11
It is definitely possible. There are many language learners who have learned an L2 from birth or a very young age, and thus, have mastered the pronunciation in the language. Others have years of exposure to the L2 inside the home, conversing with native speakers.
However, for non-native speakers who have not been learning the language for a long period of ...
9
Have a native speaker coach you on your pronunciation.
Your best bet as far as identifying certain sounds you make and training yourself to speak more like a native would be one on one training with a native speaker. The native speaker can easily recognize what sounds you make incorrectly and even demonstrate how to say them right. This is especially ...
8
It is possible, but I am not aware of many adult learners who have achieved this (in spite of watching many YouTube videos about language learning).
The example that always come to mind is Dashan or Mark Rowswell, a Canadian who started learning Chinese at university and became so good at it that he could do xiangsheng or "crosstalk", a Chinese type of ...
7
Research by Patricia Kuhl suggests that even newborns are able to distinguish the sounds of their mother tongue from sounds of other languages. An implication for L2 learners is that exposure to a lot of speech in the language you plan to learn is beneficial even if you do not understand any of it yet: your brain starts developing "a feeling" for the sounds, ...
6
In my experience, there are two types of "accents." That is the "lack" of a local accent, and the presence of a "positive" or "foreign" accent.
My greater problem is the "lack" of a local accent. That is, if an "r" or a vowel is pronounced a certain way locally, it takes a lot of time for me to pick it up. It may sometimes be years before I pronounce things ...
5
It is possible. But very few people achieve native-like pronunciation.
Example: There is a popular Russian TV host Vladimir Pozner. He grew up in US. His parents spoke French at home. When Vladimir was 18, his father decided to return to USSR and Vladimir had to learn Russian. Not only he mastered the language and pronunciation, he became a very popular TV ...
5
Since this question isn't a reference-request, I will answer from personal experience and Internet.
The closest to a tonal language that I have studied is Japanese, which only goes as far as pitch-accent (so it doesn't really count). However, throughout my involvement in my university's Asian language department and social experiences I've had contact with a ...
4
You can improve and get close, very refined, very mild, but getting an indistinguishable-from-native accent in adulthood is so rare as to be practically unheard of.
And in my experience, there's a large talent factor. I know that's not a popular opinion, but I believe it is the actual truth. Everyone can improve, but that doesn't mean some people aren't ...
4
I'm no expert in Hebrew, but I did find this extremely helpful YouTube playlist of 6 videos that directly addresses difficult pronunciation sounds in Hebrew for native English speakers. The videos are also very recent, as the last one was posted in September 2015.
4
Summarized from Absolute Pitch, Speech, and Tone Language:
Some Experiments and a Proposed Framework (emphasis mine):
The verbal labeling of pitches necessarily involves speech and language,
so in searching for a framework in which to place absolute pitch, we can
consider further evidence that it is tied to linguistic processing.
In most right-...
3
If your main focus is on accent reduction, then one method would be to listen to native speakers and attempt to reproduce what they are saying. If you don't have anyone you can talk to in Arabic, then you could seek audio resources on the internet. Find a video or podcast, play the audio briefly, then pause it and try to repeat what you've heard as closely ...
2
One thing is to know something about "accents." For instance, American vowels are "softer" than those of European, or most other languages. For instance, the American "short a" is usually pronounced more like "at" than "father." (The latter is true for European languages.) The American "long a" is pronounced more like "say," whereas the Europeans would use "...
2
Foreign accent is caused by "sound blindness" both in terms of (A) automatic pronunciation patterns you add from your own language, and (B) the sounds you "don't hear" in the foreign language.
To handle A you would need to study, dissect and deconstruct the pronunciation patterns of your mother tongue to the point where you could hear and speak it the way ...
2
Live in the country[ies] that the language is spoken in
This is similar to having a native speaker coach you, but having many of them assisting you one way or another and being able to hear and replicate their accents. I have had personal experience with ESL-like people who have lived in the US long enough to basically remove most of their accents.
2
There are several studies that seem to indicate it is indeed possible for adult learners to reach a level of pronunciation that is perceptually indistinguishable from native speakers. One could cite for instance "Authenticity of pronunciation in naturalistic second language acquisition: the case of very advanced late learners of Dutch as a Second ...
2
Personally, I've never met someone who learned German as an adult (or even teenager) without accent. Some level of accent was always audible.
Regarding TV or radio hosts: there have been many popular TV hosts in Germany with foreign roots and VERY noticeable accents.
2
I would search the internet for "How to speak English with an (insert your native tongue here) accent."
Let us say your native tongue is German. Searching "How to speak English with a German accent" pulls up a website that tells you that German speakers have a non-English "R" as well as other common errors in pronunciation ...
2
A particular accent coach that helped me to improve my English accent did the following:
Established the scope of work
Based on my first language, the coach already had a list of pronunciation mistakes that people of the same language background make.
I was asked to read aloud a sample of text, so that the coach could make additional observations specific ...
1
I have been using the Google translator app (translate.Google.com) for exactly this purpose. In both the source and target windows of the translator there is a pronunciation icon which when clicked on will pronounce the text entered in either window. Source text in any computer-based document (including pages of web-based text) can be highlighted, copied, ...
1
There are two big issues outside of 'r' and 'kh' sounds:
Vowel length. English speakers tend to have much longer vowel sounds than Hebrew speakers. Shorten your vowels.
Another aspect of pronunciation that many don't think about is the speed at which you speak. You could have perfect ר and ח, but if you speak at a snail's space, then you will still stick ...
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