How do I reduce my American accent?

Question

I'm 17 years old now and I'm learning Spanish and Russian. I've read other places that we're known for having "nasal and annoying" accents, and I agree a lot with it. The thing that I have tried to reduce the nasal tone is talking more from my throat and not from the nose if you know what I mean.

I've also found out that a good way to learn a language is to just listen to it and interact with it, because if you learn it by just reading it or taking classes, you don't know how it sounds exactly.

How else can I get rid of my American accent? I know I'll never be able to get rid of it completely, but I want to reduce it as much as possible before I go to either Spain or Russia.

Additional Details

I can roll my R's with no effort at all, but what other things make an American accent annoying and nasal?

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

As for Russian, English-speaking people tend to make mistakes with stress in the words VERY often. In every other word somehow :) Stressed syllable sounds much longer than unstressed. Pay more attention for it.

Also pay attention for intonation. In Russian it goes down very deep at the end of sentences (unless you ask questions). Otherwise you will sound like person who asks question or person who is surprised with something all the time:

Hello? Is my name Mike?... I am fine!!! (it is ~ how English speaker sounds in Russian when he wants to say "Hello, My name in Mike.... I'm fine")

Source(s):

Russian

Answer 2

I strongly suggest that you go to forvo.com and listen to Russian and Spanish pronunciations. Keep on repeating after them until you can get it exactly/almost right WITHOUT DIFFICULTY. I don't want to break your heart, but it might take you at least 2 years to bring it to a reasonable level. Just don't lose heart if you don't get it right, right away. Just keep on practising. My native language has no guttural sounds but now I can produce it without difficulty after 3 years of practise.

Answer 3

try listening to Slavic people talk English, we can't say the "th" sound. It's horrendous. So i always tease my parents. :):)

Answer 4

Well as Wave said avoid "pitch-shifting" LOL, try to sound less nasal, listen to natives and practice.. practice every sound in the language, not only the "new" ones, 'cause in fact they ALL somehow sound slightly different, do not pronounce the russian letter О as А where О is unstressed -- as I know most of the time books or teachers will tell you to do so. But this is a mistake and in cases where О is unstressed there's actually a "third" sound, which is kinda morph or mix of both О and A.. So don't pronounce the words эта / это in the same way or the word москва as мАсква, золото as золАтА and so on..

Btw your accent is not "annoying" (unless you're from the south LOL.. I'm sorry, just kidding), it actually sounds cool in Russian..

@Ivan,
please speak for yourself, "th" is a cake..