Why and How Actors Can Focus on Accent Reduction & Dialects

Expectations from an actor are sky-touching. An actor is supposed to be perfect in all aspects, be it dancing, acting, or dialogue delivery. While not coming from such a family history, in today’s era, the common man and normal people are also trying their fortune in acting. People move from one state to another and also from one country to another. Now, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that continent-to-continent movement is also experienced these days. Bollywood actors are moving to Hollywood to expand their acting careers.

In the global world, everyone has their own accent. To become a successful actor, they have to prepare themselves completely, and one of the biggest hurdles is their different accents and dialects. Coming from entirely different backgrounds, aspiring actors have to work on their accents to make their way into the acting career. Dialogue delivery with a native accent or any other kind of accent can degrade your performance. Speaking with an accent can make it non-understandable on the stage. Real-world accent speakers are kind of difficult to understand.

In addition to that, actors also work hard to change or reduce their accents to give a diverse performance. Even if we talk about only English, there are different accents, pronunciations, and vocabulary. There are major dissimilarities between British English and American English. For example, tyre/tire, visualise/visualize, flat/apartment, lorry/truck and many more. It is an important skill for them to master control over the way they deliver dialogue. To nail an accent, you need to undergo rigorous and extensive training.

6 Techniques for Improving Your Accent Easily

-Learn the difference:
It is important to accept that a native language speaker has to work on their accent to become acceptable in another culture as an actor. To begin with, you can learn the differences between your native language and the language you want to become comfortable in. While beginning with accent reduction , start with the respective rules.Talking about English, it is a Stress-Timed language and not a Syllable-Timed one. It has a unique stress-timed rhythm that makes it one of the hardest languages to pick. Build rule upon rule says, of American English. When you attain all the knowledge of the intricacies of the language, you can apply the rules and can start producing an American accent.

-Practice, Practice, and Practice!
Start speaking the language you want to master, say, American English. Till this time, you might have learned about many exceptions. So, practicing more will help to retain the rules and exceptions of the language. You can connect this with the process of losing weight. To get six-pack abs, it is important to work out daily, similarly, and regular practice with scripts, dialogues, scripts, and videos can accelerate the process.

-Contacting expert accent reduction classes:
Why make the accent reduction process a headache when an accent reduction coach can ease it for you? Yes. You can reduce your old accent to get a new one with the help of experts. Working all by yourself can be a lot of time-consuming and effort-taking. With accent reduction and dialects, you can give direction to your learning process and speed up your learning process. With experienced and proficient teachers, your work will become easy. They will guide you through the best way of reducing your accent. You can feel the freedom of being fluent. LanguageAcademia for filmmakers, a place where you can get a free consultation and acknowledge the fact if the linguists available are right for you. They cover many techniques like practicing with natives, the best ideas, and teaching based on native language age and natural learning abilities.

-Specific areas of focus:
There is a methodical plan that should be followed to get the best outcome for your accent reduction process. Problems may arise in between the procedure, but you have to be resilient and continue working towards it. Concentrate on the following areas to speed up your accent reduction and dialects learning process:

-Syllable stress: Many words act as both verbs and nouns; learning the difference between syllables to stress upon is a very deep yet significant fact to know as an actor.

-Vowel and consonant production: Learning one to two sounds per week can make you gradually accomplish your goals.

-Intonation patterns: The rise and the fall of the pitch while speaking

-Standard speech patterns: It will consist of common contractions and linking techniques. Gaining confidence in this area will prove very beneficial for your growth in learning and mastering accents in a new language.

-Word stress: For example, r is not to be stressed in the word ‘car.’ Similarly, there are many ways in which pronunciation can make you sound local. So, concentrating on learning the difference between function words and main content is required by an actor.

-Accent is more about pronunciation:

Your accent reduction, dialect, and pronunciation coach must help you with mastering Cockney-sounding words and phrases. It is because the accent is much more about pronunciation. You need to train under accent-imitation skilled professionals. There are speech traits that vary from accent to accent and their absence can make technically correct pronunciations of words sound disconnected and fake.

Important traits to be considered are as follows-

-Unique resonance
-The posture of the vocal tract
-Timbre
-Inflections on stressed syllables
-Don’t stop yourself

Accent reduction, and learning new pronunciations and dialects might be a long process. It might feel cumbersome at some point in time. But you need to keep your aim in front of your eyes so that you can work without getting tired. Many experts have recommended working on our goals early in the morning. It is the purest and the highly charged time of the day which gives us better outcomes with lesser efforts. So, being an early bird will de-stress you and facilitate you as well as boost up with all your capabilities. If you can think of it, you can definitely do it.

Sound local, improve your pronunciation, and learn the required dialect today.