How to Do an Accent

Transcript Here are some tips on a general Persian accent, the speaker I listened to was from Iran and so, he was a native Farsi speaker but, you know, you get different flavors in Afghanistan or wherever else you look for a general Persian accent. But the oral posture, the tongue is very thick and …

Transcript Here are some tips for your general Russian accent. So the oral posture for a general Russian accent is to pull your tongue all the way back in your throat. So you’re pulling your tongue all the way back here. And a lot of the sounds take care of themselves when you pull your …

Transcript Here are some tips for a general Scottish accent. The first thing we look at is the oral posture. What’s the oral posture of a general Scottish accent? You want to bring your tongue tip all the way back, but you’ve got a lot of action still in your lips and in your jaw. …

Transcript So Long Island is a very big place. We’re going to zero in on one Long Island accent here. And the person that I studied, to bring these tips to you, was a Yittish first language speaker. So, her lip corners were very tight, and the back of her tongue was very high so …

Transcript Texas is big. So there are a lot of different kinds of accents in Texas. We’re going to work on a general Texas accent. What’s the oral posture of a general Texas accent? Well, there’s a lot of bunching in the back of the tongue. The back of the tongue is braced up against …

Transcript Here are some tips for a general Moroccan accent. Now, Morocco is a melting pot. Just like the United States is. So there are as many accents as there are people. So I’m zeroing in on a French speaking Moroccan accent. So, as you might imagine, the oral posture is a little similar to …

Transcript Let’s take a look at some tips for a general Turkish accent. So what’s the oral posture of a general Turkish Accent? The tongue is pulled back a little bit and, so that affects the articulation in the front of the mouth. But the jaw is quite open still, so you get a lot …

Transcript Now let’s work on your Queen’s accent. Queen’s is big, so this accent is one of many, many, many Queen’s accents. But the oral posture for this one, I want you to sigh through the sound aw, as in four, born. Try this phrase, I was born in Queens, New York. What do you …

Transcript Here are some tips for a general Norwegian accent. Go all the way for it, then knock it back for some more authenticity, but go all the way for the caricature if you want. So first, we look at the oral posture. So, I’m going to say a phrase in my Norwegian accent and …

Transcript Let’s work on a general Philadelphia accent. My idea of a general Philadelphia accent probably has a little bit of an Atlantic City flavor in it. Because that’s where my father’s family is from. So we’re going to give this a shot. So the oral posture of this accent is, the lip corners are …

Transcript So let’s work on some traits for a general Pittsburgh accent or ‘Pittsburgh-ese.’ A lot of people think that this is a fictional accent but my mother’s family is all from Pittsburgh and I’m telling you I was raised listening to these sounds. The oral posture for a general Pittsburgh accent, the tongue is …

Transcript So let’s work on a general Minnesota accent. We’re gonna go straight for the stereotype, and then you can kind of knock it back from there. Depending on what you’re going for. So let’s work on the oral posture of the Minnesota accent. Take a look at me saying this phrase. ‘Oh geez, I’ve …

Transcript Here are some tips for your Mississippi southern accent. It’s a romantic stereotype kind of accent, and it’s southern drawn out. So you hear the musicality in some of the drawn out portions of it. The jaw is slightly elevated. So if you sigh through that oral posture, you have ahh. Ahh. Ahh. As …

Transcript Here are some tips for a general Polish accent. Now the reason I know a Polish accent is because I used to go to a Polish day spa. So my way to crawl into my Polish accent, and to get into the oral posture, is to say exfoliation, exfoliation, exfoliation. It’s very similar to …

Transcript Let’s work on a general Mexican dialect. And we’re going to straight for the caricature, and then we can knock it back to a more realistic version. Once we get really good with the caricature. So what’s the oral posture of a Mexican dialect. My daughters is why I work hard, you know? Because …

Transcript Hi, let’s take a look at some tips for a general Indian accent. One might even call it stereotypical Indian accent. But go all the way for it. And then you can pull back on it to make it more authentic. So, you pull your tongue back all the way in the back of …

Transcript There are lots of different kinds of people that live in the Bronx, which makes it such an amazing place. So, we’re going to zero in on a sort of Puerto Rican flavor to this Bronx accent. There’s a lot of lip corner tension, and the tongue is high in the back of the …

Transcript Here are some tips for a Cockney accent. Now, this is a very general form of your very urban London accent. So you want to bring your lips really far forward for the oral posture. And you want to almost imagine that there’s like a light bulb in your mouth, so there’s a lot …

Transcript Let’s take a look at some for a general Italian accent. So, first we look at the oral posture. So what’s the oral posture of a native Italian speaker? It’s easy to find it if you pretend you’re about to trill your R’s. So, and then you just hold your tongue there. The tongue …

Transcript Here are some tips for a general French accent. The first thing we do is look at the oral posture. What is the oral posture of a French speaker? You bring your lip kind of forward and the lips are relaxed. So they are forward but they are relaxed and you can find this …

Transcript So what’s the oral posture of the German accent? So there is a lot of lip corner action. A lot of action in the front of the mouth. And not a lot of opening in the mouth. Sound changes for the German accent includes the a sound. This area is very close to my …

Transcript Let’s work on your Appalachian accent. This is mountain speak, and this is the accent that shows up in the mountains of North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee. The oral posture for this accent, your tongue is pulled really far back in your throat, and your lips are barely moving at all. Try that. The “OO” …

Transcript Here are some tips for a general Irish accent. So the first thing we look at is that oral posture. When I start to talk in my Irish accent, there’s a little bit tension in the back of my tongue. So it pulls it back just a little bit. But the tongue is very …

Transcript Let’s take a look at some tips for the London accent, or what we call estuary. Estuary is a river tributary off of the Thames, so think of this accent as sort of off chute of the RP accent. Take a look at this same oral posture for RO. The jewel is raised and …

Transcript And then, of course, there is the ever important “R” sound. This sound trips up so many people because when you emulate an American accent, very often you think you have to chew your R’s, “Really, I’m from America.” And really, we don’t make that sound. And especially in a general American where you …

Transcript Here’s some tips for your general American accent. Now, general American isn’t actually a regional accent. It’s just a general clear way of speaking your American English. First of all, we look at the oral posture of general American. In general American, the lips, the jaw, the tongue are all pretty relaxed and the …

Transcript New Jersey is a big place. New Jersey is close to New York. It’s close to Philadelphia. So you get a broad range of different kinds of accents in New Jersey. We’re going to go for more of a north Jersey accent. So kind of on the more New Yorkish tip. So let’s work …

Transcript [Background Music] There are so many different types of people who live in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is an amazing place because of that. So we’re going to go for a very stereotypical, general Brooklyn accent. Just to give you a flavor of it. So you put your lip corners really far forward. And it’s a …

Transcript So this is the way I like to approach accent training. There’s a three-pronged approach. The first is to look at the aural posture of the accent that you’re trying to emulate. And the aural posture is simply just where native speakers hold their lips, where they hold their tongue, is it in the …

Transcript Let’s take a look at the British accent. So I’m going to call this RP, which is “received pronunciation”, and it’s sort of your more upper class British accent. It’s not really spoken today on the streets of London unless you were born maybe before 1950. But it’s a really important accent to have, …

Transcript Here are some articulator exercises. So, first blow through your lips, and you can use your voice there, and you can go un-voiced. Blow through your tongue, and then un-voiced, and then shake out your face. Okay. Then, you want to take your tongue, and you want to touch every single one of your …

Transcript So here are some terms that I’ll be using in our accent training together. Let’s first talk about articulators. So articulators are the bits and pieces of you that move to create words. So your lip corners are very important and they can move forward and back. So to move your lip corners back …

Transcript Let’s work on a general, Alabama, southern accent. Well, you hear now in the oral posture that there’s a little bit of tension in the back of the tongue, not so much tension that you get real twangy like you might get in a Texas accent, or nasally, but if there’s some bunching back …

Transcript So accent reduction. Accent reduction is less about reducing your accent and more about learning a new one. So if your goal is to learn a general American accent the first thing you do is you train your muscles. You train the muscles of your lips, your tongue, your jaw to take on a …

Transcript Hi, I’m Andrea Caban, I’m a voice and speech coach here in New York City. I’m also an actor. I have been here about five years, I work with actors and non-actors from beginning students to Broadway stars. I studied at UC Irvine in Irvine, California. I got my Master’s there. I studied under …