How I Started Speaking With an American Accent | Do This to Sound Like a Native Speaker

- As some of you know I'm Russian.

I grew up in Russia

and I've been living in Moscow for over five years.

And now let me read this sentence for you

in a typical Russian accent.

Let me talk to him about this problem

and we'll see what I can do.

And now let me show you what years

of accent training did to my pronunciation.

Let me talk to him about this problem

and we'll see you what I can do.

Hello guys.

And welcome back to my YouTube channel.

First of all, let me preface this video

by saying that I never laugh at people's accents.

Accents are truly beautiful.

They often tell us a lot about a person,

about where they grew up and how they learned English.

But in this video I really wanted to share my experience

with you guys.

And that's why I decided to start the video

by reading a sentence with a typical Russian accent

and then showing you how I managed to improve my accent

because this is something I wanted to do for myself.

I really love American English

and I'm a sucker for a beautiful American accent.

So that's why I picked this accent.

For you it might be the British accent

or the Australian accent, it doesn't even matter.

Or maybe you don't even wanna have a specific accent.

You just like every single one of them.

So in this video

I wanted to share my accent journey

and give you tips that will help you

improve your pronunciation.

Let's first start with a book

"Mastering the American English",

because this is something

that I first discovered three years ago

and I fell in love with this book completely.

First of all, guys, you know that I love reading.

I always read a lot.

So it was natural for me to pick up this book

and start working on my American English.

One thing that I don't really love about it

is that it doesn't give you any feedback.

So you never know if you're improving or not.

But for me the audio to this book was enough.

I could really hear what they were saying

and I was trying so hard to replicate everything.

And that was actually the time when I first discovered

that in American English

they have this flap t sound like in the world water

and it just completely shattered my world and blew my mind.

I was absolutely shocked

because I used to say water all the time,

not water and not bottle, for example.

I also really enjoy their native language guide.

It gives you specific recommendations

based on your native language.

And they have so, so many languages there.

So I'm sure you'll be able to find yours.

So here they teach you that a T becomes

a fast d in the following cases.

So in American English, we don't say better.

We say better.

We don't say little, we say little.

We don't say party, we say party.

We don't say forty, we say forty.

Isn't that amazing guys? (laughs)

I know maybe your mind has just been blown,

but believe me their exercises are truly beautiful.

And guys, in this video I'll be mentioning

a lot of resources

and you'll be able to find all the links in the description.

After reading this book, "Mastering the American English"

from cover to cover, multiple times falling in love with it,

downloading it on my computer, on my phone, everywhere,

recommending this book to every single one of my friends,

I discovered the YouTube channel called Rachel's English.

And guys this YouTube channel is amazing as well.

I really love her videos where she uses an example

of a TV show and she breaks down actors' accents there.

It's amazing, especially,

if you love watching shows and movies

because this way you'll be able to replicate their accent.

And Rachel makes sure that you understand

every single one of their sounds.

So that's why I had to recommend this YouTube channel.

And before we move on

to the next part of my story I wanted to say

a huge thank you to our sponsor, Skillshare.

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And now guys, let's move on and talk a little bit

of how a couple of years ago I realized

that I was kind of tired of all this theoretical knowledge

of American accent.

So back then I already read the book

that I talked to you about.

I watched a lot of videos on Rachel's English channel

but I was still like, I want more.

And I really wanted to practice my accent.

I wanted to find someone I could talk to.

And that's why I started to look

for English speaking clubs in Moscow.

And I really found so many great places

where I could implement all my knowledge

and talk to even Russians like using an American accent.

And guys, to be honest,

English speaking clubs are just amazing places

where you can find friends,

where you can talk to interesting people,

and just have wonderful conversations.

And this journey inspired me

to create my own English speaking club.

So if you wanna participate in my next cohort,

make sure to join the wait list.

And you'll find the link in the description.

Then it happened my New York city trip.

Honestly, guys it was a truly my magical experience.

And that's why even I have New York city behind me

on the wall because I just fell in love with the city.

I'm not sure I could live there myself

because this city is really, really unique.

There are so many people living there

but I definitely did enjoy staying there as a tourist.

Here, guys I just want you to remember one thing.

I didn't really speak a lot of English

when I was in New York

because I didn't have any people I knew there, right?

Because to speak to someone

you actually need to know someone there, right?

Obviously I talked a lot when I went grocery shopping

or just like when I went to the doctor

I also had to speak English, but it was all random.

I didn't speak English every single day.

So that's why I can't really say

that my accent improved a lot when I was in New York.

I did hear a lot of English

and I did expose myself to various accents

because there's just so many foreigners living in New York

and so many beautiful nationalities,

beautiful people and there are beautiful accents.

It was just always so interesting for me

to be exposed to their accent

because sometimes it just felt like music.

And also, in my accent training journey

there was one time when I was desperately trying

to find an accent coach.

Well, if you know anything about accent coaches

you know that they're very, very expensive.

So one time I paid a small fortune to just try,

I was really interested.

I felt like I wasn't improving at all.

I was like, why not?

I should just try.

So the lesson was okay

but obviously I couldn't justify spending

that much money on a coaching session

but I totally understand why they charge this much money

because they're helping you improve your accent.

They're helping you work on your speech.

And it's really, really difficult, guys.

So what I did instead was this.

First of all I didn't give up.

I wasn't like, accent coaches are so expensive,

so it's all useless.

I shouldn't learn English at all.

Obviously, I'm not that dramatic

even though sometimes I kind of am,

but we're not gonna talk about this right now.

So what I did was every time I watched a show

or even like a video on YouTube

I sometimes paused and I tried to repeat

after the speaker, imitating their accent,

imitating their pronunciation,

every single pause they make, every single cough they make.

It didn't matter to me.

Because I just really wanted to sound like them.

And obviously, because I wanted to have an American accent,

I tried to watch as many American TV shows

as movies as possible.

And again, try to imitate their speech.

This is something we call shadowing.

When you try to shadow after the speaker.

When you try to repeat after them.

Let me give you an example

of how I shadow by watching a short clip

from the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street."

- I told you. 70,000.

- [Veronika] I told you. 70,000.

- You made 72 grand in one month?

- [Veronika] You made 72 grand in one month?

- You show me a pay stub for $72,000 on it.

- [Veronika] You show me a pay stub for $72,000 on it.

- I quit my job right now and I work for you.

- I quit my job right now and I work for you.

So as you can see by shadowing the short clip,

first of all, I'm working on my accent.

But second of all, I can learn so many new words.

First of all, we can learn that when we talk about money

we can say the word grand instead of 1,0000.

So for example, 72 grand instead of 72,000.

Another cool word is a pay stub.

But actually right now, we use the word paycheck more,

but still it's good to know the word pay stub as well.

And also pronunciation-wise,

we can hear that they say, wait and quit.

So they're not releasing T sound, right?

They're just saying, wait, instead of wait,

and quit instead of quit.

So guys, as you can see, it's totally possible

to start speaking with an American accent.

If you're a patient and you study a lot

because guys if I'm being truly honest,

it was really hard for me to.

Sometimes, I still feel really demotivated and really sad

because my accent is not as good as I want it to be.

So in these moments I just try to remind myself

that it's all temporary.

Tomorrow I'll wake up, I'll feel better

and I'll have more motivation to improve my American accent.

So guys, before I finish this video,

I really want you to check out Skillshare,

because it's a great place where you can explore

your creativity and learn a new skill.

If you like this video

make sure to give it a thumb up and subscribe to my channel.

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because there I share my everyday life with you.

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Thank you guys so much for watching the video

and I'll see you next time.

Bye.

(bright music)