Accents are something we often only see in terms of region or a way of speaking. We don’t connect the ways in which they reflect on the cultures they serve or the people who speak them. In reality, where one lives, dictates how they speak and the words they use more than just about anything else.
Becoming familiar with a true native accent doesn’t just change the way you communicate with other people, it connects you to an entirely different culture, even if you can’t visit that place in the here and now. Whether you’re reading a book written by a British author or enjoying a song from the deep South region of the US, understanding an accent matters and connects in ways most people don’t even see.
But how can we learn an accent or even understand a dialect that is not native to us? Well, technology can most certainly help.
Learning Accents: How Can It Be Done?
Many of us would love to learn accents and inflections, if for no other reason than to enjoy cultural TV shows, books, songs, and even jokes from those regions of the world. The question is: how can you learn the accent of a place in which you don’t live? Start with the basics and go from there.
Listen and Learn
The best way to truly learn an accent is to listen. means opening your ears to the exact rhythm and inflection. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the opportunity to chat in person with a true speaker to study how syllables sing or words are pronounced in real-time. This is where the text to speech software can help. By simply inputting text into an online text to speech generator, you can choose from any number of accents with which to have that text read aloud back to you.
Let’s say you’re really looking into becoming familiar with Cockney British. Simply input some text and a British text to speech generator will read the text aloud in that particular accent. Try in both male and female voices or choose from given regions of a certain country. This is a great way to familiarize yourself with how an accent sounds in terms of rhythm, without having to track down an actual British citizen!… !
Top comments (1)
British english made zero sense to me the first time I heard it, as I don't live in an area where british english is common, but the more I got used to it from their comedy shows or whatnot, the more I could understand other accents as well.