Is there any way for a person to learn an accent?

Question

My mum wants to speak like Reba McIntire and I have been wanting to learn Cockney. I promised her I would find a way so that she doesn't have to speak with her boring Californian accent. Does anyone know how we can learn how to do accents?

Answer 1

You can hire a voice coach, or you can just do some studying up on the dialect of the accent you want. Most linguistical studies of various regional dialects describe the sound changes that are there (different from Standard English, of course). Therefore you might be able to find 'rules' that describe how to speak certain accents- i.e. using long vowels between consonants, etc.. It might be somewhat hard to do, but if you could do that and find a list of phonetically transcribed words in that dialect, you'll probably start to catch on pretty quickly of how to speak with the accent.

Otherwise, just try to immerse yourself as deeply as possible into the accent, either by going to the place (my parents went to Tennessee for only a week, and came back talking Southern), or listening to a lot of people speaking that way (on TV, in movies, etc.). You'll catch on.

You might also try this book or similar ones, if you can find them:

"Foreign Dialects: A Manual for Actors, Directors and Writers" by Marguerite Shalett Herman

Good luck!

Answer 2

No holds barred, the best way to learn a new accent is to move to another part of the country, or the world where you hear the target language. You have to immerse yourself in the environment. But the downside is that when you do speak in that accent, it will be normal, and the Californian accent will sound so divine.

Answer 3

I'm guessing you can get a voice coach for this.

And I do think its possible. Just listen to Madonna's speaking voice in the 80's and compare it to now!