what you are exposed most to.
I'd say it's certainly possible. The problem is diminishing returns. It could take thousands more hours of additional study to go from 'very advanced' to 'native like' proficiency. For most this trade-off isn't worth it - you could get solidly proficient in a brand new language in that time, which in my opinion is time better spent. But it all depends on what your goals are.
I believe talent does play a big role when you combine time and effort. When I was studying Russian in university, after 3 years of Russian, I had a history course taught by a professor whom was originally from the Ex-USSR. I went to their office hours to introduce myself. I introduced myself in Russian and the professor proceeded to ask if I was from Russia/ am Russian. I said no, and that my native language is English. She was so shocked!
Yeah, I was among those who confuse "practice" and "deliberate practice". The former can go into automatic mode and pushes fewer boundaries than the latter. It took lots of background listening that wasn't very useful to realize that. I have met many people from countries like Germany, Vietnam and Brazil who sound like native English speakers.
I love to do impressions of other English accents for fun (Scottish, New Zealand, South African, etc) because at parties and family outings, my friends and relatives crack up and tell me how good my accents are. Does this carry over to language learning? I believe it does. I think that because I have a knack for doing accents, I've picked up on the pronunciation of Spanish and Finnish pretty well. Teachers in both languages have complimented me on it. Moulding your mouth, imitating the sounds and getting the "vibe" of the language comes easier to some than others. But believe me, I'm not talented or advanced in my languages yet. Vocabulary and fluency-wise in learning these languages, I still have a lot to work on. So where my strong-suit is pronunciation, my weaker areas are vocab, fluency and overall comprehension. I don't know how close to native I will be, but I believe that if you start learning a new language, if you're already good at doing accents/impressions, I think that you'll have an edge/advantage to your target language's pronunciation.
There was this american guy that had learned Argentinian Spanish as an adult and he spoke PERFECTLY, like, not a single mistake, completely native-like accent
Yes if you spend enough time hearing, listening, and speaking that language. It just means that you have achieved an even greater mastery of that language.
As a swede who spent way to much time on the internet. I struggle way more with my native language than i do with english. But thats mostly because the only time i speak swedish is with my parents. Otherwise with my friends, siblings and with strangers i speak english because it is the language i am the most comfortable with, and no one really gives a crap if you cant speak swedish here in sweden because practically everyone knows english anyway. This has the wonderful side effect of confusing the heck out of people when i speak swedish because my accent is native but i cant remember basic words and i constantly make gramatical errors.
I haven’t finished the video so what i’m saying might be said in the video as well 😂 but! I started immersing myself in the english language when I was 11. I watched tv shows and movies, english speaking youtubers and only listened to english music. I’m now 17 and I pretty much sound like a californian white girl 😂😂 my accents pops up for some words that have a lot of r’s and l’s like the word “regularly” because the Dutch r is different from the English r, but I absolutely think it’s possible to sound like a native speaker.
Some people have an accent and others don't. It depends on how much work you want to do to perfect your accent. Just because some people can't doesn't mean it's impossible for everybody.
Exactly! And some people are more prone to mimic than others! My friend changed her accent almost IMMEDIATELY after either moving to a place where they spoke differently or getting a new boyfriend with an accent. While I on the other hand have a hard time doing something like that, because I don't do it naturally.
I speak 4 languages but cannot for the life of me get rid of my swedish accent. I'm just gonna rock it, it doesn't really matter to me as long as im understood, and frankly I like the sound of it more this way.
I was told my first German teacher was a native German speaker. When I rang her on the phone to arrange a lesson, I was so disappointed. I thought , she must have been born in Germany (ie the agency wasn't lying) but she obviously had moved to England when she was 2 or 3 or something. But she had moved to England when she was 18.
i come across a lot of foreign german teachers who got a C1/C2 certificate but still cant really interact in the language. that really shocked me actually!! im a german native and occasionally help people learning for their language certificates and im constantly trying to unlearn them the wrong pronounciations they learn in their schools....
@Jackson’s Account nothing about dialects or accents. also i speak high german. the most general and basic you can get. for the teachers, it starts with basic grammatical structure already, pronounciation is just another thing i disliked. i mean it is normal to be better in one area than the other (reading, writing, listening, speaking) but to be that bad at speaking with C1 for what i experienced...... cant imagine that haha
my father came to sweden when he was 21, before i was born, he learned to speak the language in like 2 years, but even now 30 years later, he still has a thick balkan-accent. I think i am a native speaker, like i can tell dialects apart and such, but people say me and my sibling still has traces of my fathers accent in our speech, but i think its due to us hanging around him and mimicing his and others speech
My cousin is German and didn't come to England until she was 30. She is a bit of a dosser who sat and watched TV all day. She is genuinely indistinguishable from a native English speaker - however she absolutely despises Germany and actually tells people she's English. She refuses to speak German with anyone. She won't even acknowledge that she is German. That probably had some part to play in her perfecting her accent. Ironically the other person i've seen was a random on youtube around 5 years ago who was also German and was absolutely indistinguishable from a native English speaker from the south of UK. Usually something even very tiny gives them away, but not this girl. It was immaculate. Wish i could remember who it was.
An actor being able to do native accents doesn't make it any less possible for a non-actor. Everyone IS capable of doing it, it simply depends on your motivation, whether you want to do it or not and if you keep at it.
@@daysandwords Ah, I see, I see. Judging from what I've watched of Dogen (which is quite a lot), I think he'd say he's pretty good at Japanese but he doesn't sound native. That being said, I remember an interview he had with a native speaker (can't remember the guy's name), but he basically said that Dogen could be mistaken for a native. But it's just as you said with the point of unreasonable doubt, it would be really hard to notice and even so, determine if they were non-native speakers already. Although, haha, to me, he sounds native but my Japanese skill is so far behind even conversational that it's a lot harder for me to pick out who's a really good speaker of Japanese versus someone who's not quite as good.
tbh while speaking casually, I keep making weird mistakes in my first language too, so I don't think weird grammar is automatically a giveaway for being a non native speaker. Though somewhere along the way I messed up with learning German (my first language), because often people seem to think it's my second language when they talk to me, but that's probably the reason I became interested in language learning. So I guess it's also a good thing, when people continuously ask you what your first language is, while you are not fluent in any other language than the one you're talking at this moment.
YES It's possible! You'll have to work for it, you need discipline, time, patience and a list of key techniques, both muscular/mechanical as well as psychological. It's definitely possible.
I'm a firm believer that it can be done, just not by anyone and it does require a lot of effort and linguistics knowledge. I sound pretty close to an American, but I do slip up, especially because nowadays I don't care what I sound like as long as I'm clear. If I really put in the effort, I think I could convincingly sound American even after speaking for a while.
yeah yeah you can absolutely sound like a native, the problem is to adopt their cultural history, which doesn't just change how your language sounds but it affects your speech pattern, choices or words.
I actually think that it can sometimes be more difficult to learn a language close to your own. But it certainly has a lot to do with musicality and willingness to step outside your vocal boundaries
Excellent video. To reach like 80% native, is very doable for most, with time and much effort mimicking. Reaching like 97% native is doable but will usually require some form of tutoring. To reach 97% without a tutor will require a high degree of talent and is very rare. I guess 100% is doable, but will almost always require a skilled coach, talent, and a lot of work.
To any swede that says that no foreigner can sound like a native speaker I would like to suggest you listen to Cornelis Vreeswijk. He was born in the Netherlands and he speaks the most beautiful and "correct" Swedish I've ever heard.
I find it interesting on the point of unreasonable doubt, because honestly anytime I listen to felix, despite his grammar mistakes that upon further inspection can actually be kind of confusing, his pronunciation is so close to being native (even though when I analyze it it's fairly obviously non-native despite being very close) I don't even think about the grammar mistakes, he just kind of sounds like a native english speaker with a different dialect, but I wonder if that's a product of the fact that I also watched him a lot when I was younger, so I became used to the specific mistakes he makes, and perhaps to his pronunciation as well
I would say it is, yeah. Because whenever I listen to him he sounds Swedish or Danish. When I first came across him, I spoke no word of Swedish, and someone just told me about him because my son is called Felix, and I watched him and just assumed he was German and then when I found out he was Swedish I was like "Ok same thing..." (in Australia, everywhere in Western Europe is either England, Germany, or France... if it's not one of those then it's considered basically one of those, e.g. Ireland, Sweden, or Spain are just England but with leprechauns, Germany but with Ikea, and France but with Real Madrid...)
@@daysandwords ahh yeah that's something I've noticed as well, for me it seems like as long as a non-native speaker doesn't use a sound that's distinctly from a certain country where it's common for people to learn english like the common retroflex D in india for example, I have almost no chance telling where they're from, but I can almost without fail identify the subtlest korean accent miles away, and same with kiwis because I used to have a lot of friends from there but that's also pretty much europe to the US 😂 I could name and identify every state but only quite recently I learned that britain, the uk, the british isles, and england are different things (I'd thought they were all different weird names for england), that scotland and england (and wales) are on the same island, and most strangely that the european countries are near each other we learned the countries in school I'm pretty sure but it's always kind of been segmented in my mind into different, very distant regions by language, like "english," "nordic" (this includes finland), "romantic or germanic" (this includes greece as it's basically italy), and "slavic" (this includes hungary, turkey, basically all of the countries east of germany and italy, and especially anything that ends with "a" or "ia"), notable exceptions are that montenegro and moldova are basically spain, idk where that one comes from what a world I lived in 😂
Great video! I've certainly met people who've fooled me into believing that they're native english after talking for maybe 15 minutes, but in my experience something subtle usually gives them away after spending a larger amount of time with them. I can think of someone I've met who comes close to the "point of unreasonable doubt", but it's hard for me to judge, because I learned this person was non-native after only having ~15 min or so of interaction (I thought they were native based on this), so I started to know what to listen for. Nonetheless, I think prior to watching this, my views would have been closer to Steve's, now they're a bit closer to yours. After all, if someone like the person I met can get really close to the POUD then why couldn't they, with some more effort, eventually reach it?
I'm pretty sure I have reliable method for anyone to acquire a native accent. The problem is that it requires niche technology. To learn anything we can simply apply Kahneman's 3 requirements: 1. Repetition 2. Feedback 3. Reliable environment So what we need is a tool that can in real time check tongue position, mouth shape, vocal cord pitch etc... And then we need to visually present this (with one or multiple graphs, or a 3d model of the parts being mimicked). Then we need native material recorded in this format that users can compare with. With such a tool, practise would be optimized without relying on talent in sound perception and or general mimicking intuition.
I can't remember who it was, mattvsjapan or maybe Steve Kaufmann. He said something in the lines of if pronunciation and accent is important you will be able to master it. But most never have the goal of speaking a language to that level. Most of the Swedish or Norwegians (I am Norwegian) just want to talk and be fine while speaking English. The end goal is not to sound native like. I do want to sound native like so I have made a big effort to reach that goal. keep up the good work with videos btw !
@@daysandwords yeah i think so too. I am learning spanish now with MIA style and it is going great. I will strive for a very good accent and i am 100% sure i can do it. just diminishing returns so i guess that's why most never bother.
100% agree, I speak 5 languages fluently, a couple intermediate, and the reason I don't sound native in some languages is precisely the same reason as Lucca , which is that dedicating time to several languages hasn't allowed me to focus on one particular to it's perfection. On the other hand and at the same time, knowing several languages opens your mind, ears and gives you experience on how to reach higher levels in the other languages. Also, although languages are my passion, I am far from disciplined (my bad, but always good to be aware of it and know that it's my responsibility and not that "it's not possible") and don't spend the time I wish I would spend practicing languages, and besides, unlike Lucca, I have worked in different fields and was never fully dedicated to learning languages. I wish I could dedicate myself solely to languages. It's important to be organized. I have a book on how to learn languages which is "on ice" since a few months back because of other occupations, but I hope to finish it this year (it's almost done actually).
I am a scot, i speak a few languages a little. i have lived in Norway for over a decade. i am a mental health professional, so talking to folks is the most important part of my job. i have become completely fluent in the language. i can even produce a variety of regional accents. But my scottish accent could only disappear by changing how i speak to such an extent that folks would not trust me the same so I will keep my accent which my wife thinks is charming. some things though are very difficult swearing like a native Finnmarking even wioth the perfect accent is so difficult
Honestly, I'm just gonna strive to get as close as possible and not worry too much about getting there. The fact is, my TL is (Taiwanese) Mandarin and so as a white person I'm gonna stick out like a sore thumb anyway. I'm more interested in reaching a native-like comprehension and thinking ability honestly, I want to think how a native thinks and understand what a native understands, I care less about accent and stuff.
Why would I be the former? Also, if anything, my accent is further from Kiwi than the standard Aussie. But why would a Kiwi be trying to sound not-Kiwi anyway?
@@daysandwords There is something about many New Zealanders who have spent a length of time living in Australia at least whom I have met. They generally seem to have very clear and crisp enunciation/diction. It is some of the vowel sounds that distinguish them from educated Australians. I was waiting for the NZ vowel sounds that never came. Why a kiwi would want to hide the eccint? "Maybay they toe heve some cultural crunge."
I know this to be possible. In addition to the factors you covered, it certainly helped Emily that she 1. Grew up in arguably the most americanized non-englishspeaking country in the world. We Swedes hear almost as much American English as we hear Swedish on a daily basis. 2. She lives in LA, surrounded by American English in her daily life. She’s married to an American. Generally actors are bad examples because learning to speak lines from an existing script in a convincing way, aided by a dialect coach, is far easier than constructing your own sentences on the fly. But you’ve pointed out that Emily ad-libbed a lot of her lines in this film, to which I can only give kudos. She is talented, has the aforementioned advantages, and probably passes for a native American in her daily life.
I think some of us Norwegians have a bit of an upper hand as well, because we have two different writing languages and have to learn english and one more language, and have to learn a bit of swedish, danish and iclandic in school, and we have very many different dialects in our language that sound pretty different. Often when we are young, and grown up too, we try to sound as close to either a dialect or language as someone speaks, just for fun. We are also very proud of our dielect, and sometimes when we greet a new one, instead of telling where we are from we will guess where the other one are from with lisning to how they speak, and will ask about the dialect. Also on tv me and my family will sometimes guess where one of the reporters are from.
About Claudia, she does have the melody down but you would over a longer conversation or two notice she is not native even if it is subtle - still incredible ofc! I agree with believers, even though it is a very small and specific subset of people who can manage it (native level) and not something anyone can do even if they had all the time in the world.
But I doubt anyone who says they could know that Klaudia was non-native rather than just some weird thing in her upbringing, especially since her name is Klaudia and she is fair skinned and blonde(ish). If they have decided she's non-native then something else is coming into that, on top of the little differences and quirks of speech. I have had Australians ask me where I am from. Is it because I don't sound like a native Australian English speaker, or because my name's Lamont, or because they have just not been exposed to enough Australian accents? Basically, once you know, any chance of a fair assessment goes out the window.
I agree, and wrote about that in another reply. Tou definitely change things when you have the information beforehand. Although I still stand by my assessment that I would atleast have a feeling that she was not born/raised here. Mostly because her tiny dialect/accent sounds slavic in nature. But like you said, it is hard to truly know because I already had the information. I have a colleague that was raised in France with a swedish mother but had not used swedish regularly or lived in Sweden before starting to work here. In his case you could not tell apart from him not being aware of "sayings/expressions" that you would not pick up if you didnt live here. He also has a tiny dialect but that is more like you said something that could come from a other part of sweden.
I once met a guy in Germany who I assumed was a native speaker. When he asked me if my nick name was my full first name, I thought he was just dumb, not expecting him to be American where my nick name is also a real first name 😂😅
I found a method I picked up one actor his name is Joey from Friends and everyday (I need to point this out EVERYDAY) I'm trying to mimic his way of speaking couple times and record this. I think that's a good way to improve my accent.
I also believe that it can be done, because I have personally met a person who had removed their local accent (Italian) within 5 years of arriving in America. Like you said, I've probably spoken with more people who have done this and just not been aware that they are a foreigner. That being said, I still think that using actors is not good proof of concept IF the actor can only remove their accent for a couple of rehearsed lines in a movie.
Thanks for sharing your example! About actors: the problem with that theory is that Emily Baldoni is frequently in TH-cam videos with her husband, just reacting to things normally, and thousands of people never ever realise that she's not American. Also, the lines in this movie weren't rehearsed. Each actor just had an objective for the scene and had to pursue that in whatever way made sense, and then the director and editor spent like 6 months putting together all the footage to make a... well, "coherent" story.
I think the TH-camr "Ready to Glare" is a great example of someone who has reached the native level. One would totally think she was American if she didn't mention being Italian!
@@thesmokecriminal5395 I'm not sure if she has, but she speaks multiple languages and has lived and studied in the USA for years so I suppose it's largely just extended exposure?
I know it can be done, not because I've done it but because I know especially one woman, who's German, and speaks Swedish at a native level. Germans are SUPER EASY to spot with the help of their accents. She might say one word in a whole evening with the wrong stress but if it's rare enough she might just have read it and never heard it pronounced (I don't pronounce all Swedish words properly either, because some words are just rare) and if it's a not so rare word, well it might startle you but you still would be 98% sure she's Swedish.
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It has one now.
Here is a guy saying it can be done because he's heard it done in his native language and it wasn't HE who has done it (always a dubious claim).
Also check out his channel!
@@daysandwords i watched your Steven Kaufman interview and you mentioned that thing about wanting your pronunciation be one dialect, for myself I'm gonna model my speach after certain people by buying transcripts off of Fiverr for example so when speaking German for example I have Till Lindemann, and Russian is not as diverse but the singer in shortparis sounds good and English I have tom hardy in peaky blinders, have you thought about this on modeling after certain people and like crafting your own audio and video studying material?
A couple of example to add to the list would be Alexander Skarsgård (And his brother as well i think, acting as the clown in 'IT').
And Malin Åkerman (although she did spend time in Canada in her youth).
Not to brag (or perhaps seem weird), but whilst living in Spain for a few years I was staying at alot of hostels before i found a room/flat to rent. While doing so i obviously came across loads of travelers and different people from all over the world. At one hostel there were a couple of American back-packers. Just to see if i had what it took i decided to introduce myself as an American! (I'm Swedish and have never been in the US/Canada) They instantly believed me and started asking about me, where i came from etc. Stupidly I said Detroit, Michigan just before i realized I never really mastered 'east-coast' dialect. They both said they thought I was Canadian (haha) so i had to make up a Quick story about growing up in Canada before moving to Detroit at 14. Anyway, we had a couple of drinks and I said good bye, before it all got too weird.
Sorry for the long story but I had to share it, being so relevant. Anyway I love your content! God bless!
I can give you several examples that many seem to forget are Swedish
Joel Kinnaman, Rebecca Ferguson, Alicia Vikander and the Skarsgård family (only a few Swedes who played roles where they should be English-speaking)
then in sweden we do not dubb programs so we learn by hearing english from when we were little but so do the rest of the nordic countries and the netherlands and that may be why we are relatively good at english. One thing that makes some people notice is that they confuse the word order that easily becomes when you think the sentence in a language and then translate it sounds grammatically wrong but many Swedes are used to some not knowing the language so well and it is possible to understand so many say nothing even
@@jadu79 Joel Kinnaman do have an American father though, otherwise i would've added him too.
"Nobody can sound like a native speaker."
"Here's someone who did it."
"Yeah, but they're an actor"
"Nobody can run a mile in under 4 minutes."
"Here's someone who did it."
"Yeah, but they're an athlete."
EXACTLY! Thank you.
Also: "No one can learn a foreign language like a native."
"Here's a non-actor who did."
"Yeah but they are Swedish."
"Ok so, is Swedish not a foreign language?"
"It is but it has similarities with English."
"So... That makes it not foreign?"
Gluhfunke - yes but the people saying "they are actors" are often responding to a clip you show them of like an interview of something. They are basically ignoring the evidence that disproves their argument.
Emily Baldoni, for example, was most definitely not doing this just for the camera because this film didn't actually have a script with lines, so there'd be no way of doing it just for the camera unless you really could do that sans script, plus I follow her on instagram and in her stories and stuff she sounds completely American. Granted, she has now lived there are like 12 years.
It is a valid point though. Actors are not average people and have access to highly specialises dialect coaches and languages teachers that only those with money can afford. This video should be "Can the average person acquire a native accent?
@@edwards2728 Prove it
Coherence was made on a budget of $50,000 and most of that was spent on the editor, and it is Emily Baldoni's only major role. I GUARANTEE you that she did not use a dialoque coach - and additionally, the film had no proper script - so she was adlibbing most of the time.
It is not a valid point, nor is your telling me what this video should and shouldn't be. You're free to upload your own video.
OMG FINALLY!! Thank you for making this video! I HATE when people discussing language learning say a non-native can never sound native. Its simply a flat out lie, I am a native English speaker and on several occassions I have met people who I presumed were also native, later to find out infact that they weren't. The argument that non-native speakers may make mistakes with certain things is also a huge oversight; NATIVE speakers of any language also make mistakes and slip ups from time to time, we all do it. How can you tell me someone will never sound native when Ive been fooled several times into thinking someone was? I think the reason people say its impossible is because they don't think it should be a focus when learning a language, which is a fair point in its own right, you don't NEED to sound native to be fluent and get by, but saying its IMPOSSIBLE is a flat out lie.
2 Cor 4:4, repent. Heil GOD 88
the age of 20, I lived in Denmark for about 1 year. In the beginning, everyone heard that I was Swedish, but after less than half a year, they thought I came from a special Danish province. Yes, I am Swedish, but our languages differ enormously in pronunciation.
My condolences for having to learn danish....haha
@@andershall6774 Anders it was a pleasure and quite easy. Danish girls wow .... well it was many years ago now I am a very mature man.
One potato away...
@Hartwig Flögh Så var det. För länge sedan. I dag förstår jag all danska men pratar inte lika flytande gör mig dock väl förstådd.
Unless you're from Skåne. Then the pronunciation is essentially the same! ^^
It's possible, but not everyone will put the necessary effort. Because, man, it's hard work!
And it's not possible for all people. You have to be musical enough.
@@herrbonk3635 musical??
@@papasscooperiaworker3649 Yes, to hear and copy the characteristic melody, rhythm and emphasis (prosody, cadence) of all words and phrases in a language. And also the right tonal qualities of vowels (and consonants) as well as all their combinations. That's what makes it sound native.
@Herr Bönk possible if you practice and learn to be musical
@@dwarfyman4899 Learn a talent? Didn't know that was possible...
I've had experiences of both. A landlord was Norwegian, and he was so proud of it that he had the flag everywhere. Otherwise, you would never guess. I also grew up with a lot of third and fourth generation Russians who had a detectable accent. As with everything, it depends on a person's motivation and time.
My great great uncle came to the US at 14, and 80 years later he still had an accent
My maternal grandpa isn't a native and after about 50y he still wouldn't pass an A1 test.
in 6th grade this british kid moved to my school and by 9th grade his accent was almost all gone.
And? Who cares? That doesn't negate the fact that some people sound like a native...
Yeah well my sister lived in Iceland for 8 years and she got by on 12 words
Chinese? 😂
I completely agree with your 3 points. It was definitely the case for me when I was an exchange student in Germany at 18 years old. I knew no German to start with and I had a GOAL that when I met people at the end of the 10 months, that they wouldn’t know if I was German or not, aka me having a native-like accent. So I had a motivating goal/will, but on top of that, physically living in the country definitely gives an extra push or NEED for the language that pushed me more than if I was learning it for fun, I had lots of exposure to the language everyday by living in Germany and then I would also say that I have a strong interest & ability to do accents more than the average person. So will, time & talent definitely resulted me in reaching my goal by the end of the 10 months. My German wasn’t perfect & still isn’t, especially since I don’t live there anymore, but a German is more likely to figure out I’m a foreigner from a grammar mistake than a foreign accent. Everyone’s goals in language learning are different, whether you are learning in order to understand your favorite book or TV show in the original language, or to be able to be to talk to people in the language without problem, or to be able to talk without an accent, or all of the above. But I know because I focused on having a good accent, that created results. It is definitely possible, but like you said, very difficult to achieve. I had the privileges of the right circumstances to have the accent in German that I have.
I can relate to this a lot, I was in Spain as an exchange student and by the end people really took a while talking to me to ask where I was from/being surprised I was German 🥰 it’s such a great feeling 🤍 and I’m trying to repeat getting to that level in Arabic hahaha I’ll need luck haha
Thanks for your comment Ina! Not sure why I hadn't hearted it already!
what did you do to sound German?
@@thesmokecriminal5395 yes i want to know too
I have seen this with English from many foreign friends in college. I would argue it is possible in more than one language (as adult), though extremely rare. Next video should be about the deliberate practice of this (which very few actually do). Speaking is about accent & pronunciation, vocab & idioms, and fluency and expression, not just accent. My 2 cents: Shadowing everyday, Reading (Extensive & Intensive), Flash Cards (then reading again to soak it in), and spaced repetition speaking. I have a theory on this that you master speaking by topics if you keep returning to the basics before moving on. I feel like online you spend one or 2 sessions on a topic before moving on. It never gets mastered... anyway, love the topic!
Or just work with a accent trainer
There was a Slovenian actress whose name I don't currently remember, who moved to Italy when she was in her twenties and she used to be dubbed over when acting in Italian, but now sounds 100% like a native Italian speaker.
I assume all it would take is learning the accent. It wouldn't be different from an actor learning a different accent. If you learn a language, you could just work with an accent coach
Barbora Bobulova ?
As a Turkish speaker from Turkey i went to the US for the first time for working there and most of them thought i was american! I always tried fixing up my accent and my pronounciation but never realized native speakers wouldn’t point me out as a foreigner. I believe it really depends on the person. If one really focuses on its accent, eventually it’s possible for that person to sound entirely native.
How old were you when u came to the states
@@thesmokecriminal5395 the question should probably be "who old were you when you first got exposed to large amounts of English?" because I've never stepped foot in the US but I speak it with a pretty much native accent (as far as I can tell), and it's because of American TV shows and TH-cam growing up.
@@booknerdjebbi5037 how were you when u got exposed to...?
coincidently, there's a twitch streamer named hasanabi who grew up in turkey and he has a completely native sounding american accent. he permanently moved to america when he was 18
This video is spot on. I'd point out one more reason that native(-like) accents are so rare: Most learning resources do not stress pronunciation.
When phonetic training is integrated into language learning -- at the start and then continually reinforced -- the results are much better. If this were standard, we'd shift the entire distribution.
Lamont, I absolutely loved this video. A topic that definitely needed to be explored and you did it superbly. This could very well be your best video. One of the best language videos I have ever seen. Keep up the excellent work.
Thanks!
Thanks for this- my favourite video of yours too. :-)
I absolutely agree. I've always disliked the common notion (even among linguists) that adults couldn't learn a native-like pronunciation and I have often argued against it. First of all, there are examples of people who did it which automatically disproves the "it can't be done" claim. The naysayers also never really dissect the language learning process and methods used to understand why native-like pronunciation is so rare among foreign language learners. When you analyze the usual language learning process with time and effort spend on the different subcategories of language, you will see that there is a huge disparity between time spent on pronunciation and the other aspects of language. Usually, people spend a bit of time on pronunciation at the very beginning of their learning process until the point their pronunciation is "good enough" to be understood and that's it. They rarely spend much more time later on while they will spend years on grammar and a lifetime on vocabulary (i.e. by checking unknown words in the dictionary). How do people expect their pronunciation to significantly improve¿
Rich Brian, Dogen, NIKI are just a few example of ordinary people that I can think of that can master their 2nd language to the native level before going popular. I also know some foreign people that can absolutely speak Indonesian without any foreign accent (some of them even speak in local accents), and when I tried to spot their mistakes it turns out they only make mistakes that we natives do too, and sometimes speak even better than some of us. So the only thing that is limiting oneself to do things like that is his own mindset. If you work hard and smart enough, that's absolutely not impossible
Well rich brian mispronounces words every now and then and his grammar is kinda meh, Niki on the contrary sounds much better. Joji also learned English as a second language.
Great video! Yeah I'm also a Swede and I could only hear a very minor hint of some Slavic accent in Claudia's Swedish.
But her Swedish is so amazing that it almost feels ridiculous to bring it up, since there were only a couple times I could hear something being slightly off ... in a 50 minute interview :D
And you are absolutely right about Scandinavians not being some omniscient Gods when it comes to English.. I myself speak English with a very thick Swedish accent because I have never made any good attempts to improve my English accent.
Cheers!
The litmus test should be: if you hadn't KNOWN she was Polish before you heard her speak, would any of these 'faults' that you think you detected have raised any suspicions about her being non-native? (Also, would that "very minor bit of some slavic" have TRULY sounded 'slavic' to you if you hadn't already been told she was Polish?) I'm a bit of a contrarian by nature, and I listened to an interview with that Swedish actress Emily something that Lamont referred to, and I was trying very, very hard (I promise) to catch her out on something, and a couple of times I thought I did, but when I applied this litmus test, I could only conclude that, nope, I would have had ZERO reason to doubt that I was listening to a native speaker. In your case, perhaps your answer might still be yes even after the litmus test, and that's fine - I'm not trying to tell you what to think.
The video quality and editing is really fire tbh
Thank you 😄 I actually rushed this one because I generally spend too much time on them. So it's good to know I can rush and still do it well.
Really insightful & great examples! I get why people stress over having accents, especially if they're discriminated against or particularly difficult to understand. I always strive to hone my accent at the beginning of learning a language so I don't have to unlearn anything later. People never expect people from the US to speak any other language let alone have a good accent, so it's always a nice surprise when they see I've put in the effort. I get lots of comments from Brazilians that I have a good accent in portuguese, and I hope it's not just flattery. I think it's definitely attainable
Excellent video. You're exactly right that it's very hard to talk about a native-level accent without people getting emotional, defensive or critical. People never criticize someone learning more words or learning esoteric grammar, but very often working on one's accent is.
Considering there have been soviet spies who had to learn English to a native level of accent, it seems obvious that a motivated person could do it.
although practically perfect, there was some tiny part of her speech that still gave it away, maybe some nuance in the amount of force she used when speaking or something. would probably never realize if i wasn't actively listening for it though.
It's absolutely possible. My mum learned swiss German in her 20's after getting married to my dad and now speaks accentfree. And it is worth it because the sad truth is, she faced more discrimination before she mastered the language to this degree because in Europe it's mainly important how well you are integrated in compre to what skin color you have in terms of discrimination. Not saying racism doesn't exist but as a rule of thumb, people are more acceptive of those who put in the effort to learn the local languages.
How did she do it?
THANK YOU for making this video. Particularly as someone who just learns languages for fun and selects them almost exclusively because I like the way they sound, I've always striven to speak as much like a native as possible (I mean, if I wanted to sound like a foreigner I would simply just speak English?), so whether it was possible or not never came into question because it would've invalidated my reason for wanting to be able to speak German in the first place. Well... it "only" took like four years to get to that point, but that was long before I got diagnosed with autism and realised my ability to mimic accents is in part thanks to neurological predisposition.
I think the fact that so many English learners in particular struggle to attain a native sounding accent has a lot to do with the fact that they don't get consistent exposure to a single type of accent for the overwhelming majority of the time they spend learning, as they end up mixing (chiefly) British and American dialects together in an clumsy sounding mishmash, but of course this goes for any pluricentric language with wildly differing varieties (and heck, even natives have problems with this from time to time).
11:32 this point here is very relatable. People say I have a knack for accents in different languages, and I myself am someone who loves to spend time learning languages. However, my experience is that I would learn for a month or two, but then would burn out, give up and start the next language. So I would always never get past the beginner stage. In college I was learning Hebrew first semester. At the same time, I was also learning the Telugu language, which I started learning a month after learning Hebrew. It came to the point where it was so hard learning the both of them, so I decided to drop Hebrew so that I could focus on just Telugu. My entire life I always felt like I was switching between things, becoming super passionate for a thing and then dropping it cold the next day. It made me feel like I wasnt able to accomplish anything, even basic commitments like doing homework or showing up on time. Which made me feel bad because I felt like I would let people down all the time that I was so bad with commitment, which is a virtue. I thought to myself, "Hey, what if I decided to stick to Telugu for four years?" Four years was the perfect time since Im a college freshman. And I decided, I would REALLY COMMIT to this for the next four years. Its a promise I made to myself, because I felt like I could go so far if I simply committed to something instead of dropping it, like I do with so many things my entire life. And so far I have not regretted this. The reason I was able to commit to this language was because of powerful personal experiences that I had with people of this langauge. I think its most beneficial to focus on one language at a time and get to a high level-- at least, thats my goal anyway. but Because my time is split between being a content creator for the language, as well as creating language learning resources for Telugu, I dont have much time to learn the actual language itself so the progress is slow. but all of this is definitely rewarding!
I'm Swedish, but my father was Norwegian. I talk exactly like the people from the place he grew up, Hardanger, so I speak 'haring', which is a dialect of Norwegian that is a bit difficult to understand for some people. I have never had anyone ask if I wasn't Norwegian whenever I was in Norway, unless I was speaking Swedish first. I'm also really good at copying pronounciation, so I have always been told by my teachers in French , English or Japanese that I have really good pronunciation, and that I sound like I'm a native. (I usually speak British English, but I have been falling into US English a bit more, and it irks me. :P We're taught British English and spelling here, so it goes against what I've been taught to sound like an 'american'. )
I have't spoken French or Japanese for a few years, and I guess that my pronunciation and intonation might be a bit worse now, but I'm currently learning Thai, and my goal, however long it might take, is to sound as native as I can. The key is to speak as much as you can, and not just speaking. I actively try to copy everything in the clips I hear, from intonation, to melody, to pitch and to which syllable is stressed more. Is it a glottal stop, or an aspirated consonant? Analysing the language as you learn, makes it easier to understand it, and it helps you to sound more native. I've gotten a few compliments that my pronunciation is really good for a 'farang', but I want to get to the point where it's simply 'really good', without the addition of me being a 'farang'. :P
Lol. You can't fight the American accent, bro. Plus, you will be understood better around the world.
@@GUITARTIME2024 I beg to differ. It really depends on your accent if you're understood or not, no matter if you're speaking British English, or not. I can name several US accents that a lot of people simply won't understand because of how they pronounce the words.
@@joannawentworth9519 obviously I mean a "standard" non-regional American accent, which is pretty common.
Dude your channel is seriously so underrated. I wish I had known about Emily Baldoni before I said "PEWDS" on the community post lol. I totally see what you mean now about "charisma vs actually sounding native". That little clip of him really put it in perspective for me.
Thank you! And honestly I find it nice that we can have a discussion about it and not just try to be "right" - I was actually pretty harsh when you said Pewds but you kept being respectful and everything - so my Sox hat comes off to you. 😄
@@daysandwords I didn't think you were being harsh lol. Just honest and explaining in a clear way why you feel that Pewds isn't a good example for non-natives sounding native! Plus its always cool when TH-camrs interact with their community in a meaningful and insightful way lol
I was able to pick her out - and I found it very hard to believe that she were Italian, as you implied. It sounded like she had a Germanic background.
@@peterfireflylund But you had FOUR people to choose from and she got the most screen time. Plus she looks European. It becomes obvious just from context.
I have shown that movie to numerous people (because I love it), and have asked them afterwards and pretty much everyone says a different one of the 8 characters, including Americans.
Anyone claiming they can "hear" her accent without any other clues, I believe is either projecting it or they can also hear the difference between the back and front tyres of a car going past.
I'm from New Zealand, there are Americans who have told me I sound like a non-native. I'm completely native I just speak a version of English that is so uncommon people don't even recognise it as English sometimes.
Of course it’s Americans saying that…
I am almost there with my American accent. I'll try to improve my accent deliberately soon, but right now my main goal is to improve my Japanese comprehension. Reaching a native or near native level in a foreign language is fun but I feel like the most enjoyable time period with a foreign language is when you slowly start to comprehend previously incomprehensible input.
@Jackson’s Account I am from Germany and my native language is (unsurprisingly) German
I have the same experience. I could've done this with my English, but I switched to French instead because I found the process of starting to learn a new language really enjoyable. Then, when I reached a level in French in which most things were understandable, I just moved on to Japanese. I still practice them all and dedicate time and effort to them, but having a native accent is the least of my worries because, well, I am not a native so there's really no need in the short term.
Great video, I've seen several people who achieved native level in foreign languages, and I've never been suspected of being a Swede myself. It's important to want to improve your pronunciation too if you want to sound native. I think a lot of people are pretty much satisfied when they can communicate unhindered in their second/third/fourth language, getting from there to "absolute native pronunciation" takes a lot of effort for what could be seen as very little gain.
My wife grew up in the USA bilingual in English and Italian. She later became a French teacher, and when she speaks French, French people think she's French. We've visited France several times and I've witnessed this innumerable times. Eventually, someone French asks her where in France she's from and when she tells them she's American, they're astonished. However, when she's in Italy everybody knows she's American because she speaks Italian with an American accent. Why the difference? Because she worked really, really hard for years on her French accent and has never worked on her Italian accent.
A few things:
1. Great video production quality as always--I hope you know that the effort and skill you're putting into editing these videos doesn't go unappreciated!
2. Swedish accents in English are adorable
3. Australian English is definitely a challenge. I'm a yank and can do a pretty good imitation of English and Scottish accents, but Australian feels impossible. I've wondered in the past why that was, and your point about the very open vowel system makes sense.
4. Relating to point 2, sometimes mild accents in a language can be very charming, so that's something worth taking into consideration when deciding whether or not it's worth investing in a perfect accent. Good pronunciation is absolutely important and helps you connect better with natives, but not sounding identical to a native can have advantages too.
Yeah, I normally prefer a slight accent to a fully native sounding one in English, but I'm not sure I do in other languages haha
I juste wanted to say that Luca actually sounds like a native speaker in french and it's really impressive. At first I thought that he was french so I was confused about his nationality haha
Pareil, j'pense que je saurais pas dire qu'il est étranger, en tout cas pas pendant une courte conversation. De temps en temps je tilte sur des petits trucs, mais je sais pas si c'est juste un biais de ma part vu que je sais qu'il est étranger (genre si j'écoutais un enregistrement sans savoir que c'était lui qui parlait, est-ce que je tilterais pareil sur les mêmes trucs?). Un autre dans le genre bluffant en français c'est Akira Mizubayashi. Tellement bluffant que c'est limite déprimant lol ^^
@@bofbob1 Pour les moments où tu tiltes quelque chose j'ai eu exactement le même questionnement que toi ! Mais personnellement à la première écoute je n'avais rien remarqué, le fait que son accent soit aussi bon nous amène à penser qu'il est français donc dans ce cas là on ne se pose pas la question sur sa grammaire ou autres. Je pense que le fait que tu saches qu'il était italien a surement joué ! Honnêtement je ne comprends pas trop comment il peut dire que Luca ne sonne pas comme un français... Et merci pour la recommandation j'irai voir !
@@bofbob1 Il a une très bonne prononciation, mais il fait des erreurs que même un locuteur français natif qui n'a pas une grande connaissance de la langue ne ferait pas, mais en même temps ce n'est pas un problème.
Personnellement j'ai un accent tellement prononcé dans ma langue maternelle qu'il faudrait d'abord que je l'efface avant de travailler une autre prononciation. Je me contente donc d'essayer d'avoir la bonne accentuation, et par exemple de prononcer un o 'o' et pas 'a'.
A logical and well argued piece Lamont. Having the désire and determination is as you say, a key factor in aquiring a native accent. That said, a slight or light accent is often charming! Thanks for all your videos.
I think motivation or cost/benefit plays a huge role in this. If I ever decide on living in a foreign country for a few years, I might deem it worthwhile perfecting my pronunciation, just for the heck of it. On the other hand, if I can already communicate everything I want to, or I'm only there for a bit, then why would I? Especially if the place is very accepting of foreigners and nobody cares that my accent sticks out. Heck, some might even appreciate my effort to learn their language and be interested in my background, but once I sound completely native, they won't even notice anymore. Not saying I need that, but anyways, except for my own satisfaction, what do I get for putting in the time and effort to hide my real origin, after I'm already able to communicate fluently?
But this is the “do I want to” topic, that, while is an interesting discussion, is not under discussion here. Meet you over in another video, my friend.
@@muskadobbit Thanks Catherine. Saved me some typing.
Thank you for mentioning talent.
I happen to have some and managed to speak a foreign language I learned as an adult to a native level I actually got a bit tired of people assuming it was my native tongue.
I also tried to sound less native, but it simply didn't work because my ears and tongue (and I guess eyes too) are like a sponge which absorb the language down to such details.
I have to say, this is the best video I've ever watched on the topic. Great job :)
I think you are 100% spot on with every point you made in this video!
I‘m a native German and french speaker from Switzerland, and I remember my french teacher in high school was not a native speaker. He grew up in the German part of Switzerland and never even really came in contact with french before he started high school. Funnily enough he only told us (the class) about that two years into high school, and before that I would never have guessed that he isn‘t a native french speaker.
Addition: I have yet to come across a non-native speaker of Swiss German that speaks like a native speaker. If the argument were true, that many Scandinavians speak good English because their language is so similar, surely you‘d think that native Germans could learn to speak Swiss German in an instance, but I know people who have lived here for over 30 years and don‘t even come close to sounding like native Swiss German speakers.
The equation is not the same :
English = Swedish x 50
Swiss-German = German / 20
Those figures are vague estimates of population and langue gobal attractiveness.
Lets be honest : no a lot of Germans fancy talking in Swiss-German (just like not many French fancy talking in French-Canadian).
Native-English is a valued norm (a golden standard), native Swiss-German is not.
Regarding your first point I have noticed that for Germans broadly speaking (including Swiss-Germans) picking-up a native French accent can be quite "natural" and easy (maybe a French native will perceive a hint of an accent).
@@jandron94 I think if you live in a country, speaking that countries native language is the ultimate goal (or the gold standard as you said it) for most people. And, I'm native in french, my Teacher had not the slightest hint of an accent.
This is the best video on this topic I've seen so far. I like that you give actual real life examples, not just theorize. Keep up the good work!
I'm a native Arabic speaker who has made American friends online. My accent was so convincingly American that many refused to believe I am not American lmao.
Did you made it ?
@@rapperrapper7032 wut?
3:55 dude i had no idea you were australian. i can tell the difference between someone from NYC and from Canada effortlessly but distinguishing australians from british people continuously baffles me.
Yeah and to us it's super clear haha.
Australia and NZ is even harder... even some Aussies struggle to tell (not many, but still).
We had a taxi driver in Honduras that spoke perfect English and he learned it completely of the tourists.
For my own experience, I'm not that broad In vocabulary for Chinese but I'm so paranoid about accent that people think I'm better than I am at it. The positive thing is, a few times native speakers thanked me for bothering to use the tones because many learners don't and it's terrible sounding and makes the language awkward.
Not using the tones in Mandarin would almost be like skipping some vowels or consonants in English.
They are part and parcel of the language, not an optional extra.
That's a good (and much needed) one. Well done. And nice to be featured again! Thanks!
My mother and aunt came to the US as children from a Spanish speaking country (at 8 and 5 i think), and they both still have slight (but noticeable) accents. I'm sure it can be done, but i don't think most accomplish this
Interesting. I always thought children would naturally acquire it! I came to the US at 7 years old & accents always fascinated me! So I constantly practiced many. It was just a game as a child but now I’m researching more about this. I don’t have an foreign accent btw according to everyone :o
@@Aaa-fe7kc not if they grow up in an environment where most people speak English with a Hispanic accent - which happens a lot in the US. Had they been Swedes, they would probably have been accent free today. It is similar with the Arabs/Turks/etc in Europe.
What an interesting video! Thank you for talking about this, because there's definitely a lot of misinformation out there about whether or not it's possible.
You’re right that I wanted to discount her for being Scandinavian. Not because Swedish is close to English but because they get full on English immersion from a young age. But to completely change your speaking habits after all that time at age 28, I think I have to agree that she proves the impossible, possible. So how much talent and dedicated focused study is required now becomes the question. And do I have enough talent 😂 (I’m thinking not to get this good). It would be nice to know just what she did to achieve this. I’m guessing I could imitate what she did and not get the same results but still.
I respect people that wanna be as close as native as possible, but that is just not my goal. When learning a language what I want is to be 100% understood and not sound kinda odd to the point where it would be a distraction, other than that I'm happy having that "charming" foreigner accent.
It is possible but you have to actually try hard at it. Your accent doesn't automatically turn "native" after a certain amount of years. But if you practice and teach yourself, it's possible. Growing up I met lots of Polish people (mostly teens) who sounded completely native despite only having been in the country for a few years
Fascinating topic and video. Great channel. I am attempting something like this with Gaeilge. I am Irish but English is my first language. My great grandmother was a native Gaeilge speaker (there are about 60,000 native speakers left in the country). I have found a native speaker from the exact village she grew up in to help me (whatsapp calls, recordings, feedback etc) as well as listening to tonnes of content (radio shows, tv programs) from native speakers of that region and reading books on the phonology of that dialect. One of my main motivations is to pass on the language to my daughter (she is a newborn) as it is part of our heritage. I still have time to get to a high level and raise her through both English and Irish (I'm probably high B1 now). I feel that no matter what there will always be SOME tell tale signs that someone is a native speaker but with years of effort you can get to a really high standard that passes for native some or most of the time.
You really took on the topic in an educated and nuanced way. Great stuff!
Klaudia is absolutely amazing, freaks me out listening to her. However, she does have an accent. I tried to trick my wife asking her to spot Klaudia’s Swedish dialect, and she could tell Klaudia is not native within 10 seconds. Klaudia is so good though, but there are just lots of very subtle tells.
Yes! I rarely see people talking about this but you did! What most people don’t realize is that languages may share the same alphabet, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the letters are exactly the same. Even if the letters sound similar, they are not the same. People don’t usually hear the difference, and not being able to hear that difference doesn’t allow you to pronounce things like a native. It’s not just about saying words, it requires physical abilities, different countries speak with different intonations, they flex different muscles when speaking, even if the letter is the same they might put their tongue in a slightly different position when saying it and people don’t realize that! You HAVE TO pay attention to how natives are saying it. How are they pronouncing that R? Are they rolling the R? Are they pronouncing it with the back of their mouth? or maybe their throat? Are those vowels supposed to be high pitched?
And of course it requires a certain ability and a certain intelligence to be able to identify those details and perfectly reproduce those sounds, so of course it is totally okay to have an accent, but every time I get complimented by a native speaker and my friends ask me HOW? that’s what I always explain.
I’ve sounded like a native english speaker all my life (with an american accent) even though I’ve only ever left my country once before. I still make A LOT of mistakes, of course, but natives still dont believe me when I say I’m a foreigner. People often tell me I have a great pronunciation in other languages too, but I’m not fluent in any of them.
Anyway, that’s an important detail that people rarely talk about!! If you wanna sound like a native you have to focus on that.
I was surprised to see an extract of that unknown masterpiece called Coherence. Props to you!
I actually got to speak to the director last year!
It is not about sounding like a native; it is about the combination of sounding like a native and having indistinguishable grammar, prosody and diction such that natives think you are one of them; the sound part is just a small piece of the puzzle.
It's 100% possible lol, I don't understand the people who say it isn't. But I've got a friend of mine who speaks English as if he were a Brit. His accent is even a little Northern (I'm in Newcastle). Yeah, it may slip once in a blue moon - I've only heard that type of slip once when we were talking - but you wouldn't be able to tell he was Polish.
Also, I should add, he came here when he was 19 and has lived here for 7 years.
It doesn't surprise me that he's Polish. Something about those guys is NEXT level when it comes to LL. Basically all the best second-language Swedish speakers I've come across are Polish.
its about exposure and whatever accent you learn. in germany we have to learn oxford english in school from german teachers (german natives i mean to say) and most of the english media we consume is american. you can already guess that this will mix up our pronounciation and accents a lot. i dont even know how i would consider my accent to be honest and it honestly changes over time if i speak it a lot. perhaps i start off sounding more german because it is my main language, but then i will shift in whatever direction i am interacting with... if its a brit it will be more british if its an american more american. is it native sounding, i dont think so. but english is a difficult language to choose, just because there are so many types of english and it depends on what you are exposed most to.
Great video! I'm an English tutor and I will definitely share this with my students.
Awesome, thank you!
I'd say it's certainly possible. The problem is diminishing returns. It could take thousands more hours of additional study to go from 'very advanced' to 'native like' proficiency. For most this trade-off isn't worth it - you could get solidly proficient in a brand new language in that time, which in my opinion is time better spent. But it all depends on what your goals are.
I believe talent does play a big role when you combine time and effort. When I was studying Russian in university, after 3 years of Russian, I had a history course taught by a professor whom was originally from the Ex-USSR. I went to their office hours to introduce myself. I introduced myself in Russian and the professor proceeded to ask if I was from Russia/ am Russian. I said no, and that my native language is English. She was so shocked!
Yeah, I was among those who confuse "practice" and "deliberate practice". The former can go into automatic mode and pushes fewer boundaries than the latter. It took lots of background listening that wasn't very useful to realize that. I have met many people from countries like Germany, Vietnam and Brazil who sound like native English speakers.
I love to do impressions of other English accents for fun (Scottish, New Zealand, South African, etc) because at parties and family outings, my friends and relatives crack up and tell me how good my accents are. Does this carry over to language learning? I believe it does. I think that because I have a knack for doing accents, I've picked up on the pronunciation of Spanish and Finnish pretty well. Teachers in both languages have complimented me on it. Moulding your mouth, imitating the sounds and getting the "vibe" of the language comes easier to some than others. But believe me, I'm not talented or advanced in my languages yet. Vocabulary and fluency-wise in learning these languages, I still have a lot to work on. So where my strong-suit is pronunciation, my weaker areas are vocab, fluency and overall comprehension. I don't know how close to native I will be, but I believe that if you start learning a new language, if you're already good at doing accents/impressions, I think that you'll have an edge/advantage to your target language's pronunciation.
There was this american guy that had learned Argentinian Spanish as an adult and he spoke PERFECTLY, like, not a single mistake, completely native-like accent
Just checked, his name is Dustin Luke
Haha the mere fact that your making such assumptions over what we would say is so funny xD cheers to the vid man!
Ohh and thanks for teaaching me new words in English. Ive learned two new English words today thanks to reading your comments. :)
Outstanding video, Lamont. Really thoughtful and well done.
Thank you kindly!
Thank you! Finally, I have all my arguments in one comprehensive video to send to ppl when I can't be bothered to explain it all.
Yes if you spend enough time hearing, listening, and speaking that language. It just means that you have achieved an even greater mastery of that language.
As a swede who spent way to much time on the internet. I struggle way more with my native language than i do with english. But thats mostly because the only time i speak swedish is with my parents. Otherwise with my friends, siblings and with strangers i speak english because it is the language i am the most comfortable with, and no one really gives a crap if you cant speak swedish here in sweden because practically everyone knows english anyway. This has the wonderful side effect of confusing the heck out of people when i speak swedish because my accent is native but i cant remember basic words and i constantly make gramatical errors.
Er du svensk? Eller innvandrer?
I haven’t finished the video so what i’m saying might be said in the video as well 😂 but! I started immersing myself in the english language when I was 11. I watched tv shows and movies, english speaking youtubers and only listened to english music. I’m now 17 and I pretty much sound like a californian white girl 😂😂 my accents pops up for some words that have a lot of r’s and l’s like the word “regularly” because the Dutch r is different from the English r, but I absolutely think it’s possible to sound like a native speaker.
Some people have an accent and others don't. It depends on how much work you want to do to perfect your accent.
Just because some people can't doesn't mean it's impossible for everybody.
Exactly! And some people are more prone to mimic than others! My friend changed her accent almost IMMEDIATELY after either moving to a place where they spoke differently or getting a new boyfriend with an accent. While I on the other hand have a hard time doing something like that, because I don't do it naturally.
I speak 4 languages but cannot for the life of me get rid of my swedish accent. I'm just gonna rock it, it doesn't really matter to me as long as im understood, and frankly I like the sound of it more this way.
I was told my first German teacher was a native German speaker. When I rang her on the phone to arrange a lesson, I was so disappointed. I thought , she must have been born in Germany (ie the agency wasn't lying) but she obviously had moved to England when she was 2 or 3 or something. But she had moved to England when she was 18.
i come across a lot of foreign german teachers who got a C1/C2 certificate but still cant really interact in the language. that really shocked me actually!! im a german native and occasionally help people learning for their language certificates and im constantly trying to unlearn them the wrong pronounciations they learn in their schools....
@Jackson’s Account nothing about dialects or accents. also i speak high german. the most general and basic you can get. for the teachers, it starts with basic grammatical structure already, pronounciation is just another thing i disliked. i mean it is normal to be better in one area than the other (reading, writing, listening, speaking) but to be that bad at speaking with C1 for what i experienced...... cant imagine that haha
my father came to sweden when he was 21, before i was born, he learned to speak the language in like 2 years, but even now 30 years later, he still has a thick balkan-accent. I think i am a native speaker, like i can tell dialects apart and such, but people say me and my sibling still has traces of my fathers accent in our speech, but i think its due to us hanging around him and mimicing his and others speech
My cousin is German and didn't come to England until she was 30. She is a bit of a dosser who sat and watched TV all day. She is genuinely indistinguishable from a native English speaker - however she absolutely despises Germany and actually tells people she's English. She refuses to speak German with anyone. She won't even acknowledge that she is German.
That probably had some part to play in her perfecting her accent.
Ironically the other person i've seen was a random on youtube around 5 years ago who was also German and was absolutely indistinguishable from a native English speaker from the south of UK.
Usually something even very tiny gives them away, but not this girl. It was immaculate. Wish i could remember who it was.
An actor being able to do native accents doesn't make it any less possible for a non-actor. Everyone IS capable of doing it, it simply depends on your motivation, whether you want to do it or not and if you keep at it.
A good distinction to bring up! On a side note, saw Dogen in the thumbnail and expected Dogen in the video, but he never came up lol
Thank you! Yeah, see the reply to Amalie Rossland.
@@daysandwords Ah, I see, I see. Judging from what I've watched of Dogen (which is quite a lot), I think he'd say he's pretty good at Japanese but he doesn't sound native. That being said, I remember an interview he had with a native speaker (can't remember the guy's name), but he basically said that Dogen could be mistaken for a native. But it's just as you said with the point of unreasonable doubt, it would be really hard to notice and even so, determine if they were non-native speakers already. Although, haha, to me, he sounds native but my Japanese skill is so far behind even conversational that it's a lot harder for me to pick out who's a really good speaker of Japanese versus someone who's not quite as good.
tbh while speaking casually, I keep making weird mistakes in my first language too, so I don't think weird grammar is automatically a giveaway for being a non native speaker. Though somewhere along the way I messed up with learning German (my first language), because often people seem to think it's my second language when they talk to me, but that's probably the reason I became interested in language learning. So I guess it's also a good thing, when people continuously ask you what your first language is, while you are not fluent in any other language than the one you're talking at this moment.
YES It's possible! You'll have to work for it, you need discipline, time, patience and a list of key techniques, both muscular/mechanical as well as psychological. It's definitely possible.
damn! wasnt expecting a coherence reference. that movie is really good. worth watching.
I'm a firm believer that it can be done, just not by anyone and it does require a lot of effort and linguistics knowledge.
I sound pretty close to an American, but I do slip up, especially because nowadays I don't care what I sound like as long as I'm clear. If I really put in the effort, I think I could convincingly sound American even after speaking for a while.
yeah yeah you can absolutely sound like a native, the problem is to adopt their cultural history, which doesn't just change how your language sounds but it affects your speech pattern, choices or words.
I actually think that it can sometimes be more difficult to learn a language close to your own. But it certainly has a lot to do with musicality and willingness to step outside your vocal boundaries
Excellent video. To reach like 80% native, is very doable for most, with time and much effort mimicking. Reaching like 97% native is doable but will usually require some form of tutoring. To reach 97% without a tutor will require a high degree of talent and is very rare.
I guess 100% is doable, but will almost always require a skilled coach, talent, and a lot of work.
To any swede that says that no foreigner can sound like a native speaker I would like to suggest you listen to Cornelis Vreeswijk. He was born in the Netherlands and he speaks the most beautiful and "correct" Swedish I've ever heard.
I find it interesting on the point of unreasonable doubt, because honestly anytime I listen to felix, despite his grammar mistakes that upon further inspection can actually be kind of confusing, his pronunciation is so close to being native (even though when I analyze it it's fairly obviously non-native despite being very close) I don't even think about the grammar mistakes, he just kind of sounds like a native english speaker with a different dialect, but I wonder if that's a product of the fact that I also watched him a lot when I was younger, so I became used to the specific mistakes he makes, and perhaps to his pronunciation as well
I would say it is, yeah. Because whenever I listen to him he sounds Swedish or Danish. When I first came across him, I spoke no word of Swedish, and someone just told me about him because my son is called Felix, and I watched him and just assumed he was German and then when I found out he was Swedish I was like "Ok same thing..." (in Australia, everywhere in Western Europe is either England, Germany, or France... if it's not one of those then it's considered basically one of those, e.g. Ireland, Sweden, or Spain are just England but with leprechauns, Germany but with Ikea, and France but with Real Madrid...)
@@daysandwords ahh yeah that's something I've noticed as well, for me it seems like as long as a non-native speaker doesn't use a sound that's distinctly from a certain country where it's common for people to learn english like the common retroflex D in india for example, I have almost no chance telling where they're from, but I can almost without fail identify the subtlest korean accent miles away, and same with kiwis because I used to have a lot of friends from there
but that's also pretty much europe to the US 😂 I could name and identify every state but only quite recently I learned that britain, the uk, the british isles, and england are different things (I'd thought they were all different weird names for england), that scotland and england (and wales) are on the same island, and most strangely that the european countries are near each other
we learned the countries in school I'm pretty sure but it's always kind of been segmented in my mind into different, very distant regions by language, like "english," "nordic" (this includes finland), "romantic or germanic" (this includes greece as it's basically italy), and "slavic" (this includes hungary, turkey, basically all of the countries east of germany and italy, and especially anything that ends with "a" or "ia"), notable exceptions are that montenegro and moldova are basically spain, idk where that one comes from
what a world I lived in 😂
Great video! I've certainly met people who've fooled me into believing that they're native english after talking for maybe 15 minutes, but in my experience something subtle usually gives them away after spending a larger amount of time with them. I can think of someone I've met who comes close to the "point of unreasonable doubt", but it's hard for me to judge, because I learned this person was non-native after only having ~15 min or so of interaction (I thought they were native based on this), so I started to know what to listen for. Nonetheless, I think prior to watching this, my views would have been closer to Steve's, now they're a bit closer to yours. After all, if someone like the person I met can get really close to the POUD then why couldn't they, with some more effort, eventually reach it?
Hard work and consistency always works out 💪🏼
Really enjoyed the video, thanks for putting the work. Very informative and interesting!
I'm pretty sure I have reliable method for anyone to acquire a native accent. The problem is that it requires niche technology.
To learn anything we can simply apply Kahneman's 3 requirements:
1. Repetition
2. Feedback
3. Reliable environment
So what we need is a tool that can in real time check tongue position, mouth shape, vocal cord pitch etc...
And then we need to visually present this (with one or multiple graphs, or a 3d model of the parts being mimicked).
Then we need native material recorded in this format that users can compare with.
With such a tool, practise would be optimized without relying on talent in sound perception and or general mimicking intuition.
I can't remember who it was, mattvsjapan or maybe Steve Kaufmann. He said something in the lines of if pronunciation and accent is important you will be able to master it. But most never have the goal of speaking a language to that level. Most of the Swedish or Norwegians (I am Norwegian) just want to talk and be fine while speaking English. The end goal is not to sound native like. I do want to sound native like so I have made a big effort to reach that goal. keep up the good work with videos btw !
That sounds more like Matt because Steve made a whole video about how it's not possible haha
@@daysandwords yeah i think so too. I am learning spanish now with MIA style and it is going great. I will strive for a very good accent and i am 100% sure i can do it. just diminishing returns so i guess that's why most never bother.
100% agree, I speak 5 languages fluently, a couple intermediate, and the reason I don't sound native in some languages is precisely the same reason as Lucca , which is that dedicating time to several languages hasn't allowed me to focus on one particular to it's perfection. On the other hand and at the same time, knowing several languages opens your mind, ears and gives you experience on how to reach higher levels in the other languages. Also, although languages are my passion, I am far from disciplined (my bad, but always good to be aware of it and know that it's my responsibility and not that "it's not possible") and don't spend the time I wish I would spend practicing languages, and besides, unlike Lucca, I have worked in different fields and was never fully dedicated to learning languages. I wish I could dedicate myself solely to languages. It's important to be organized. I have a book on how to learn languages which is "on ice" since a few months back because of other occupations, but I hope to finish it this year (it's almost done actually).
I am a scot, i speak a few languages a little. i have lived in Norway for over a decade. i am a mental health professional, so talking to folks is the most important part of my job. i have become completely fluent in the language. i can even produce a variety of regional accents. But my scottish accent could only disappear by changing how i speak to such an extent that folks would not trust me the same so I will keep my accent which my wife thinks is charming. some things though are very difficult swearing like a native Finnmarking even wioth the perfect accent is so difficult
Honestly, I'm just gonna strive to get as close as possible and not worry too much about getting there. The fact is, my TL is (Taiwanese) Mandarin and so as a white person I'm gonna stick out like a sore thumb anyway. I'm more interested in reaching a native-like comprehension and thinking ability honestly, I want to think how a native thinks and understand what a native understands, I care less about accent and stuff.
thank you for the idea of the "point of unreasonable doubt" i happen to have this goal but wasn't able to articulate exactly what it was
At first I thought this guy was a New Zealander paying very careful attention to not sound like a kiwi but I am now convinced he is an Aussie.
Why would I be the former? Also, if anything, my accent is further from Kiwi than the standard Aussie.
But why would a Kiwi be trying to sound not-Kiwi anyway?
@@daysandwords There is something about many New Zealanders who have spent a length of time living in Australia at least whom I have met.
They generally seem to have very clear and crisp enunciation/diction. It is some of the vowel sounds that distinguish them from educated Australians.
I was waiting for the NZ vowel sounds that never came.
Why a kiwi would want to hide the eccint? "Maybay they toe heve some cultural crunge."
I know this to be possible. In addition to the factors you covered, it certainly helped Emily that she 1. Grew up in arguably the most americanized non-englishspeaking country in the world. We Swedes hear almost as much American English as we hear Swedish on a daily basis. 2. She lives in LA, surrounded by American English in her daily life. She’s married to an American.
Generally actors are bad examples because learning to speak lines from an existing script in a convincing way, aided by a dialect coach, is far easier than constructing your own sentences on the fly. But you’ve pointed out that Emily ad-libbed a lot of her lines in this film, to which I can only give kudos. She is talented, has the aforementioned advantages, and probably passes for a native American in her daily life.
I think some of us Norwegians have a bit of an upper hand as well, because we have two different writing languages and have to learn english and one more language, and have to learn a bit of swedish, danish and iclandic in school, and we have very many different dialects in our language that sound pretty different. Often when we are young, and grown up too, we try to sound as close to either a dialect or language as someone speaks, just for fun. We are also very proud of our dielect, and sometimes when we greet a new one, instead of telling where we are from we will guess where the other one are from with lisning to how they speak, and will ask about the dialect. Also on tv me and my family will sometimes guess where one of the reporters are from.
About Claudia, she does have the melody down but you would over a longer conversation or two notice she is not native even if it is subtle - still incredible ofc!
I agree with believers, even though it is a very small and specific subset of people who can manage it (native level) and not something anyone can do even if they had all the time in the world.
But I doubt anyone who says they could know that Klaudia was non-native rather than just some weird thing in her upbringing, especially since her name is Klaudia and she is fair skinned and blonde(ish). If they have decided she's non-native then something else is coming into that, on top of the little differences and quirks of speech.
I have had Australians ask me where I am from. Is it because I don't sound like a native Australian English speaker, or because my name's Lamont, or because they have just not been exposed to enough Australian accents?
Basically, once you know, any chance of a fair assessment goes out the window.
I agree, and wrote about that in another reply. Tou definitely change things when you have the information beforehand.
Although I still stand by my assessment that I would atleast have a feeling that she was not born/raised here. Mostly because her tiny dialect/accent sounds slavic in nature.
But like you said, it is hard to truly know because I already had the information.
I have a colleague that was raised in France with a swedish mother but had not used swedish regularly or lived in Sweden before starting to work here. In his case you could not tell apart from him not being aware of "sayings/expressions" that you would not pick up if you didnt live here.
He also has a tiny dialect but that is more like you said something that could come from a other part of sweden.
I once met a guy in Germany who I assumed was a native speaker. When he asked me if my nick name was my full first name, I thought he was just dumb, not expecting him to be American where my nick name is also a real first name 😂😅
I found a method I picked up one actor his name is Joey from Friends and everyday (I need to point this out EVERYDAY) I'm trying to mimic his way of speaking couple times and record this. I think that's a good way to improve my accent.
I also believe that it can be done, because I have personally met a person who had removed their local accent (Italian) within 5 years of arriving in America. Like you said, I've probably spoken with more people who have done this and just not been aware that they are a foreigner. That being said, I still think that using actors is not good proof of concept IF the actor can only remove their accent for a couple of rehearsed lines in a movie.
Thanks for sharing your example!
About actors: the problem with that theory is that Emily Baldoni is frequently in TH-cam videos with her husband, just reacting to things normally, and thousands of people never ever realise that she's not American. Also, the lines in this movie weren't rehearsed. Each actor just had an objective for the scene and had to pursue that in whatever way made sense, and then the director and editor spent like 6 months putting together all the footage to make a... well, "coherent" story.
I think the TH-camr "Ready to Glare" is a great example of someone who has reached the native level. One would totally think she was American if she didn't mention being Italian!
She really does sound american. Has she ever talked about how she learned English?
@@thesmokecriminal5395 I'm not sure if she has, but she speaks multiple languages and has lived and studied in the USA for years so I suppose it's largely just extended exposure?
If you listen to the queen of Sweden she still has a really heavy German accent
And? Who cares? That doesn't negate the fact that some people sound like a native...
@@Rilows I didn’t say that, I just think it’s interesting how some people have it easier when it comes to fluency
@@Rilows although your point is right, you were a little too harsh here. You should be more respectful
@@emmavastenberg4862 Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so rude. You’re right and I misinterpreted your comment. Have a nice day :)