How I learned the American Accent. Action plan.

did you just say groceries it's groceries did you just move from Russia you have a crazy Russian accent I gave this video to my husband and he said you sound just like a Russian person there is no hint of American accent okay guys I get mocked from my accent all the time especially in the comment section and I'm totally used to it now because I'm kind of a public person so a lot of people hear me speak and hear my accent and and they love to judge it but today I wanted to make a video

for all of you I'm going to give you some tips and hopefully by the end of this video you feel confident in your English regardless of your accent I know how you feel I've been there uh many many times as an immigrant person who came to the us at the age of 25 with zero American accent and who's been working on it for 9 years now you know there were many situations in my life where people were laughing at me so I'm going to share what I've learned in this video first of all let's address

this issue from the psychological standpoint it's essential to realize that when people mock your accent it stems from their own inner struggles this never comes from a happy place perhaps they were criticized for their work that day leading to their lack of confidence maybe they are trying to make you feel worse so that they can feel better and when something like this happens to me I tell myself you know maybe that person um told me those negative things today but because they said them to me online they went back home to their family without having

these negative emotions they went back to their family and they didn't scream at their child that evening and if my mission is to let them pour their anger on me then let it be why not it happened online did it hurt my feelings yes it did but I also realized that maybe it was necessary for that person that day on the other hand I have friends who provide constructive feedback in a positive manner for instance my friend Vena who's a professional teacher always tells me Marina that was great but you could pronounce this word differently

here is the correct way and my favorite example is sugar cuz I used to pronounce it in a very Russian way sugar sugar and he said that you never say ooh you kind of smile when you say sugar so it's sugar and he does it in a very polite manner so I actually learn from it and I'm happy when he corrects me and he also tries to do that not too often CU otherwise our friendship will be endangered I'm just kidding but he does it in a very nice way remember there is no good or

bad accent there is you and you are unique so today I want to share some tips and hacks I've learned during my journey to sound more American remember there is no good or bad accent it's about embracing your personality and uniqueness personally I am to some more American because it just aligns with my personality but you totally don't have to but if you're curious and interested please watch this video Until the End and I'll provide some of my best tips to sound like a native speaker but first I want to thank the Bold voice app

for sponsoring this video bold voice is one of the best pronunciation and accent training apps I've seen if you want to feel more confident speaking English I highly recommend checking out bold voice even though I like the way my English sounds right now and I don't feel like I have a major accent problems I still use bold voice to practice pronouncing some words and sounds I can record my voice and it instantly scores my pronunciation with artificial intelligence let's pronounce there's the word condition but I'm going to mispronounce it condition let's play with this one

compare my pronunciation to yours and then try recording the word again condition incredible Improvement that was a difficult word and you got it right in the end woohoo 96% bold voice creates a custom learning plan for you and your native language my native language is Russian so it created a plan with the English sounds that are especially difficult for me and other Russian speakers now every day the app gives me two activities to practice my pronunciation it takes only 10 to 15 minutes a day to exercise but since the plan is Taylor Made for me

the results are impressive my favorite part are video classes from Hollywood accent coaches which is very useful for me since I do a lot of public speaking in English it truly feels like you're learning from a top speech coach but it's way way cheaper this app cost me for a year less than one lesson with a coach and there is a free 7-Day trial so you can discover all of the Bold boys amazing features before paying I will leave the link in the description of this video please check it out and start working on your

accent with bold voice today you should focus on mastering specific sounds intonation patterns pronunciation nuances and vocabulary here are my top 10 tips with examples and explanations and tips number one and two are especially important okay very important Master the r sound example car jumped on the car car car jumped on the car it almost sounds like HR car or say start it it almost sounds like there is an H in front of an R the American R is pronounced with curl the tip of your tongue and pull it back a little bit it's distinctive

feature of the general American accent and it's always pronounced unlike in some other English accents number two understand and use the schwas sound examples so the schwas sound is a little bit tricky let's pronounce the word about maybe she forgot about you about you about you maybe she forgot about you about uh about this is the this uh is the schah sound what about sofa this is a $4,000 sofa sofa sofa this is a $4,000 sofa it's not sofa it's sofa it kind of your your a is somewhere in the back of your mouth sofa

sounds like sofa did you know that the schwa sound is the most common sound in American English so you have to practice it I know speakers of certain languages mix L and R A lot especially coming from Asian countries and this is where I want you to pay extra attention if you are from those countries so let's practice together light right law not raw law raw because in some languages l&r may be interchangeable or may not exist at all in American English they are very different so please try together with me lead read write light

raw law practice them all the time it's physical memory it's inside your mouth so the only way yes you can learn it you you can understand it but if you don't practice you're still going to mix them up when you speak okay the next tip is more practical use online dictionaries for pronunciation for example you can use Mariam Webster Oxford or Cambridge dictionaries for words like route garage schedule and also pay attention whether you're learning British or American English because pronunciation is going to be different so whenever I am confused with a word I go

ahead and type you know garage American pronunciation Google can help you perplexity can help you I use perplexity for for all of my searches all the time now tip number five create a list of words that you struggle to pronounce that are challenging for you 33 I know this is very confusing for a lot of people or fifth uh I know some Americans even say fifth without saying the second F create a list of all of those words that you're struggling to pronounce and just practice them every single day number six train YouTube to serve

you the right videos so what I like to do with my YouTube search is I have multiple channels you know that but I also have multiple channels from which I consume YouTube content the thing is sometimes I'm in the mood to consume business-oriented content so I have a special Channel where I follow business-oriented YouTubers and consume those videos which means that if I'm in the mood to learn something new about business I go to that channel and I see my recommendation feed and it's all about business it does not confuse me however if you're learning

a language I highly recommend creating a separate Channel where you follow all of the language learning YouTubers that you like and you watch their videos and you like the videos that are appealing to you so just Train YouTube to be your second brain to feed you the right videos when you're in the mood for learning a language tip number seven record your speech most of my progress happened when I started recording myself on YouTube and listening to myself and reading all the comments reading all the embarrassing comments and actually improving and I I'm grateful to

a lot of you guys who come to this Channel and tell me Marina I started watching you s years ago your accent was completely different some people like oh this is so sad you're losing your original accent because we loved you for that I know but for me as a student this is just so much progress and I'm just so happy to compare my English in my first videos to my English in my latest videos and see that my tips are actually working all of these hours foot into pronunciation um trainings are they're actually paying

off tip number eight practice phrases and sentences my mom's on the war path when you practice sentences you not you're not only practicing pronunciation you're also practicing intonation stress ask perplexity to come up with top 10 American phrases for you and just read them out loud where you going for vacation in the fall I'm going to Hawaii oh no it's raining again what's happening to California in 2024 just have those phrases or maybe you take them from movies and you repeat them out loud because sometimes our brain thinks we know everything but when we actually

start saying things our brain is like h no I don't really know how to read that what should I do oops so do that TI number nine focus on one sound at a time there is this phrase by Tim Ferris who said you should only focus on improving I think it's two things at a time because if you're trying to improve four spheres of your life at a time you're trying to work on your financial life you're trying to work on your personal relationships you're trying to work on your friendships and your business you feel

like everything is going wrong cuz you're trying to fix everything the same principle applies to English if you try to fix your R sound if you try to fix your the sound if you try try working on your pronunciation everything at the same time you eventually you'll you'll just start feeling like a failure because it feels like everything is wrong so you focus on one or two things at a time so for example this week you're focusing on the sound th HTH TH or the and you start pronouncing think bath this it just helps your

brain train for one specific thing without jumping from one thing to another and it also helps you feel better about yourself okay tip number 10 and this is where we're starting we're going to go from 10 to 1 tip number 10 practice every single day what I like to do is I like to write down several words that I'm practicing this week and I try to pronounce them during the day because chances are if I mispronounce something I kind of corrected it once by checking it out online by pronouncing it a couple times then chances

are I'm going to forget it in a couple of days so in order to prevent this from happening I write those words down and I practice them every day until the new pronunciation the correct pronunciation replaces the mistakes I made before because your task here is to create patterns in your brain is to create this almost physical memory in your mouth where your tongue goes where how your mouth opens which muscles are at work and you can do this by constantly practicing that was it for me for today guys thank you so much for watching

this video up to the very end please do not forget to comment like share and subscribe to this channel it's really important that you subscribe because the more subscribers we have the better content I can put out there thank you so much and I'll see you very soon in my next videos bye