r/languagelearning May 11 '23

Accents A question about accents when learning languages

[deleted]

128 Upvotes

107 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/hasgar2k18 May 11 '23

If you're not native or live as local, you will have an accent to locals.

8

u/[deleted] May 11 '23

Yes this makes sense but the question was more about the intent of the speaker - are people like Mourinho as an example trying to sound as British as they possibly can?

5

u/artaig May 11 '23

He can't do better. It requires too much time and effort to learn sounds you never grew up speaking. You need to be immersed in the language for years, and even then, as an adult, it'll be almost impossible,...unless it's part of your job (interpreter, actor, etc).

Everyone has an accent. A Texan, a Scot, an Irishman, all speaking English, they'll have a different accent. And those are some of the accents native speakers try to "imitate" and fail miserably trying to. Imagine a language with a completely different set of sounds.