50 Non-American Actors Who Mastered The Accent So Well, People Had No Doubts They're American

Bored Panda reached out to voice coach Ashley Howard to learn more about what accent reduction is.

Howard defined it as the process through which a person changes their accent towards another accent. It is also known as accent softening, accent modification, and accent neutralization.

“In reality, accent reduction is more so a process of accent acquisition: you never lose the ability to speak the way you speak but instead learn another way of speaking, substituting the sounds and intonation patterns you use for other sounds and intonation patterns.”

“If you only wanted to use the new sounds and intonation patterns, then after some time, the old neural pathways may become less familiar and easier to use, so the new sounds and intonation patterns would become the more dominant instinct. At this point, perhaps you could then say that you have reduced or even gotten rid of your old accent.”

We also got in contact with a professional actor and dialect coach, Holly Renaut, who prefers not to use this term at all, as it implies that it’s possible to get to a point where one has no accent, and this is simply not attainable.

“We all, regardless of language, have an accent. An accent is simply a particular way of pronouncing a language. You can have an accent that is, for example, more Spanish in its pronunciation, and you’d like to shift it towards sounding more American. This notion that some people have an accent while others do not is simply false.”

“So, let’s tweak slightly and talk about accent shifting. Moving along the line from one accent to another. You could land anywhere on that line, with some features of one accent, some of another. We all have our own particular, unique, and beautiful way of speaking.”

“Accent shifting is a complex but achievable process involving training your articulation muscles, reprogramming your brain to activate them in a different way than you may do habitually, working on your listening skills to distinguish between similar sounds, perhaps unfamiliar to you, noticing the rhythm, melody (intonation), and word stress patterns, and turning that all into something that, in an ideal world, happens without you thinking about it.”

We were fortunate enough to receive another opinion from actors’ accent coach Sarah Valentine, who has worked with all kinds of people and thinks people shouldn’t hide this part of their identity in the first place.

“I work with people from all over the world who want to sound more ‘American’ or more ‘British’ or just be understood, so they can be doctors, lawyers, dentists, telephone operators, anyone in business, professionals from all walks of life, basically anyone at all who just wants to ‘sound more professional’. But I do need to reiterate that because I have such a passion for accents and I love listening to them, I don’t feel the need for accent reduction. But I understand the need to teach people how to do it, and so that's what I do. It’s simply a service I provide, although I personally don’t see it as necessary.”

The challenges these experts face vary from person to person. Howard finds that the most common ones are learning new sounds and intonations that a person has never made before. Or knowing when to apply the newly learned characteristics to the desired accent.

What he also finds challenging is consciously applying the learning to spontaneous speech. “The way we approach this is to think about introducing the new features into low-stress and low-stakes conversations first. The other way we approach this is to consider their most common phrases in both personal and professional contexts, as well as names and technical terminology used at work that they can practice, so that when these come up, they are more likely to use the new pronunciation.”

Renaut finds difficulties with mindsets that some individuals have adopted. “Some people feel that accents are a skill you either have or don’t. But they’re more like music. Some people have a different level of talent naturally than others, but anyone can learn with some time and effort.”

“Other people hugely underestimate how much effort and practice can go into learning to shift to another accent. They tend to think it’s a matter of ‘listen and repeat’, but there’s much more to it. I work according to how the client responds best. Some are visual learners; some respond to audio and are great at imitating; and some need physical instructions and work with images… It’s about getting to know the individual and catering the training to them.”

She also notices that “there are a lot of people who teach ‘accent reduction’ who charge a fortune and only approach things using phonetics. But learning the symbols for the sounds doesn’t always translate into your mouth being able to correctly make them. This leads to a lot of frustration, and people enter training with me already feeling like their goals are achievable.”

Valentine shares that the challenging part of her job is that everyone hears differently, and being able to get sounds right is difficult. But, fortunately, she has found a way to work around it.

“I make the learning fun, and whether you want to sound American or British, I am able to connect to my client and imagine how the interior of their mouth currently works, and I get them to switch it to their desired accent.”

Her method of teaching isn’t really conventional, as she has created her own “Valentine method,” which still works on the basis of phonetics but is adjusted to the person she’s working with. “I am more visceral in the respect that I work with the person and understand them so that we together can create the exact perfect sound and accent that the person wants.”