5 Things You Can Start Doing Right Now to Sound More Like a Native Speaker
I’m going to start this blog off with a disclaimer: You do not have to sound like a native speaker in order to have good use of the English language. This is a personal preference and is not a requirement.
One of the most common questions I receive about speaking is, “How can I sound like a native.” Many language coaches will tell you that a learner can’t sound like a native after childhood, but this simply isn’t true. It is possible if you start doing these five things.
Use connected speech
Connected speech is spoken language in a continuous sequence, like how natives speak in normal conversation. There’s usually a major difference between how we pronounce a word on its own, like ‘and,’ and how we pronounce it in connection with other words, like ‘rock ‘n roll.’ When we connect our speech, we get rid of some syllables and phrases run together. For example, ‘want to’ becomes ‘wanna’ and ‘going to’ becomes ‘gonna.’
Native speakers make many verbal short-cuts in day-to-day informal speech. Therefore, including connected speech in your rhetoric is the first step you can take to sounding more like a native. There are some different ways we connect our speech outlined below:
LINKING: Linking happens when the end of one word blends into another.
ex. Is he there? = Izi there
INTRUSION: Intrusion is when an additional sound inserts itself between others.
ex. Do it = Dewit
ELISION: Elision is when a sound is cut off by a stronger sound.
ex. Most common = moscommon
ASSIMILATION: Assimilation is when two sounds blend together, forming a new sound.
ex. Don’t you = donʧu
GEMINATES: Geminates are words that end and begin with the same sound, so they become connected.
ex. Social life = socialife
2. Stress the appropriate words and syllables
English is a stress-timed language. This means that English is spoken with a kind of rhythm since the stressed parts of words and sentences are spoken with more emphasis than the unstressed syllables and words.
Word stress is the emphasis on one syllable within a word. For example, banana. In comparison, sentence stress is the emphasis on certain words within a sentence. For example, I want a banana.
Stressing the appropriate syllable simply takes practice. Most dictionaries will inform which part of the word contains the stress.
Stressing the appropriate words in a sentence depends on which type of word it is. Is it a content word or a structure word? A content word is a word which carries meaning, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives. A structure word is a word which is used for grammatical accuracy, such as prepositions, articles, and auxiliary verbs.
Stressing the content words in a sentence signals the listener to the most important parts. Not stressing a sentence or incorrectly stressing a sentence can lead to misinterpretation. Therefore, learning how to stress words and sentences correctly will make you sound much more like a native speaker.
3. Start learning phrases and expressions rather than single vocabulary words
If you memorize words in isolation, you run the risk of translating sentences word for word and sounding totally off to native speakers despite being grammatically correct. This happens when choosing the wrong words to form collocations because rather than remembering the phrase, you’ve remembered the single word and have referred back to your mother-language to form the sentence. For example, saying ‘make homework,’ rather than ‘do homework.’ A native speaker would never make this mistake. Therefore, if you want to sound more like a native, you shouldn’t either.
Besides allowing you to sound more like a native, learning a language in phrases and expressions, or ‘chunks’ is easier for our brains to remember. Our brains are designed to recognize patterns making remembering chunks a lot more efficient than single words. Beyond that conversations will become much faster and smoother as you’ll have many phrases on hand rather than searching for individual words.
4. Replace your one-word verbs with phrasal verbs
Native speakers will almost always choose a phrasal verb over a single-word verb during everyday informal speech. A major problem learners have is they sound far too formal in casual conversations which can make them sound a bit odd. For example, “Do you want to hang out?” sounds much more natural to a native speaker than, “Do you want to spend some time together?”
There are many reasons why learning phrasal verbs can be such a challenge, but in order to master the English language, you have to start incorporating them into your speech as much as possible.
5. Use English sounds rather than your mother-tongue sounds
This is the hardest skill to master on the list, and that’s why it’s last. Training your lips, mouth, and jaw to make new sounds can be incredibly uncomfortable, so some people by-pass the task and use similar sounds from their mother language rather than learning how to use the English sounds properly.
For example, many languages don’t have the / v / sound, so they compensate by using the / w / sound. As a result, ‘vodka’ becomes ‘wodka’ and ‘vacuum’ becomes ‘wacuum.’ It’s a minor difference and a speaker can still be easily understood, however, to sound indistinguishable from a native you will have to master all the English sounds.
The easiest way to do this is to familiarize yourself with International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and learn how to make each sound. This will include a lot of repetition as your training your mouth to make a sound it’s never used before. Once you’ve mastered phonetics you can master English pronunciation and sound just like a native.
