How to lose American accent in Russian?

How to lose American accent in Russian? What’s the solution to losing your accent in English and Russian languages? You’ve just reached some high level of proficiency in a language. This means you’ve endured all the concepts many language learners struggle with such as grammar, vocabulary, listening, writing, speaking and so on. But even though it may be pleasant to finally speak with your peers in a new language, there is still one problem unfortunately. YOU’VE GOT AN ACCENT. Yes the accent. 

How to lose American accent in Russian? The American and Russian Way with both the English and Russian Language?

 

The one thing that separates from the other native speakers of your newly acquired language. The trait that causes children to ask their parents “Mom! Why does he/she talk funny?”. 

 

The American and Russian Way with both the English and Russian Language by Matthew Hamelburg

 

I’ve had many students who have wanted to pick up an American accent. Of course being that there are so many I simply taught them mine which is the Standard American Accent. Normally what I like to do first is have my students read a small excerpt of something.

Of course some of my students will tell me such things countless times like “I warn you I may not be a good reader” or “I’m so embarrassed with my pronunciation please forgive me”. And with this I continuously reply with “You will never understand what you are mispronouncing unless you make a mistake reading a text with a native speaker”. That’s right I said it…. a native speaker. It doesn’t just have to be a physical native language teacher to actually be present. But an actual native speaker of that language.

For example, if I were to teach Russian pronunciation, I might not be the most qualified person. It’s true I come from a background with some Russian-speaking people and I consider myself bilingual in Russian, but this does not mean I am a native speaker because unlike some of my other relatives, I was born in the United States.

“Tongue Twisters” work!

Therefore, my native language is solely English. Having a physical person to analyze how you conduct sounds is just one way to find out what you need to work on in relation to phonemes. There is also the option to find out through audio. A person can try to compare his/her pronunciation with a recording of a native speaker. The person can read a little section of a text and then listen in that order.

I will say though based on the feedback from other students and self experience, this method can be difficult as it is difficult to compare one’s speech with a recording because the recording can give no feedback and the person listening to the audio or recording will have to compare one’s speech more so on his/her own. It is already hard enough to study a language on your own in terms of other language concepts.

Well done… And?

Once the person has found out what sounds or words they struggle with in terms of pronunciation, it’s time to practice. Now the next question that comes to mind for people is “What kind of exercises can a person even do?”. Well…it’s not as complicated as you may think. One exercise that I do with students of all ages is something called “Tongue Twisters”. What it does for a person is have them focus on certain sounds they can’t make. For instance, the “th” sound. 

People who speak slavic languages do not have this sound in their languages so it can be difficult for them to articulate because throughout their development as speakers they never picked it up or learned to do so. Therefore, they substitute this sound with one closer to their native language such a the “z” sound.

How the “Tongue Twister” would help in this situation is that someone would create a sentence or passage using a predominant amount of words with the “th” sound. For example we could use a passage like “The thieves thought that the thickening thumb would ruin math”.  ‘Tongue twisters’ is a universal way to reduce the accent and so it must work if you want to lose American accent in Russian.

 

THANK YOU FRENCH, LATIN, AND CELTIC LANGUAGES

 

Very silly sentence I know. But it certainly makes the learning very fun. Especially with my younger students. Another exercise I have for students or more so a method that I use is that I would have my students identify the hardest words for them to pronounce. After all, one of the hardest parts in the English language is pronunciation itself because a word can look and be written a certain way, but that doesn’t mean that is how it’s pronounced. THANK YOU FRENCH, LATIN, AND CELTIC LANGUAGES. YOU ARE THE BEST ( all sarcasm). So then I have the students write down the words that appear to be the most challenging for them (these being the words in English that appear to be spelled one way, but are pronounced another).

And what’s next?

Once this is done I write next to these words how they actually sound. Take the word “quiet” for instance. Some people who look at this word think that it is pronounced as (kyou-i-et) because the letters q and u have their own separate sounds especially when they are on their own. However, there is a phonological rule where if the q and u are put together in a word, it makes the sound “kw”. Therefore in order to help them I will write the word as (kwai-it) because it uses the sounds they already know in English and helps them memorize it.

Once this is done I have them memorize it on their and quiz them by showing the word they struggle with once more. One final thing I recommend for people who wish to acquire a new accent, is to immerse themselves in an environment where their target language is spoken. Going back to my journey with learning the Russian language, I have made the decision to continue with my teachings in Russian speaking countries so I can surround myself with native speakers.

So as I am constantly conversing and hearing speech being produced through these native speakers, I am properly learning how to mimic and articulate the correct sounds of the language based on its dialect and geographical location.

 

The Russian Way How to Lose your American accent in the Russian Language by Olha Dankova

 

Having worked as a Russian teacher for many years with different age groups, I have noticed one common thing which bothers everyone. It’s their accent. All people want to get rid of their accent and sound like a native. Russian language is not an exception and all students want to reduce their American accent in Russian. Fortunately, it is possible and there are many great ways to practice acquiring a Russian accent while learning it even though you were born in an English speaking country and have never been taught or spoke Russian before. 

First, you should understand the difference between the languages and their articulation when you speak both. If you practise articulation and do the exercises (which even actors in Russia do by the way), your speech will sound clearer and more understandable.  

 

READ THE SYLLABLES LIKE AN ACTOR!

 

For instance, you can write down all the consonant letters on a piece of paper and read them with the vowels in a row. 

 

Б – БА -БО – БЕ 

В – ВА – ВО – ВЕ

Г – ГА – ГО – ГЕ …. etc

 

It’s not easy as it seems but it is indeed very effective. I have created a special course for beginners to share the useful exercise which help to lose the accent effectively. The reading of the syllables itself is useful and helps a lot in the struggle against the foreign accent. Russian children are taught in school to read syllables first. The texts in the starter books look like the following:

 

МÁ-МА   ЛЮ́-БИТ   МÁ-ШУ, И   МÁ-ША   ЛЮ́-БИТ   МÁ-МУ

[ Má-ma   lú – bit        Má – shu, i  Má – sha  lú – bit   má-mu ]

The mother loves Masha and Masha loves her mom.

 

When the words are split into syllables, it’s much easier to recognize the letters and their sounds. After reading the syllables and doing exercises, the next step is to try saying tongue twisters in Russian.

 

НА ДВОРÉ ТРАВÁ, НА ТРАВÉ ДРОВÁ

[ Na dvaryé travá, na travyé dravá ]

In the yard there is grass, on the grass there are logs.

 

Pay attention to the phonetics of the Russian language so that you could lose the American accent!

 

Secondly, you should pay attention to the phonetics of Russian language and how we pronounce the consonants and vowels. A good example is the pronunciation of a vowel ‘o’ which becomes ‘a’ if it’s not stressed in the word. It’s very similar to English when natives pronounce words like ‘coffee’ |ˈkɒfɪ| or ‘clock’ |klɒk|. They never say ‘KÓFI’ but more ‘KAWFI’. You should do the same thing in Russian when the ‘o’ is not stressed. 

 

МОЛОКÓ – [ MALAKÓ ] – MILK

КОРÓВА – [ KARÓVA ] – A COW

 

Another good example of the phonetic rules is the ‘voiced consonants’ at the end of a word. According to the rules they should be pronounced as voiceless, which is what we in fact do in the Russian language. That’s why it’s hard for us Russian natives to say English words with voiced letters at the end of a word. 

 

How to take advantage of a common mistake which all Russian make!

 

‘Bet’ – ‘bed’ would be pronounced by Russian as ‘бэт’ which sounds totally wrong in English! This common mistake happens when we don’t pay attention to English phonetics. And on the other side of the spectrum, a native English speaker would misunderstand us if we said: ‘I bought a nice bet’ instead of ‘I bought a nice bed’ with ‘d’.

An English speaker can take advantage of this ‘common Russian mistake’ and use it to get rid of their American accent in the Russian language. This is because as said before that Russians would pronounce the last voiced consonant as voiceless like ‘Код’ [ kot ] or ‘род’ [ рот ]. 

 

These are some words to practice:

код [ kot ] – a code             and their opposites        кот [ kot ] – a cat

год – [ got ] – a year            which sound                    гот [ got ] – a goth

род – [ rot ] – a gender        the same                         рот [ rot ] – a mouth

бог – [ bok ] – God                                                         бок [ bok ] – a side

 

Thirdly, you should always remember that ‘the stress’ (accent) is extremely important in the Russian language. For example, at times if you just flip the stress to another letter in a word it changes its meaning. 

 

я пла́чу     –     я плачу́                             оно́ стои́т   –   оно сто́ит

[ ia pláchu]    [ia plachú]                           [ anó stoít ]  –   [ anó stóit ] 

I’m crying       I’m paying                         it stands            it costs

Finally, you can just listen to Russian podcasts or do the dictations and repeat after a speaker to copy the accent of natives. This approach is more difficult than others but pretty effective. Some of my students start talking to Siri on their phones or Google/Yandex translators. In such way they check their Russian pronunciation. Either way works only if you put everything into practice and keep learning.