Accents and Pronunciation

English was not my first language.  Spanish was predominately spoken at home (with a bit of Italian thrown in) the first five years of my life.  English was introduced to me when I entered school.

Believe me I was one confused kid.  It took a while to distinguish the language spoken at home and the language spoken at school. Over the years I became good at compartmentalizing the two.  I did very well academically and had a pretty good grasp of the English language.  For example by the 4th grade I had achieved a 7th grade reading comprehension level.  I was pretty good with writing and understanding vocabulary.  My trusty dictionary was always besides me.  My only major problem I had was my terrible accent.  My English pronunciation was awful and I was constantly teased by my peers.  I would be asked to say "this" and I would say "dis", "chair" and I would say "share", (well, you get the idea) and the kids would chuckle.  So, I learned not to speak much...it was better to keep quiet than to be laughed at.

In 7th grade, my English teacher took notice of me and before I knew it, I was pulled for speech therapy a few times per week.  For three years I learned about the anatomy of the mouth and placement you make to achieve the desired sounds.  It was the best thing that had ever happened to me in my young life.  It helped me come out of my shell and not be afraid to express myself, and well be the chatter box I am now.  :-)    I am ever so grateful to those ladies who helped me.

As a facilitator for an English conversation group at the library where I work at, a common complaint I hear from the intermediate and advanced English speakers, are how they hate their accents and how it's so hard to pronounce some of  the at times, crazy English words.  I really can identify with what they are feeling.  Drawing from my experience as a child, I explain to some of the members of the group that the key is not to lose an accent (an accent is part of who they are) but to make yourself be understood.  And maybe now is not the time to get hung up on the grammar of the language but to focus on understanding the sounds of the words.

I came across this excellent website put together by the University of Iowa, called Phonetics: The Sounds of Spoken Language, which focus on the phonology of the sounds of words, in three languages.  It shows a video graphic of a profile of a face explaining the anatomy of the mouth.  It does a wonderful job showing the movement and placement of letters and words.  I also posted about this site on the Language Connection link on this blog.

So I guess the key is to understand where the sounds of the letters are coming from, continuing to practice the sounds (I remember countless hours of just looking in the mirror to practice) until it becomes muscle memory.