There were a few news items on a report that recently found that babies pick up an accent in the womb. The researchers studied French and German babies cries and found that the French babies had a rising intonation in their cries and German ones had a falling intonation.

Here’s the article from NPR. And here’s the quote I found most interesting:

Previous studies have already shown that newborns appear to show a preference for melodies that they heard prenatally. And Toben Mintz, associate professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, says scientists already knew that newborns can distinguish different languages, probably based on rhythmic patterns.

“But what is really novel about this study is showing that they can actually produce these patterns in their cries,” Mintz says. “Crying is not linguistic, yet they seem to be echoing the acoustic patterns that they’ve heard either in utero or every early on, very early exposure, right after birth.”

I try to encourage my clients to hear the rhythm of language as separate from the pronunciation. This article helps show that is how we processed the sounds of language before we were even breathing air!

I’ve just finished reading “How We Decide” by Jonah Lehrer. It’s about the neuroscience behind decisions. There is discussion about fMRI scans, what the amygdala does in different situations, and what neurons are up to in the decision-making process. It’s quite interesting, and the examples he uses (while perhaps more interesting to men than women: sports, war, and airplane pilots) give real-life examples of how our brains get us to act.

The section that I found applicable to accent modification (or trying to change any behavior, really) is in the chapter titled “The Brain Is an Argument.” When we’re faced with a message we don’t want to hear, we tend to turn up the static in our minds — we think about other things, we pay attention to everything but the unwanted message. But in order to make a change, we need to minimize that static and listen to the unpleasant message. Here’s a quote, from page 217:

The only way to counteract the bias for certainty is to encourage some inner dissonance. We must force ourselves to think about the information we don’t want to think about, to pay attention to the data that disturbs our entrenched beliefs. When we start censoring our minds, turning off those brain areas that contradict our assumptions, we end up ignoring relevant evidence.

How does this apply to accent modification? My clients come to me because they want to change the way they communicate. But sometimes, when I play their recordings back to them, or ask them to re-view a videotape of themselves, they tune out the evidence that they are pronouncing things incorrectly or using non-standard intonation. They’ve heard themselves a certain way for a very long time, and listening to their own voices as “wrong” disturbs their entrenched beliefs.

Getting clients to be open to novelty (mindfulness principle number one) can be quite a challenge, when what is novel is the idea that their own speech is giving out information that they don’t want to hear.

I was at a dinner party recently and one of the guests was English. He said the word “car” in a perfectly simple, understandable sentence, “my brother has that car.” Half the people sitting at the table couldn’t understand him. He was speaking in a perfectly educated, nice “Queen’s English” type of accent; it wasn’t like he was busting out the ol’ cockney rhyming slang, mate. He said /ka’/. Now bear in mind, that everyone who couldn’t understand him was either from Massachusetts or New York and had heard both Bostonians and New Yorkers say their version of “car” — this wasn’t some sort group from Minnesota who’d never heard a regressive “r.” And most, if not all, of the people had been to England.

I was taken aback. If cosmopolitan East Coasters have a hard time around a dinner table with no outside interference understanding someone speaking a very normal sentence in crisp British English, how much trouble would these same people have with a non-native English speaker? Granted, this was the only word that was lost (as far as was obvious), but really, this surprised me.And when people at the table said, “Oh, caRRR,” emphasizing the final /r/, I was reminded of how crucial this sound is to our (no pun intended) understanding of language.

Our /r/ is so different from the way it’s pronounced everywhere else. It’s a sound that I have to work on with all of my clients, no matter what their native language is. And non-native English speakers who’ve had British teachers in English class are at a double disadvantage.

The more I learn about mindfulness, the more its importance becomes clear. I am trying to practice mindfulness in my own life, and am trying to teach my accent clients to be mindful about the way they create sounds. I hope that the more mindful I can be about my own behaviors, the more effective I will be in teaching mindfulness to them.

I’m currently reading “Mindful Eating” by Jan Chozen Bays, MD, and found this quote:

When we learn how to use this simple tool [mindfulness] and find for ourselves what it can do, it seems miraculous. It can transform boredom into curiosity, distressed restlessness into ease, and negativity into gratitude. Using mindfulness we will find that anything, anything, we bring our full attention to will begin to open up and reveal worlds we never suspected existed. (p. 2)

I hope I can pass on this understanding of how focused awareness can facilitate change from the inside, and hope I can continue being mindful in my own life.

Sean Connery has topped a recent list of the worst accents of actors in movies. Empire magazine has come out with a top-ten list of the worst accents in English. Some are supposed to be British, some South African, some Irish, and poor Sir Sean was supposed to be American.

Actors hire fancy accent coaches to help them achieve a natural sound. Just like with my clients, some people have more success than others.

Here’s their list:

1. Sean Connery (Hunt for Red October)
2. Dick Van Dyke (Mary Poppins)
3. Brad Pitt (Seven Years in Tibet)
4. Charlton Heston (Touch of Evil)
5. Heather Graham (From Hell)
6. Keanu Reeves (Bram Stoker’s Dracula)
7. Julia Roberts (Mary Reilly)
8. Laurence Olivier (The Jazz Singer)
9. Peter Postlethwaite (The Usual Suspects)
10. Meryl Streep (Out of Africa)

There is a very interesting post on Consumerist.com today — the title: “Even Indians Hate Indian Call Centers“. 

The article is about the frustration of not finding resolution to the issues for which one calls customer support. But the comments from Consumerist readers weigh heavily on how frustrated American callers are in speaking with people who have difficult to understand accents.

Hey, call centers of the world — help is available! I wonder how many of the call centers make use of accent modification training for their employees. To date, all of my clients have been US-based, but I would relish the opportunity to work with an Indian call center. I’m in discussions with the Department of Commerce to see how to promote my services overseas, so perhaps someday soon I’ll be able to help out some of those CSRs named “Sally” and “Bob” that the Consumerist readers have such a tough time with….

I have been making mindfulness an explicit part of my accent training process for the past year or so. I’ve adapted a list of the five qualities of mindfulness from Ellen Langer’s book on Mindfulness and help my clients examine how they relate to changing their accents:

1.   Openness to novelty. (You will experience new muscle movements, new awareness and use of breath, and you will hear yourself in a new way).

 2.   Alertness to distinction. (Begin to recognize the difference in the sounds you make and the sounds native English speakers make. Listen for differences among native English speakers, too).

 3.   Sensitivity to different contexts. (How does environment affect your speech choices? Others’ choices?)

 4.   Implicit or explicit awareness of multiple perspectives. (What do other people think of the way you speak? Can they understand you? How do they perceive you?)

 5.   Orientation in the present. (Be conscious of what your body is doing, and be conscious of how you sound).

According to US News and World Reports, Accent Modification Trainer is one of the eleven “best-kept-secret careers” for 2009. They are in alphabetical order, so we come out on top.

Here’s what the article gives as a “snapshot” of the profession:

 A customer-service person in India speaks perfect English but wants his accent more clearly understood by Americans. A Chinese scientist at a government lab speaks poor English and in such a heavy accent that it’s hard to understand him. A corporation has executives with thick Brooklyn, African-American, Latino, or southern accents, and the company believes they’ll be more credible if they sound more like a TV news anchor. These are typically the clients of accent-reduction specialists, also known as accent neutralization or accent modification specialists. Demand for this specialty is strong. Most accent-reduction specialists come from the ranks of speech therapists or English-as-a-Second-Language teachers.

The reporter got what we do, but used the term accent “reduction” rather than accent “modification.” I think modification is the more accurate term, since we are changing, not reducing people’s accents, but “reduction” is easier to understand. I find that when I say “accent modification” I frequently have to further define what it is that we do. 

Well, great to know that we’re in a hot career! Let’s hope 2009 will be a good year for all of us.

Speak Easy Accent Modification was featured on the program “Making it Here” on the local PBS station, WGBY in Springfield, Mass. The file is too large to load directly into the blog, but here’s a link to it on my homepage for anyone who is interested:

Speak Easy

I got this from a client in the Boston area. It’s funny because it’s true.

Welcome to Bawstin …

Frappes have ice cream, milk shakes don’t.
If it is fizzy and flavored, it’s tonic.
Soda is CLUB SODA.
‘Pop’ is Dad.
When we want Tonic WATER, we will ask for Tonic WATER.
The smallest beer is a pint.
Scrod is whatever they tell you it is, usually fish.
If you paid more than $6/pound, you got scrod.
It’s not a water fountain; it’s a bubblah.
It’s not a trash can; it’s a barrel.
It’s not a shopping cart; it’s a carriage.
It’s not a purse; it’s a pockabook. 
It’s not an Italian; it’s a sub.
They’re not franks; they’re haht dahgs. Franks are money in France.
Police don’t drive patrol units or black and whites they drive a ‘crooza’.
It’s not a traffic circle, it’s a rotary.
‘Going to the islands’ means Martha’s Vineyard & Nantucket.

Bostonians… Think that it’s their God-given right to cut off someone in traffic.
Bostonians…think that there are only 25 letters in the alphabet (no R’s).
Bostonians…think that three straight days of 90+ temperatures is a heat wave.
Bostonians…refer to six inches of snow as a ‘dusting.’
Bostonians…always ‘bang a left’ as soon as the light turns green, and oncoming
traffic always expec ts it.
Bostonians…say everything in town is ‘a five-minute walk.’ (pronounced ‘wok’)
Bostonians…believe that using your turn signal is a sign of weakness.
Bostonians…think that 63-degree ocean water is warm.
Bostonians…think Rhode Island accents are annoying.