In this Episode I chat with my good friend Adrian, a fellow accent coach. Learn about Adrian´s skills, tips and anecdotes about being a polyglot! And how this skill enhances his teaching methods, together, we discuss the importance of understanding the production and context of sounds in language learning AND teaching! And how connecting similiar sounds between different languages can make a huge difference for students!

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Today we're going to talk about being a polyglot.

Learning languages, multiple languages, and also how being a polyglot can teach

you to become a better teacher yourself.

And today I'm going to talk about that with a friend named Adrian.

He runs what's called Accent Amazing.

I found him on Instagram a few years ago when I was looking

for other accent coaches.

And he's so knowledgeable.

You guys are going to learn so much today through his passion of learning and

teaching through languages and how sounds really help us to create inroads and

how the more aware we become of sounds, the easier it is to pick up languages

and to sound better in those languages.

There's so many tips and so many tricks that I want you to hear today.

I hope you really enjoy today's episode.

I'm Bianca, your personal American accent coach, and I'm here to help

you master an American accent in English because your voice is your

choice when it comes to how you sound.

I try to release a podcast episode every two weeks, and so you should

really subscribe to whatever podcast platform you use so that

you don't miss the newest episode.

And by the way, if you want to see the full video of the episode, it's available

at Accent Coach Bianca on YouTube.

Now let's get on with the show.

Hey, Adrian, it's so nice to see you.

Welcome again.

I haven't seen you in a long time.

We used to do some Instagram lives, and this is the first

time we've been on the podcast.

I'm interested to have you today because you're one of the, one of the

few polyglots that I know, and I know that you have participated and you've

given some talks and workshops at the Polyglot Gathering, which is exciting.

And today we want to talk about how that helps you learn things and teach things as

well, because you're also an accent coach.

Can you tell us more about yourself first?

Sure.

My name is Adrian.

I am an accent coach.

I specialize in the American accent or various types of American

accents, but usually I teach one, one type to most of my students.

And then.

I help high level learners of English sound less foreign and more native.

I studied linguistics in university, naturally, because I love languages

and I like, understanding their structures and how they're different.

Not just learn to speak it, which of course I like to do, but actually

understanding the phonology and phonetics.

For example, I studied Korean by myself before university because

I was really interested in, like, how the sounds changed.

So the phonology, even though I, at that time, I didn't know

it was called phonology, right?

Because it was before university.

I'm originally from Hong Kong.

I grew up there, but my dad is from the U.

S.

And my mom, she was she's from Hong Kong, but she also lived in the U.

S.

and in Canada as well.

So I grew up speaking mostly English, but there were four, four languages

spoken in the household, so there was English mostly everyone spoke English.

And then my dad spoke Mandarin at some degree, but his native tongue is English.

My mom spoke speaks Cantonese and Shanghainese.

And then my grandparents also spoke Shanghainese.

So that's English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Shanghainese.

So I spoke some degree of those ones.

And I was always interested in those like the differences because

they're systematically different, which is something we can talk

about later in the podcast.

That's my background.

Oh, that's fantastic.

Yeah, I think a lot of people who are interested in languages, it comes from

something when they were young too.

I remember when I was a kid, I was fascinated when I went to a garage sale.

I don't know if you're old enough to remember garage sales or yard sales,

but I would go and people used to learn with physical flashcards, right?

And they would be written on index cards or paper.

And sometimes they were more professional, but I would, I was just in love with.

Language flashcards, and I would find them at garage sales and

yard sales for nothing, right?

Because people would often buy them and never learn the language.

So I would pick them up for a quarter, and I just loved looking

at them because I loved how, to me, it was like a font, right?

Oh, this is a font of how somebody thinks and speaks.

And I was really enamored with that.

And when I went to university, I also studied linguistics.

But more through the lens of anthropology and meaning I first, I

took a bunch of anthropology courses and then linguistics was later and I

fell in love with French phonetics.

So I think we have that background as well, even though in my house, when

I, where I grew up, it only English was spoken, even though my father's

side of the family spoke greek, and my mother's side of the family, they

spoke some French and German, but in the house, we didn't really speak it.

I feel like we have similar childhoods in that.

Tell us more about being a polyglot and what that means, because I know

it's a pretty common term, but people might not know to what extent it means.

If I speak two languages, am I a polyglot?

If I picked up some Spanish because I watch a lot of telenovelas,

am I considered a polyglot?

What does it mean to be a polyglot?

Can we start with that?

Yeah I think the definition is just someone who speaks many languages,

and and that's basically the definition, so that might, it's a little bit vague,

some people might consider many languages to be three or more maybe even two or

more, maybe some people are like, oh, it's only if it's five or more, and

then I don't think it's that clearly defined, but it just means, poly means

many, and glot means many, Speaking.

So you speak multiple languages.

Yeah, I actually don't even call myself a polyglot, but people call me that

and I'll accept that terminology.

I don't think I speak any language fluently except for English.

Like all my other languages I'm, working on and I'd like to improve.

But yeah that's how I see the term polyglot, and I'm happy to accept it,

but I don't usually call myself that.

I've heard that same thing a few times, and I find that very interesting

because let's say I speak French, and I'm like, yeah, I speak French,

and you learn a language in school, or you learn a language on your own,

Or you learn through Netflix or whatever, and, there's a certain level

at which you need to feel like, yes I, I can do this language, right?

Maybe at the beginning it's very receptive, right?

And then later you're starting to speak it either by yourself alone in your room

or with some other people, but you, at some point you yourself have decided,

yes, I speak this language, right?

And then for, I feel like there's sometimes an imposter syndrome

thing there where you say " Oh, I don't really speak X language."

I took some Russian in school, I took a little bit of German, but those aren't,

those don't go on my list, right?

Unless somebody asks and they're digging deeper.

I think it's interesting that you bring that up, because I wonder, when you go

to these polyglot gatherings or other polyglot happenings, let's say, what,

when people decide to go there, they have already accepted the fact that they

label themselves as a polyglot, right?

At some point you accept that and you wear it proudly, yeah?

Oh, I'm not sure.

I think most do.

But the polyglot gathering the largest gathering of language lovers and educators

and other people who do language related stuff in the world, that it just says

you need to speak only one language, to communicate if you like languages.

But I think everyone who I met there, I would call a polyglot, even

if they wouldn't call a polyglot.

It's Yeah, I think it's the same with me, they might not call themselves a polyglot,

but other people would consider it.

I always qualify, what languages I speak to what degree people always ask

Oh, how many languages do you speak?

I'm like, speaking a language.

And then you can have a conversation.

And I'm like, what level of conversation?

Because, I usually do that in a teasing way, because I know

what they're trying to say.

Yeah,

After I asked maybe what, like some qualifying questions like that.

I'm like, okay I would say that I can have an interesting conversation

comfortably about things that are beyond the, just introductions and

like travel and survival stuff.

I can have interesting conversations about more complex topics I know

what's going on in the news.

in about seven or eight languages but I don't think I'm fluent.

I'm not fluent in those languages.

But then I would say, in this order from best to worst that I'm comfortable in,

it's English and then Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish French, and then Portuguese.

I'm not quite sure.

It's like Portugal, I'm thinking those.

Sounds from like words from Spanish and changing it a little bit to Portuguese.

And then I've, I lived in Brazil, like recently, earlier this year for

a month and a half, and I was just speaking Portuguese all the time.

Or at least I think it was Portuguese and I had no problem.

I'd say that, but I do definitely use some Spanish words.

And then Polish, Russian, and those are the ones I'm comfortable in.

And then I also have more basic, but travel sort of stuff and

some basic conversation in like Croatian, Korean and Japanese.

I was speaking Korean and Japanese when I was in Korea and Japan.

To get around.

I don't think I'll be comfortable.

That's that's how I would say my polyglottery is

Nice.

I love that word.

My polyglottery.

Awesome.

And yeah, I love how everybody's different.

They all feel comfortable at certain levels.

Like I might be "comfortable" in in a Spanish conversation at B one, but

you might not be comfortable at B two.

And even when you use the, that framework, when you say A one A two,

a lot of people might not know that unless they're already into languages.

So you have to find a way to describe it, so that they can.

Understand it.

And they're probably just looking to see how many languages you're

into or what you're into, because I imagine they're always surprised.

Like maybe you're sitting at a cafe and you overhear a little

bit of Korean behind you.

And so then you just go up to that person and you say something and it

probably just blows their eyeballs open.

No, yeah.

That's happened.

I went to a language exchange.

I often go to language exchanges because I love them.

But it wasn't actually a language exchange.

Nominally, but everyone was just practicing English, or just but

then this was in Gothenburg last month, no, the month before.

And it was I met one guy who was from Croatia and now I started

speaking Croatian to him and he was like really surprised.

And then he became then he was talking to me a lot.

He became really like energized.

And we had a cool conversation in Croatia.

Yeah, that's it's always fun because people are always surprised when I

know something from their languages.

For example, when I was at the party a couple years ago in Hungary, in Budapest,

and I sat down at a table that seemed to be empty, but then these people came

by and they looked Central Asian ish.

I wasn't quite sure they looked could be Central Asian or East Asian.

They looked really, like not happy.

They're like frowning stuff.

I was like, "Oh, is it okay if I sit here?"

He's and then they were like, "Yeah, fine."

And then I heard them speak Russian.

And I was like, excuse me, are you from Kazakhstan?

And then they suddenly, and then they were really surprised and

" Oh, yeah, how do you know about Kazakhstan?"

And I started speaking, I said a few Kazakh words.

I only know Kazakh words and then I spoke some Russian to them

and they were super friendly.

But it, it opened a door, it opens doors and people are surprised

when you know about their country or their language and that you

can communicate in their language.

It like surprises them and they get really excited about it.

Oh, totally.

Yeah, totally.

Like you and I, we speak English as a first language, so it's maybe not

as, it doesn't hit us as hard as if we spoke a language that had a

smaller number of speakers, right?

And if we finally encountered somebody randomly like that, oh my God, I

would be in love with that person.

Yeah, totally.

And not just, for example, not just Russian is also a very

large language, large group.

And then you're like, more specifically though, oh, Kazakh, like who's

gonna know that, they makes people feel so seen, so heard literally.

And so welcome, I'm sure when this happens.

So it's a way like, yeah you're bridging, you're making bridges, you're

opening doors, but also it's that connection that I think language is

all about, and so I, it just really warms my heart to hear that too.

Yeah.

You mentioned Kazakh.

What was it about the Mongolian one too?

I think you, you said something about Mongolian.

I didn't say it I didn't say it yet, but yeah, sometimes I met Mongolians

and I know a few words from Mongolian because I in High School, we had a school

trip to Mongolia and that's actually the first time I learned like I was

preparing for that because I've always been interested in other cultures and

other countries and like Mongolia was.

So different so I wanted to prepare.

So I took, I picked up a Mongolian book and I started learning

how to pronounce the things.

Like it was the Cyrillic alphabet.

It's actually, that's where I learned the Cyrillic alphabet.

It wasn't for Russia.

I learned Mongolian and I still remember a bunch of phrases in Mongolian.

And I whenever I meet a Mongolian, I can do some introductory

things like, "Oh, my name is.

. How are you?

And my name is Adrian . And then what is your name?

Tan."

I get really surprised.

One of the Kazakhs that I met at that party, like we were friends still

and like a year later when I visited Prague where he is based he was

like, "Hey, I'll show you around."

So he, he showed me around, he drove me around and like his English is, not good.

His English is really bad.

So we spoke mostly, we spoke only in Russian.

So that was that was good

. And we're still friends like a couple of years later yeah.

So if he visits, I'm going to show him around as well.

That's exciting.

That's super exciting.

And it's funny that you touched on that subject because a lot of people, we said

connection is really important for a purpose of motivation behind language.

But also like friendships, you connect with people and you stay friends

with them for a very long time.

So it's like when you have a shared interest, whatever that is, baking

bread, making Legos together, whatever it is if you can find people who speak

a different language but have the same passion as you, in this case, the

passion is languages, then I feel like you've got lifelong friends there too.

So I think that's why community.

Yeah.

Community is really important there.

And I and I heard you mention that like Polish and Croatian and things like that.

And would you say that I'm just guessing from your Instagram posts and things

like that, would you say that Slavic languages would be your favorite?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah I was thinking of niching towards Slavic languages, just

cause I, I really Slavic languages.

They're so interesting.

They're quite different from English, like romantically and

sound wise like structurally.

And also I'm often in Slavic countries or countries where

they speak Slavic languages.

I'm currently in Latvia.

They'd speak Latvian, but they also speak Russian a lot here.

I think 25 percent of the population is ethnic Russian.

But, Latvian and Lithuanian are actually Baltic languages, which are part of the

Balto Slavic group, so there's a lot of similarities as well, which is cool.

But yeah, no, I really like Slavic languages.

Polish is my best.

I actually, one time due to a social media trend, I was challenged to write

a short rap song in it, and I did.

That is fantastic.

Maybe we could link to that because that sounds super, super interesting.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

I don't want to think about that.

Yeah, we'll say maybe.

Yeah, maybe.

I like I like Slavic languages a lot.

And once you learn one the next one becomes so much easier because they're

so similar because they were mostly, they were like the same language

until I think a thousand years ago, but I'm not a hundred percent sure,

but I think they branched off.

Very recently so they have a lot of similarities.

So it, my first Slavic language was Russian, and it took me a year and

a half of study like self study and some private classes to be comfortable

making, I don't know maybe even A2 sentences, or maybe low B1 sentences,

it took me a year and a half.

And then I studied Polish and it took me three months to get to a point where when

I took the a placement test for a course that I was going to take when I was based

in Poland for a while they told me that I could take either the A2 classes or B1

classes, and it only took me three months.

And then,

Sometime just after COVID or just towards the end of COVID, when

I was starting to actually do this digital nomad thing and my first stop

was Croatia, I started to take some Croatian classes on Italki and it took

me two hours to form basic sentence, be comfortable with basic sentences.

Like it's so similar.

Yeah.

And now I can just read a lot of Slavic languages.

I just look at it and I understand a lot of things without even studying it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was just gonna say it's a kind of domino effect.

I guess it builds off of each other and it's, I want to, there's got to

be a phrase about this, like less is more, but it's not some kind

of maxism maximum about that is.

That same kind of fundamentals, like a lot of them.

What they share a lot of commonalities.

And we'll probably talk about this in the moment as well as one of the topics,

when you, as you learn more languages, you start to see the similarities.

And that's one of the things I try to use to teach my students, because there's

a lot, of similarities that I can have, like students already know how to do

these things that exist in English.

They just don't know that it also exists in their own language.

If you can draw on those like commonalities, then

it becomes a lot easier.

And yeah, most languages have a lot of similarities, so you can just use that.

Absolutely.

And I feel like for, in both of our cases, if you are a person who's

teaching anything, having been on the other side of that gives you all

the perspective, and lots of extra little tricks, to show somebody else.

Because maybe somebody is coming to us to learn something, but they

haven't really examined how they do it in their first language.

But if you or I have seen how they do it in their first language,

then we can make those connections that they might not do it.

Because I feel like there's some very obvious similarities.

If you're a learner there's something that's going to be

obvious to you, and it's probably obvious to most people, right?

Something pretty glaringly obvious.

But each of us, too, makes those connections in our own brain and

sees the patterns that we also see that other people might not see.

Just because of our experience and things like that, or we're making

associations based on our own memories and experiences as well that

somebody else might not share at all.

So I think being on the learning side, the more you can make those neural

connections, the better and quicker and faster your learning is going to

be and the deeper it's going to be.

So that means it's going to stick more.

That's what I think.

I think we both probably agree on there.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

We both speak Spanish.

You can see one example is that you got English words ending in "ity" right?

Like a fraternity, or like liberty, and then it becomes "idad" in

Spanish, like fraternidad I think that's a word, probably.

So then, and then in French, it's université, nationalité

fraternité Uhhuh, Italian.

It's probably it.

I don't speak it, but I think it's like and like National.

National, probably like that.

It's a shared base and you know the, it's systematically different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's parallels there.

And especially if you look at, depending on the group of languages, like you

were just mentioning like French and Spanish and Italian, these romance

languages, which I'm sure that's also true in the Slavic languages where

you're like, "Oh, look at this."

It kind of transfers, just switch this out and you can see those parallels as well.

And then there's other things too, that we can call cognates or sometimes even

false cognates in other languages too, that can help us or they can trick us too.

So I'm sure you've had that experience.

I have, yeah, there's one, I always talk about this with my

friends but for example, in Russian, there's a word zapomniat, and

there's, in Polish we have zapomniat.

In Russian the Slavic it's composed of two Slavic what's it called, morphemes, yeah,

so two Slavic morphemes pomni is like something to do with the mind, memory,

and then za, is a prefix and there's a lot of prefixes in Slavic languages but za

can either mean into or behind and so in Russian zapomniat is to memorize to maybe

not memorize to remember right but in Polish it's to forget and the reason for

this is because the base of The root is pomni which means " in memory", but then

in Russian it seems like they've taken za to mean into, so it's put it into your

memory, and in Polish they've taken za to mean behind, so it's out of your memory.

So zapomniat is to forget, and zapomniat in Russian is to remember.

Oh, that's hilarious.

Those are

the

ones you find out the hard ways, the false cognates.

Not quite.

There's another one that's even funnier, which is in Russian and

Polish, you get like the word trudna, which means difficult.

And then in Croatian, you have trudna as well, but it means Pregnant.

And, there was, there were a few times when I said, Oh,

the language is so pregnant.

I've done that in Spanish.

You probably know.

You think, "Oh, I'm so embarrassed because my Spanish is so bad."

Not only am I saying I'm embarrassed, but I'm not even saying that

I'm saying I'm pregnant as well.

So yeah,

Um trudna does mean it means pregnant and then to say difficult you

say tashko and tashko it's a cognate to to a polish chesco but because of a

series of sound changes it doesn't quite sound the same but like polish phonology

you know that yeah things that were like yeah became yeah And Polish still

retains the nasal, sounds like animal.

So it's like change.

But then the other side of languages have lost it.

So Tesco and KO are are related.

They both mean heavy.

Or difficult.

So Tesco means difficult in Croatian and Ko means heavy in Polish.

But it's also related to which there's a valve mutation.

So it's not Chen, but Chen.

. Change, which means pregnant in Polish, so it is related words here and there.

You can see the path.

You can go from A to Q, at least through all these things,

if enough of those things.

Yeah, I think that's really cool because then you can get this top down view of

things and you can see how they've changed and morphed and I think that's, that

gives you a lot of insight for things.

It probably makes you very good at guessing things that

you don't know about as well.

Yeah, sure.

Another example is with, time ago before university, I was interested

in Korean because of the complex sound changes lots of constant mutations and

just phonological things happening.

But that also made it easy to guess the Korean word.

Based on the Cantonese pronunciation, because Korean, a lot of the Korean

words come from middle Chinese, which is closer to Cantonese.

Cantonese has, and Korean have both maintained the like more

complex syllable structures.

And when I used to speak Korean better I would.

If I didn't know a word, I would just take the word in Cantonese and change it a bit.

For example, in Korean, the words for 1, 2, till 10, it's the words one it's okay.

It's like

and says one thing you might notice is that the things intones

that have a tea at the end of the sy yet and but are correlated

with the Korean words that have.

Like an L or an R at the end of the silver.

So E is, and then you get tier is T and you get higher is B.

And so the T is, if you have a word intones, that's, that ends in the T

then it ends in in L or R in Korean.

, similar to , which is ing and then em which is.

Pronunciation is fat

yum.

Oh, that's super interesting.

What I was going to ask, too, is if for you as on the learning side, if

there's any difference in your process between a language that has an alphabet

where you can see the sounds Versus an alphabet where you have almost like

pictures, I'm describing this for people who don't know the technical names.

But would you say, even if it's not in, let's say, in the Roman alphabet,

where we already know those sounds more or less, even if they're different.

Let's say, like you said, the Cyrillic alphabet.

What about languages like Korean versus Cantonese?

How does that, how is that different for you in your process

as a learner, as a polyglot?

I actually haven't learned that many languages that don't have

some sort of alphabetic system.

Cantonese, like the Chinese languages have a logographic system, like

you said, the pictures, but they're they're not completely abstract.

Like sometimes you see parts and you can guess that the sound be similar to this.

But or yeah, similar to this sound or that sound based on other words.

It also, they all have this similar sounds.

But maybe Japanese, you could say the Japanese is like that, but I would just.

Change it into Romanized letters and just based on that

Korean is actually an alphabet.

That is, that's fairly easy.

Yeah.

Good point.

Yeah, I was thinking.

For you, it sounds like everything comes back, it sounds like everything

comes back to the sound, right?

And the way that you process things is more about like, how does

something sound and how are these sounds related to other things?

And that's how it sounds like you you're goes, it goes through that language in

your head, that seems how it comes out.

For example, I was actually just teaching this earlier to a

student where we were talking about how we were talking about aspirated

sounds in English, like how..

When they're not aspirated, when you have an S sound before

it, it blocks aspiration.

So even if you would say example, the word expect, it doesn't have an s

letter in there, but it has an S sound.

So it's expect, and you can't say expect no one says, we don't speak, we speak

because the S sound blocks the aspiration.

It doesn't matter if you spell it that way.

Letters are not, I always tell my students this, but letters aren't,

they don't exist in reality.

They're not real.

We've made them up, the mouth doesn't know what what letters are, like if you.

writes Serbian, you can write Serbian in Cyrillic or in Latin,

and it's still the same language.

You can have a language without any alphabet and still language.

It's, the mouth and the way the mouth interacts with sounds.

It's only based on sounds.

It doesn't know spelling.

And especially in English when it's a really poor grasp at

trying to, handle that problem.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If we just think of it as sounds and that's going to be pretty helpful anyways.

Yeah.

I think that's a really, that's a really good point.

So on the other side then, so you're on one side of learning and learning

and putting it together and seeing the patterns and you sound a lot for that.

What about teaching, then?

So you touched on that.

Tell us more about how being a polyglot helps you to teach languages, and

specifically, let's talk about accents as well, since we're talking about sounds.

So yeah, I like to use I think there are two things here.

I like to use examples of sounds exist in the student's native tongue.

And also how English speakers sound their accents, English language accents

in the native speakers, native tongue.

So for example a lot of times when I teach Spanish speaking students or

actually romance language speaking students, like French speakers Spanish

speakers, Portuguese speakers aspiration I tell them to think about I tell them

to think about how an English speaker sounds when they say things like, instead

of saying taco, we would probably say taco, yo quiero un taco, you know?

It sounds and they're like, "Oh yeah, it sounds so strange".

And I'm like, yeah, that's because that's the sound in English.

No English word can start with Pa, Ta, and Ka.

It's always going to be Pa, Ta, and Ka.

So we say, Como Te Llamas, right?

Instead of Como Te Llamas.

And so I'd use that.

How I use examples that exist in their native tongue.

With Russian have to teach them how to pronounce the a sound.

That's a tough sound, but also super important in English.

You can't, a lot of words with a, right?

It's super hard to do.

But what I teach Russian speakers is to use an existing like an

allophone, like a version of that sound in words that exist in Russian.

So it does exist in words like five, which is in Russian, bet, bet.

If you, this sound, the ya sound or the ah sound changes into ah, if you have a soft

sound in the front and a soft sound in the back of, in like before and after it.

So the Phonologically, underlyingly, you would, the

word pet is actually a p and a t.

But when you put it together, it's not p a t, it's not p a t, it's pet,

because soft sounds are causing the a, which is more central, to be, forward.

And then I asked them to say that and try to isolate that a sound.

And I also compare it to how how it's different from when

you have fifth, which is.

This is still A, because the first sound is P, it's a soft sound,

then you get A, but then the next sound is also a hard sound, so it

no longer pushes the sound forward.

So it's B A T, which is normal A for Russian, but you get B A T with an A

sound like the English sound, and I try to isolate those sounds and get

them to be able to say it without having the other sounds next to it.

It's a kind of a hard process, but it's a bit easy.

Because their tongue is still doing it, without me having to

teach them how to move their tongue and their mouth and stuff.

They're already doing it, I'm just telling them how to, I'm trying to get

them to elongate it and split it off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I feel like when we know those little tiny things about somebody

else's language that they didn't really think about cognitively, because they

just grew up speaking the language.

If you can be like, here look, you're already doing it.

Or look, you're super close.

Just pay attention.

And then, like you said, raise your awareness, isolate it.

Once you can get somebody to do that skill, I feel like Boom.

Like they can apply that skill to so many other sounds and so many

other things, and they can see that.

But when you can't, when you don't have that little golden nugget of information,

then you have to figure out how to do it.

And it takes you so much longer, which I think is the real benefit

to going to people like us, right?

People who have all this knowledge, who can just get

right to the heart of something.

Even if I've only just met you, I can, I already know something enough about

you to help you that much quicker.

And I think that's why.

Having an accent coach is really valuable.

It's like I used to teach snowboarding and I used to be a skier quite a lot

and I used to teach the snowboarding.

So people would come to me, after they've plateaued and they didn't

think they could get any better.

But when you, or I see something from the outside, we're like, Oh yeah.

Just fix this little thing.

Boom, golden.

And I think that is so important because we can see that from the outside.

And the more, like we said earlier, the more we've experienced, the easier it

gets for us to help other people too, so I think that's really interesting,

especially with the patterns, the similarities, the differences.

Like you were saying, I think what you're getting at is like knowing a sound that's

either identical or that's really similar.

Do you have some other ones that, that you were going to mention too?

Yeah.

For example, with the Spanish speakers sometimes I've done this a few times

where, you know they are, struggling with the sound the, but then I

tell them take the word for finger.

Dedo, right?

The first D is like a normal D like a D ish sound.

And then the second one is not really dedo.

It's like devil, right?

It's sound it gets and that's.

That's the English of this sound.

So they just need to isolate that Yeah.

To say this and that instead of this and that.

. . Yeah.

So that's a common thing that happens in Spanish.

The weakening of consonants between vowels.

And they do that all the time.

If you wanna sound more native in Spanish you gotta do that.

Things like that.

And if you don't, you sound Brazilian, though.

The Brazilians don't.

They say, Bebida, right?

They don't say, Bebida.

It's These inter multilingual things, they're really helpful.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And knowing the, I think we really nailed it in terms of both sides.

The learning side of anything and the teaching side, whether it's

the whole language, whether it is the sounds of the language, right?

I'm trying to work on my accent, my pronunciation, make it sound a

little bit more like the audience that I want to talk with, right?

It's all about the patterns and it's all about raising your awareness

and really just paying attention and paying attention to what's my

tongue doing or how are my lips, how tense are my lips, and what about the

space in my mouth and things that.

I don't know, maybe you and I, because we were probably, odd little

children, but we thought about these things probably as kids.

But most speakers, I don't think, thought about these things

until somebody told them to.

And I think that's, again, the benefit of having somebody like

us come around and just say hey, I Think you're already doing it.

Let's just pay a little more attention.

There you go.

You got it.

Do it again.

Or that was a little bit off, right?

But here's why it's off and here's how you can fix it.

And so that being said, can you tell us how we, the audience could work more with

you, Adrian and see if we're a good fit.

Sure.

So currently I mostly do one on one coaching.

I teach on italki, but I'm also teaching off of italki.

Currently in the works of building my own sort of platform thingy or

using a different platform, but you can find You can stay in touch

on my website, accentamazing.

com slash start.

There is a free mini email course and you put your email in and

you start getting stuff from me, the useful tips and like updates.

You can follow me on all the socials.

I'm accentamazing cause I make your accent amazing.

But yeah, no, you just look at my stuff there.

I write blogs sometimes I post sometimes, but I'm going to work.

I have some video courses as well.

Yeah.

So one on one coaching is my main thing, but I have some video courses

and I'm currently in the works of just improving all of that.

Yeah, I think if you're a person like you, or a person, what I mean to

say is a person who's really passionate about languages, you already know some

things that you can apply, some tricks.

Often, I think, doing, getting an accent in another language, the more

you know, more is more in this case, the more you know, the more you can

apply, the more you can pay attention, you can see these things yourself.

But most people can maybe hear that there's something going on there, But

they don't actually know what to do, and they definitely need to know if what

they're producing is on point, right?

So I think that there's a lot of videos out there, there's a lot of apps even

for accents, but I think that the one on one is the thing that really

propels people forward very quickly and to get those tricks themselves.

And I'm a very firm believer in the fact that like that kind of, That,

that kind of thing that you get from a person, the gold nugget there is the

feedback is the thing that, and for us, we make it very personalized, and so

I think that is, that's the best thing that somebody can do for themselves.

And today, I think the takeaways today were more about your passion.

I was really excited to hear about your passion and all the different examples

that you were giving, as well as the idea of the sounds of relationships and the

parallels that we can draw among other things too, to make things make more sense

in our own heads, in our own process.

And if for a person, it's not about the sounds, maybe it's

about the kinesthetic feeling.

Maybe it's more about, maybe some people are more into the reading

of the language, finding that thing that, that really focuses you on how

you are able to go forward in your goals, I think is the most important.

Those, the most, sorry, I think that's the most important thing

for someone to do, to stoke that fire of passion, in the language.

Because I think most of the people we work with, they have some kind of passion.

That's why they're there.

They like it.

They enjoy it.

And to not become What am I trying to say?

To not become overwhelmed, not become frustrated, we have to keep stoking

that passion and figure out how we learn best so we can make progress.

Also what you said about isolating sounds, really important because it might

exist there in some form or another.

And also the using, using that, like we said earlier, to find the

patterns that are most useful.

I think those are the biggest takeaways from today to think

about learning multiple languages on both sides, on the learner side

and then on the teaching side too.

Is there anything you want to add to that?

No, I think that's that encapsulates most of it.

Yeah.

When you, oh, one thing that might add is that it's It's very helpful

to understand the structure like the concepts in addition to, to

actually being able to say the sound.

I always tell my students it's not enough to know how to say the sound, you need

to know where to say the sound, right?

Cause the, for example, aspiration in English, it's not every single

P T K is always aspirated note.

You need to know not only how to say the sound, but also where to say the sound.

Where to apply it.

You mean, you don't mean where in your mouth, where in the articulation,

you mean where to apply this sound.

Yeah, like in the context of the word, like the phonological context,

because for example, with Spanish I think, I'm, I don't think that, I might be wrong

here, but like with the, for example, dedo, I don't think you say dedo like

the first D is usually a is a normal D, and then the one, Afterwards becomes the,

but anyway, for English, for example, with the aspiration, like you, you never

have but the cut the start of a word.

And then you never have put a car after an S sound in this in the end the word.

Right.

Like you might be able to say the sound perfectly like to articulate the sound

perfectly, but if you're putting it in the wrong context of this, of the word,

you're still not, you won't sound native.

It's all about the variation and how I'm applying it in its maybe

phonological environment, right?

It could be, Beginning, middle, end of the word, what I'm connecting

it with, what's around it.

All of these things influence that.

So it's not just about, let's say one sound, one T sound.

No.

There's tons of variations and to really be fluent, not just in English, but other

places too, is to know how those sounds are affecting each other, basically.

Like what you mentioned with Russian too.

So I think that's really interesting.

I think that we got a lot of, a lot out of today's talk, even

though it was pretty short.

I feel like we've all picked up some.

Tons of little tips.

We picked up tons of little tips that are really, how should I

say they, they really hook me.

I'm like, oh, I didn't know that about this Mandarin thing, or oh,

I didn't know that about Kazakh.

That's very interesting.

So I hope that it sparks interest in our listeners as well today too, and

they know how to get a hold of you.

And we can always follow you on social media too and see where you're living.

You're posting information, lots of very comprehensive things about phonetics too.

That's something I always really enjoy seeing in your posts.

And so I want to thank you so much for joining me today and to talk about

Holly polyglottery, as we said earlier.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

I, it was a pleasure.

I love talking about this.

Cause I can talk about it forever.

Honestly.

Yeah, me too.

It's the same way with with sounds in English, right?

Yeah.

People say " Oh my God, you could talk about a stop T for hours."

And it's yeah, cause it's awesome.

So I think we can probably schedule many more episodes together and maybe talk

about the finer points of some of these sounds that may or may not exist in

English and where people are coming from.

I think that would be a really interesting series.

So we'll keep in touch about that.

And in the meantime, we'll say, thanks a lot, guys.

Thanks for listening today.

Thank you.

Bye!

See you soon!

And thanks again, Adrian, for joining me today to talk about being a polyglot.

And thank you guys today for listening all the way to the end.

I want you to know that your passion is a strength that you have and

how you process things can help you find all the little tricks in there.

And if you need any help with that, remember that every month

I have a free masterclass on the last Thursday of the month.

And we go over a specific topic every month, and it's always new.

So I want you to sign up for that.

And because And I want you to sign up for that because that's the best two hours

you're going to spend every month on your accent because your voice is your choice.

If you found this episode helpful in any way, please subscribe and leave a review.

It's actually really helpful to me.

Now, before I go, I have two tasks for you to do.

First, I want you to register and come to my free monthly masterclass.

They're on the last Thursday of the month.

In just one hour, you're going to master a specific American accent skill.

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Be sure to sign up for my mailing list, and come to the

monthly masterclass for free.

I'm Bianca, your personal American accent coach, and I want you to

know that your voice is your choice.

Thanks for sticking around to the end of the show.

I'll see you in the next episode.

Bye for now!