Fluent in 3 Months is a blog by Benny, the Irish polyglot, about his adventures in learning multiple languages in shorter periods of time. Key to his success: Just speak it! (Don’t wait until you’re comfortable to get started - it’s okay to suck.) He shares another key to handling multiple language in this post: Create a “character” that defines the language. (Take on the attitude, posture and personality of the language, and you won’t mistake it for another.)
Benny is on to something beyond language acquisition: The same is true of learning accents. You have to just try them, and try them boldly, and you need to let them transform you!
I have to give the note Fail Boldly all the time. If you are wimpily trying to do a Cockney accent, you will be so indefinite with the vowels and the other sound changes that I won’t be able to tell if you’ve got them or not. If you boldly dive in, you will nail a lot of it, and you will suck at some of it, too, but if you don’t completely suck, you won’t know what to work on. Fail Boldly! Then fix it; then fail boldly again…
Another thing to realize is that you need to let yourself transform to fully get an accent. I do occasionally have to say that someone has the sound changes down, but I don’t believe them… They don’t “own” the accent. That’s the part that can be difficult to describe. But I do find it true in my own work with multiple accents - I usually have a key word or phrase (often the name of the place or the accent) that kicks me in to gear. Part of what happens on my key phrase is that I adopt the attitude of the accent. Let it transform you to expand your sense of who you are!
Yeah, that was artsy fartsy, but it’s also true… Cope with my artsy, but stay clear of my fartsy.
Thanks, Benny!
(Source: wwwlfluentin3months.com)
I’ve had a fixation for the last week and a half: What is unique about you?
This isn’t a touchy-feelie thing - it’s marketing, damn it! And it’s an ongoing issue for actors. I think it’s the downside of training, sometimes. Congratulations, you’ve learned a lot of technique, so now you do what you do better, but you have also learned how to turn off your humanity and be neutral enough that I recognize you’re doing a good job, but you’re boring.
I feel that I have the right to call your acting boring, by the way, because my acting is boring, too. I’m the boring expert. I don’t just act; I teach this shit, so I must know it well!
This is a huge issue when I’m working with actors on speaking in General American. (What is GA? Approximately 147 more blog posts, so let it go for the moment. You know what I’m saying. Don’t be an argumentative voice teacher.) GA is not just an accent; it’s also a style, and it’s not just speech; it’s also voice. It requires efficiency of movement and it requires a vibrantly resonant voice and it requires appropriate articulation (as opposed to wacked-out over-articulation or mumbling.)
But what it does, usually, is wash people out. It’s a personality leech.
“That’s accurate, but I don’t care.” It kills theatre. It’s why Shakespeare productions almost always suck - it’s one of the reasons, anyway.
So the challenge is Can you speak in Generican without losing You?
You’re the one cast as Hermione, not one of the other 11 women they read for the role. What do you bring to Hermione that no one else can? (There is no Hermione, by the way - there’s only You as Hermione or Jennifer as Hermione. Bob could play Hermione, too, but that’s a whole other concept. Kind of hard to explain the pregnancy thing that way, too…)
It’s Generican season. Get innoculated.
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Time to Test Your Phonetics! -
Someone designed a game to test your IPA skills. (You should realize that it’s broad transcription, so the R’s are right-side up, for example.) My only problem was actually spelling the words correctly in normal human spelling! If only English had followed Shaw’s lead to simplify spelling!
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Bad Accents: Better Off Not Trying? -
I’m actually even more interested in the responses than the article itself. One of my favorite responses is the comment that no one ever gets a Boston accent right in the movies, even from actors who are from Boston.
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