Can I Speak a Foreign Language Without an Accent? Part 1.

Yes, you can.
Read on.

When studying a foreign language, you are usually taught vocabulary, sentence structure, and grammar rules. However, when you try to speak,no matter how hard you try, native speakers can usually tell that you are not one of them. This is because your accent gives you away; the sounds you produce differ from those they use.

A crucial part of language learning is often missing from your tuition: the learning of the sound system, phonetics, or pronunciation—how the sounds are produced and pronounced by native speakers. But don’t worry! With the right systematic practice, you can start to sound very similar to native speakers of the language you are studying.

In Part One of this post, we will explain what phonetics and the phonemic system of a language are, explore why different languages have different sounds, and examine how these sounds are learned in early childhood by native speakers.

In Part Two, you will find practical recommendations on how to improve your pronunciation and start speaking with minimal or no accent by dedicating just 10-15 minutes a day to pronunciation practice.

What is phonetics and pronunciation?

Phonetics is the study of the sound system of a language, while pronunciation refers to the way these sounds are produced.

The study of language, or linguistics, identifies the minimal units of sound in every language, known as phonemes. Phonemes are used to form syllables, words, and sentences in a language.

Linguists estimate that the world's languages use more than 800 phonemes.

Each phoneme has specific acoustic qualities, such as pitch, intensity, length, and voice onset time—the delay between opening the mouth and producing a sound.

To produce different phonemes, we use our speech organs in various ways. Some languages involve nasal sounds, where air is expelled through the nose, while others use clicks or tones, which are created by manipulating the tongue, lips, or other parts of the mouth in distinctive ways.

Why do languages sound differently?

Any given language uses only a subset of all existing phonemes, which is why languages sound different from one another. For example, the English language has around 44 phonemes, whereas Mandarin Chinese has over 400 phonemes.

Each language has its own unique set of phonemes, which, when combined, create the accent or set of accents associated with that language.

To speak without an accent, we must identify the phonemes of the language we are studying, learn how to pronounce them, and reinforce this learning through regular practice.

Before exploring how to learn new phonemes, let us first consider how babies acquire them.

How do the children learn to speak with the right accent?

Learning to speak with the correct accent is a complex process that begins early in life. Children must learn the phonemes of their language to be understood. But how do they do it?

Researchers studying language acquisition have found that learning phonemes precedes learning words and begins in early infancy. Babies have an extraordinary ability to hear subtle differences between sounds, enabling them to perceive not only the phonemes of their native language but also those of all the world’s languages!

Newborn babies can hear all 800 phonemes that exist in the world’s languages, regardless of their parents’ native language. For example, a baby whose parents speak Chinese can hear and distinguish English sounds, while a baby whose parents speak Arabic can hear and distinguish Korean sounds.

You may wonder: how do researchers know that babies can differentiate phonemes if babies cannot speak?

It’s a fascinating area of study, and researchers have conducted experiments to learn more about this phenomenon.

One such experiment, led by Amos and his colleagues, investigated how infants differentiate between voice onset times. The researchers gave the babies a special pacifier wired to record how often they sucked on it. Whenever a baby sucked, a sound would play through a loudspeaker. The faster the baby sucked, the louder the sound became.

Babies, naturally curious about new sounds, quickly learned that sucking caused the sound to play and began sucking faster to hear it.

Eventually, the babies grew bored of the same sound and sucked more slowly. At this point, the experiment changed: the researchers slightly lengthened the voice onset time by 1/15th of a second. Both the researchers and the babies could still hear the sound. However, when the voice onset time was reduced by 1/50th of a second, the researchers perceived the sound as a “b,” and the babies responded by sucking faster. This demonstrated that the babies heard the sound differently too.

This study shows how babies can quickly adapt to changes in speech patterns and sounds. They can differentiate subtle variations in voice onset times, laying the foundation for their ability to distinguish between different sounds and speech patterns as they grow.

How We Learn the Sounds of Our First and Second Languages: Insights from Neuroscience

We have ears identical to babies' which can pick up the same vibration of the sounds of speech, we have the same acoustic nerves which carry information to the auditory cortex in the brain.

But why then, babies can hear and therefore reproduce the phonemes of all world languages, but we can only hear and reproduce the phonemes of our own language and speak foreign language with an accent?

The evidence from neuroscience demonstrated that this is due to the differences in brain processing.

Phoneme Processing in the Brain

Neuroscience studies using MRI techniques have shown that a specific area of the brain, the left mid-cingulate gyrus (mid-CTG), is responsible for processing phonemes—the fundamental sounds of language. In adults, neurons in this area become active or "fire" whenever phonemes are processed.

Differences in Processing Between Native and Non-Native Speakers

Research has also revealed that in native speakers, the neurons in the mid-CTG fire immediately upon exposure to the sounds of their language. This rapid activation occurs simultaneously with the brain's processing of speech meaning.

In contrast, in non-native speakers, the processing of phonemes takes much longer (White et al., 2015). As a result, non-native speakers find it far more difficult to understand speech. How can we understand speech if we don't recognize the sounds that the speech consists of ?

Studies also have found that non-native speakers use significantly more neural resources to decode the phonemes of the second language they are learning. They have significantly more neurons engaged in phonemic processing compared to native speakers.

Changes in Brain Processing with Increased Proficiency

As non-native speakers gain proficiency in a language, their brain processing becomes more similar to that of native speakers. More proficient learners expend far fewer neural resources than beginners. This change likely occurs because the brain forms new neural connections that help to quickly recognize the phonemes of the second language. As phoneme recognition improves, learners can understand speech as quickly as native speakers.

In Conclusion

1. Speech consists of small units called phonemes. Children start to speak with the correct pronunciation because, from birth, they have an exceptional ability to hear phonemes exactly as they are pronounced. The acquisition of the sound system of their first language during the first year of life provides a foundation for future language learning, as understanding speech requires the ability to differentiate the sounds it consists of.

2. When we begin learning a second language, we already have a neural network that responds to the sounds of our first language. We often try to substitute the phonemes of the language we are learning with similar phonemes from our first language. As a result, we speak with an accent.

3. Neuroimaging studies, however, have shown that adults process the sounds of a second language in the same area of the brain as children. Initially, adults spend a significant amount of neural resources, and this processing occurs more slowly than in native speakers. However, in proficient learners of the second language, neural processes show similarities to those of native speakers. Therefore, it can be concluded that the sounds of a language can be learned by non-native speakers both in childhood and adulthood.

However, we must learn phonemes differently from how we learn grammar and vocabulary. A specialised approach, called phonemic learning, should take place. This method of learning , which focuses on mastering the sounds of a foreign language exactly as they are pronounced by native speakers, should occur independently of grammar and vocabulary acquisition and, ideally, should precede both.

The phonemic learning has its own nuances and aspects, with specific rules that must be followed to master the sound systems of a second language. Read more about what the phonemic learning entails and the rules you need to follow to speak English with the correct accent in our next blog post.

References:

White, E. J., Titone, D., Genesee, F., & Steinhauer, K. (2015). Phonological processing in late second language learners: The effects of proficiency and task. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9(1), 25–38. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728905002380

Neuroscience News. (2023). Bilingual native language is easier on the brain. Retrieved from https://neurosciencenews.com/bilingual-native-language-brain-25731/