The Real Reason Your Accent Goes Back to Your Native Language's

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]So when I was first learning Spanish, I really struggled with this sound as in a sound that doesn't exist in English.

[00:00:09]So it took me a long time to learn how to pronounce it and also how to pronounce it naturally in sentences. And one problem that I repeatedly came across was the fact that I could actually say this sound normally in sentences like when I was practicing or in words and things like that. However, when I was speaking to people on the street, my neighbors or even classmates and things like that, I found that I kept slipping back into this like an English h sound. So I would say like hamon and nanha instead of nanha and it really frustrated me because I knew that I could pronounce this sound when I was practicing it but the problem was when I was speaking naturally like when I was having conversations and stuff it's like my brain just forgot how to pronounce this sound and it's like my mouth would just default back to the the English sounds and The same happened with certain vowels. So as you know in English we have strong and weak vowel sounds and one of the weak vowel sounds is the schwah. So one thing that would keep happening and it still happens to this day which I'll talk about more in a moment is that I replace some of the weaker syllables with schwas in Spanish.

[00:01:32]So, a really common example, and it's a mistake I still make after like 13 years of learning Spanish is I always forget to say like professor with a strong a sound or barona with strong vowel sounds and I say like bara barcelona or I say uh like professor with this schwa sound and it's something that my brain just really struggles with. But there's a reason why that happens and it's because our brains are trying to juggle with grammar, vocabulary, listening to the other person, thinking about what to say next, and so on. So basically, your brain goes into like this sort of energy saving mode. And more often than not, the first thing that goes is your pronunciation or your accent, let's say. And even though you've been practicing a certain accent, maybe it's a more British accent or something like that, it doesn't matter how much you practice. Sometimes when you're speaking in conversations, it's like you just kind of resort back to this default setting of sounding like your your your first language is accent.

[00:02:40]And I know that this also happens to you. Otherwise, you wouldn't have clicked on this video, and you won't be asking yourself, why does this happen to me? For sure, it's happening to you, too. That's why you're here. Now, this isn't because you are bad at pronunciation or you just can't improve your accent. There are some really interesting reasons behind that. And in this video, I'm going to talk about the science behind it all and how you can overcome this problem. So, let's start with the brain and science. So, when you learn something new consciously, there are parts of your brain that hold this information. So they could be things like memorizing a telephone number, the pin number for your card. It could be an address or maybe like mathematical equations and things like that. Another one is remembering vocabulary, for example. Now with these things, your brain is actually thinking, right? Your brain is actually thinking about these things. So when you're having a conversation and you're talking to another person, you're listening, you're thinking about the grammar, you're thinking about the vocabulary, you're thinking, what is this person saying?

[00:03:40]What should I be saying next? What was that word they just said? I don't remember what that word means. And your brain is doing a lot of work up in there. So your brain essentially starts to offload some of that work and it goes into a kind of autopilot mode, let's say. So imagine your brain has all of these buttons turned on. Yeah. Grammar, vocabulary, what's happening, the conversation, uh facial expressions, movements, and so on. There are a lot of things going on. and it's going to flick a couple of those buttons off for sure, okay? Because there's so much happening.

[00:04:13]And more often than not, one of the things that gets turned off is your pronunciation. And what basically happens is your brain or your body resorts to muscle memory. So if you're used to saying this and that and duh instead of this, that, and the, even though you've been practicing these words and the th sound, it doesn't matter. So your brain is just going to kind of go back to this sort of comfortable autopilot position and it's just going to go back to this dot duh and so on. And this is because of muscle memory. It's because for so many years of your life, you've been saying this data and duh and you've not been using the th sound. This goes for words as well. So if there's a word that you have constantly mispronounced for many years and this mistake is kind of stuck let's say in your brain then you can kind of forget about it and as I said your brain will go in autopilot and it will resort back to that old way. So if you constantly mispronounce a word like comfortable instead of comfortable then your brain is just going to kind of switch off that bit. is going to go into muscle memory mode and it's just going to say comfortable and then you'll think afterwards, oh no, it's comfortable.

[00:05:25]Yeah. And then you get a bit frustrated with yourself. I know cuz I do the same in Spanish. So your native accent is essentially your muscle memory. you've said these sounds in your native language time and time and time and time again that when you now need to use new muscles and new sounds in English, you're just going to go straight back into autopilot and default back to those original sounds that you have in your native language. So that explains why that's happening. And of course, the faster you're speaking, the more kind of cognitive overload is going on. And therefore, more slips are going to happen. More of the buttons in your brain are going to have to be turned off. And that's when you start making mistakes. That's when you forget grammar rules as well. But most importantly, yeah, it's when you forget how to pronounce words or you you slip back into old habits and things like that.

[00:06:15]Stress and nerves can also make this worse. So, if you have something like a job interview or you need to give a presentation at work or you need to do an English exam or something like that or even just speak to a native speaker.

[00:06:27]A lot of my students, they feel absolutely fine talking to their classmates and stuff in English. But then as soon as they need to talk to a native speaker, they're like and they get like really nervous just cuz it's a native speaker. Then of course, when you get really nervous, your body starts to kind of freeze a little bit and your brain starts to go a bit blank. And this can make it worse. This can essentially affect your pronunciation. Sometimes your muscles can get more tense, especially if you're very nervous. And that affects your pronunciation, too.

[00:06:56]So, the key takeaway here is that your poor brain when you're having a conversation in English, is that it's just trying to help you. As unhelpful as it feels, but it is. It's just trying to offload some of that cognitive workload and just trying to find a shortcut. is trying to just flick off some of those buttons to make your life a bit easier so you can fully concentrate on the vocabulary or the grammar or what the person's saying. And your pronunciation just basically resorts to muscle memory and it goes back to really familiar sounds, stress patterns, intonation patterns. And those familiar ones tend to be the ones that are in your native language. Also, pronunciation is physical. The way that you move your tongue, teeth, jaw, pallets, and how they all touch each other are very different to the ways that they work in English and your native language. For example, take a language like French.

[00:07:49]It's very forwards in the mouth. And when you speak like this, it goes very forwards into the lips. Yeah. Because all the sounds are very forward. Then you take a language like English and if you try to speak English in a French way, then it starts to sound a bit more French. Yeah. So that's because you're using different muscles and different face shapes when you're speaking English compared to French. And the same happens in other languages as well. Like for example, in Spanish, it's not that open.

[00:08:18]Or in Japanese, again, like the vowels aren't as open as they are in English.

[00:08:22]This is one thing that I need to always tell my students is open your mouth. You really need to open your mouth and you need to lengthen those vowels as well because yeah, that's how the sounds work in English. So if your language has very closed vowels or very flat intonation, then you're going to bring those features over into English. So you need to be speaking English with English movements of your mouth. If you're using say Spanish movements or French movements of the mouth, then you're going to sound more French or you're going to sound more Spanish. And these movements and ways of speaking that you use in your native language are kind of ingrained in your brain. It's like a groove, let's say, is made into your brain. If you think of something like a road where cars have driven down that road many many many times and they've created these kind of grooves like these tracks almost in the road. It's almost like the sounds have sort of done that to your brain in your native language.

[00:09:18]But when you slow down you can actually consciously override these sounds and these grooves and kind of create new ones, let's say. So with enough practice, you can go from saying like R to R. But it takes a lot of training. So if all your life you've been saying red ready and so on, those grooves really are quite deep. So if you again take that car analogy in the road and going over and over and over and over until that groove is formed in the road, that's what you need to start thinking of pronunciation and accent as. that you can't just train a sound a couple of times and expect it to start replacing that old way, you know, that old groove.

[00:10:03]You need to be training again and again and again and again to form that new groove. So, most English learners kind of think one of two things. Oh, I can never change my English pronunciation.

[00:10:15]It is terrible and I'm stuck with these sounds forever and I will always sound like a Spanish speaker. or they realize that they can change these sounds that they can create new habits and patterns and new grooves let's call them and these are the yes I can do it people however instead of thinking about this as I can change my pronunciation and accent and I can't change it because I'm a lost cause I want you to start thinking about it in these three ways instead so typically learners go through three stages stage one is I have come across a new sound I don't know this sound it doesn't exist in my native language. It feels strange. I'm doing it wrong. Feels weird. Help. Am I doing it right? Okay, that's normally stage one.

[00:11:00]Then you start practicing that sound very carefully, very consciously, very slowly, maybe with a teacher or perhaps you're just listening to a dictionary and repeating and repeating and repeating after audios. And then you start to enter stage two. And stage two is normally I can pronounce the sound now. good, but it's only when I slow down and when I concentrate. Most learners stay stuck at two thinking that that's the final point and they don't quite know how to get to stage three or they're kind of in a limbo point. Like sometimes they can pronounce that sound, but then maybe when they get quite nervous or something like that or just uh from time to time they slip back into this old habit and then they're stuck between stage two and three. And many pronunciation teachers and videos online only take you to stage two. So they'll help you become aware of the sounds.

[00:11:53]That's stage one. Then two, they help you correct those sounds and correct those words. But very, very few pronunciation teachers help you get to stage three. And stage three requires a very different kind of practice compared to stages two and one. But don't worry, I will show you in this video how to practice for stage three. And if you want that practice and the support to be structured if you're looking for guidance and feedback on your pronunciation, then that's something that we do inside Emma's pronunciation hub. But that will be at the end of the video. Right now, I want to share the tips with you on how to practice to get from that stage two to stage three.

[00:12:29]Okay? So, I'm going to share six tips.

[00:12:31]Number one is to drill at speed, not just slowly. So, drilling is when you repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat something. But the problem is many learners, they just take these little phrases or words and they just practice them very slowly and carefully. The problem with that is you're only learning how to say these sounds and words slowly and carefully. You're not building up the fluency to be able to say them quickly when you're speaking in natural conversations. So what you can do is start slowly and then build up the speed gradually. So let's say for example you are struggling with the sound R in English. So you take a word like are you ready? Are you ready? So ready is the key word. Ready? Okay, good. I can pronounce that. Put it in a sentence. Are you ready? Are you ready?

[00:13:22]Good. I can now say that. Then I build up and up and up and up until I can get to a natural speed. Now, you don't just want to do this at like a super unnatural fast speed like, "Are you ready? Are you ready? You ready?"

[00:13:34]because saying it quickly like that is just completely useless. You're never going to have to say it that quickly in natural speech. So don't try and say it as fast as you can. There's no need to do that. Just make sure you're doing it at a very natural speed. So are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? The goal is to keep practicing until you find a speed where your pronunciation starts to become quite difficult and then you just slow it down a bit. Keep practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing.

[00:14:03]Drill, drill, drill, drill, drill until it starts to feel more natural. And make sure that you're not just practicing the sounds in isolation. Make sure you're also practicing words and that those words are in chunks or that they're in sentences or something like that.

[00:14:16]Because if you're just saying the word ready, ready, ready, ready, ready, but then you're saying it in a sentence later, you're not quite trained enough yet to be able to transition into that word. And that's when hesitation and stumbling and stammers and things like that can can happen. Tip number two is to shadow at full speed. So shadowing is one of the most powerful and in my opinion one of the best techniques to help you with your pronunciation and accent. It's essentially when you listen and you repeat. Listen and repeat.

[00:14:46]Listen and repeat. That's it. Now there are two main ways that you can shadow.

[00:14:50]You can listen, pause, and repeat after.

[00:14:53]or you can repeat at the same time as listening, which is a lot more difficult, but it's really, really good for improving your speed and fluency. If you're not sure what to listen and use as shadowing materials, then I do have a free story for you which you can download as part of my pronunciation pack. The link to download the pronunciation pack is down below in the description. It's completely free to download. With that, you'll receive a story. It's a very short one along with the phonetic transcription. Now, you don't have to read the phonetic transcription. That's just for the nerds among us. But you need to be reading the story and listening to the audio. And you need to repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat until it starts to feel natural. If you want to try the method of repeating at the same time, the best thing to do is to choose a text or a video or something like that that you're already familiar with. So you're not really thinking, oh, what are they saying? What's the next word? You can just listen and repeat, listen and repeat, listen and repeat. And again, if you want to go even deeper with this, inside Emma's pronunciation hub, we really focus heavily on shadowing. So, we train you to say the sound correctly in isolation, then we build up into words, then into chunks, then into sentences, and then full conversations.

[00:16:05]There are also more stories inside Emma's pronunciation hub, but as I mentioned earlier, I'm not going to talk about that right now. I'll talk about it more at the end of this lesson. For now, we're going to go on to tip number three, which is overarning. Now, if you remember before I talked about those grooves in your brain, like the grooves in a road and that kind of set pronunciation that's stuck. Well, you can train new grooves. And the problem with many people when they start learning about pronunciation is that they will train a little bit. They'll be able to say the sounds. They can say them in isolation. They can say them in words. They can say them when practicing, but they're not repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating. I'm going to say that word a million times because you need to understand that you need to repeat and repeat and repeat and train muscles in order to form those new grooves. Again, you're thinking of that car going going going over the road and creating those new grooves in the road. That's what you're doing with your pronunciation.

[00:17:03]And most people stop practicing when they think, "Oh, well, I can say this when I'm practicing. All good." Well, no. The grooves need to be made. You need to keep practicing. That car needs to keep going over the road. You need to keep saying that sound repeatedly. I want you to think of pronunciation like you're learning how to play the piano.

[00:17:22]Imagine you learn how to play a song, but you can only play that song slowly.

[00:17:27]Are you going to stop learning how to play the piano? Are you going to stop perfecting that song? No. You're going to keep practicing and practicing and practicing until it becomes like second nature to play that song. And that's the same with pronunciation. You can't just play the song slowly. Okay. You can't just say the sound slowly and think, "Good, got it. I've learned the song.

[00:17:48]I've learned the sound." No, you need to keep practicing until you are able to play the song naturally. Same with the sounds. Yeah. Until you're able to say them naturally. Tip number four is to record yourself and listen to it. I know many people hate this one, but you've got to do it. So, practicing alone in a controlled environment is great, okay?

[00:18:10]It gives you lots of space to practice freely. There's no judgment. No one can laugh at you. It's fine. However, if you're not listening to how you sound, then how do you know that you're doing the sounds correctly? So, the next time you're practicing your pronunciation, record yourself and compare your recording to the original audio that you're shadowing. How closely do you sound to that original recording? How's your intonation? Is your intonation the same or is it very flat? Are you slipping back into old habits and saying things like this is duh instead of this is the Are you pronouncing the vowels correctly? Are you using strong and weak forms? You need to be listening for all of these things and comparing them with the original recording. So listen carefully. If you find it a little bit overwhelming, you can just choose one thing. If you want two or three things maximum and think, okay, am I saying my R in the correct way? Am I saying my th's in the correct way? Is my stress and intonation correct? And so on. You can choose the three things that you want to focus on, but just make it the target of your practice. Number five, and this is a little bit of a cheat. I like this one, is to target high frequency words and phrases. So if you find that you're always stumbling over a certain word or phrase or something, then repeat that. Practice that. Don't waste your time practicing a certain sound if the sound isn't the issue.

[00:19:32]Practice the phrase or practice the word. Or if you find that there are certain phrases that you always say, but you want to be able to say them correctly. So instead of saying I think, you practice I think. I think. I think.

[00:19:44]I think. Another really big one is and then. A lot of students stumble and they're like and then. But you can say and then and then and then and then and then. And then when you need to say it in a sentence, you're able to say it more naturally. And number six, you're going to hate me for this one, but it is to step outside of your comfort zone. I want you to speak English and perform under some mild pressure. So, for example, let's imagine you are always scared to talk to your colleagues at work. The next time you're going to work, try and be brave. Try and talk to them. Or let's say you avoid answering the phone or you avoid calling people because you think, "Oh, I hate talking on the phone. I hate doing calls because people don't understand me."

[00:20:28]Just try put yourself in those positions and step out of your comfort zone because if you never step outside of your comfort zone, it's never going to grow. So if you're here, your comfort zone is here and you're going to stay here forever, right? But if you start doing these little things, answering the phone instead of telling people to email you, um giving a presentation, speaking up in a meeting, blah blah blah, all these things, your comfort zone is going to grow and grow and grow. So, I want you to stop avoiding phone calls. Stop avoiding meetings. Stop avoiding whatever it is that you're avoiding.

[00:21:04]Just stop. Be brave. The worst thing that can happen is that when you're on the phone, you just say, "Actually, I'm really sorry. can you send me an email instead? That's the worst case scenario.

[00:21:17]Or if you're in a meeting and people don't understand you, worst case scenario, people don't understand you and it's okay. They're your colleagues.

[00:21:24]You'll be fine. The world will keep on spinning. But if you want to take some baby steps and just very very slightly stick your toe out of the comfort zone, then here's something you can try.

[00:21:35]Number one is by reading something aloud and letting the other person listen to you and correct you. Number two is instead of messaging your English friends, send them a WhatsApp voice note instead. Third one is to join a conversation club or go to conversation classes. Sometimes one-on-one classes can be quite intimidating. So if you go to group classes, it at least gives you some time to think about what you're going to say first before you answer. So they can be a little bit less intimidating. And the last one is to put yourself in certain conversations where you can talk and it's okay if people misunderstand you. It's very low stakes, let's say, maybe like a barbecue at a friend's house or something like that, but try to not focus on self-correcting all the time, and just get into the habit of speaking. The goal here is to gradually raise the pressure for you and push you out of your comfort zone.

[00:22:28]Because the more you push yourself out of your comfort zone, the more you're going to grow. And the things that used to scare you won't scare you anymore.

[00:22:35]Now, I know how it feels and how frustrating it is when you've been practicing your pronunciation and yet you still get this feedback of you're still doing things wrong or you still need to improve. I still don't understand you, you're still not doing that right and so on. It can be frustrating, demotivating, demoralizing even. And especially after putting in so much effort, it can feel like why am I even putting in so much work? Why am I wasting my time? Especially if you're paying for courses as well, it can feel like not just wasting your time, but why am I wasting my money as well? However, I want you to think about it like this.

[00:23:10]If you don't have those sounds in your native language, and then you're able to pronounce those sounds and those words consciously and carefully when you're practicing, then you're already progressing. You're already moving from stage one to stage two. The next step for you is just moving from stage two to stage three. And that's the part that you're kind of getting frustrated at.

[00:23:34]So, you're still progressing. Don't worry. It's just that you need that little bit of extra practice and a different type of practice to get to that next stage. So, your pronunciation isn't stuck, which a lot of people say to me that their pronunciation is, or it's not plateaued necessarily. You're still progressing, but you're just stuck in that little kind of transition phase between stage two and stage three. So, after watching this video, I'd like you to do this exercise. I'd like you to record yourself for about a minute. Just tell me a story of what you did yesterday. It doesn't matter what you say. The words aren't important. The key thing is that you're speaking. Then I'd like you to listen for three words that you struggled with or that you mispronounced or that a sound was incorrectly pronounced in those words.

[00:24:20]So for example, if you said ready instead of ready. And I want you to take those three words and practice them over the next seven days. That's it. Just those three words over the next seven days. Then record yourself again using those three words and listen back to your recording and compare yourself. How did you pronounce those three words on day one in your first recording? And how are you saying those three words again in your final recording? If you've been practicing correctly, you'll be able to hear the difference between the two recordings and how you're pronouncing those three words. Now, everything we've talked about in today's video, muscle memory, the three stages, and how to transition from stage two to stage three so that your pronunciation is more, let's say, automatic and more natural when you're speaking in conversation is the exact thing we focus on and solve inside Emma's pronunciation hub. It's a structured British English pronunciation program that takes you from where you are now through the three stages where good pronunciation becomes part of your everyday accent and natural speech.

[00:25:26]Every week you'll get new lessons that focus on the specific sounds, intonation, and stress patterns that speakers of your native language struggle with the most. So, this isn't a generic pronunciation course. This focuses on exactly the sounds that you need to focus on. And everything in the course is tailored specifically to you and your native language's most common mistakes in English. Every week you'll receive personal feedback from a pronunciation expert. And it's not just generic feedback like well done and keep practicing, but it's specific targeted corrections so you know exactly what you need to fix and what you need to do to fix those issues. But it's specific targeted corrections so you know exactly what you need to do so you keep progressing every single week. Over six months, you will learn and master all of the rules of British English pronunciation, as well as completely retrain the way that your mouth moves in English. You'll build new muscle memory and replace those old habits with the correct pronunciations. This is a structured, expertly guided step-by-step pronunciation plan that finally gets you to the other side and helps you take your pronunciation to the next level.

[00:26:35]The doors are open right now for enrollment, but they won't be for very long. and the doors will open again for enrollment later this year. So, if you've been watching my videos on YouTube and you're ready to become more serious about your pronunciation and take that next step, then you can click the link down below in the description.

[00:26:52]So, if you've been watching my videos on YouTube for months, maybe even years, and you still feel stuck and like you're not progressing with your pronunciation, then this is the moment for you. You need to stop watching random videos and guessing what you need to focus on and follow a clear and tailored step-by-step structure along with feedback so you know that you're pronouncing everything correctly and not reinforcing bad habits. The link to enroll in Emma's pronunciation hub is below in the description of this video. That's the end of today's video. I hope you've enjoyed it and you've learned something new. I hope as well it's also changed your way of thinking about pronunciation. Remember to subscribe if you'd like more British English pronunciation videos and I will see you in the next lesson and hopefully inside Emma's pronunciation hub. Bye-bye.