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Tips to Learn to Talk With a Canadian Accent

Mukta Gaikwad
Whenever one is learning a new language, perfecting the accent is a crucial part of it. Here are some tips to get better at your Canadian accent, whether French or English, in a few simple ways.
They say, practice makes a man perfect, and it is true! Thus, you need to keep on practicing your accent to get it right.
Learning a foreign language is always an advantage. It opens up a whole new, undiscovered avenue for many kinds of opportunities. However, learning a language is not just about knowing the vocabulary, tenses, sentence constructions, and its usage.
Pronunciation and the finer nuances of accents is an integral part of picking up a language thoroughly. While trying to better the Canadian accent, there is an important intersection of two widely spoken languages that you need to understand.
Although Canada is an English-speaking country, French also happens to be its another official language. Both English and French differ in accents as compared to their native counterparts and other regions speaking the same languages. Let's take a look at some of the helpful tips to learn to talk in the proper Canadian accent.

Listen

Remember how we learned the first ever language of our life? Much, rather all of it was through listening. Hardly did we care about the grammatical rules or the spellings.
Instead, we focused on the sounds, their rhythms, the intonations, repetitions, reactions to these sounds, and the movement the mouth needed to make to say these words. Gradually, as we got older, we picked up on these words and began speaking. Speaking a Canadian accent can also be learned in the similar way.
Listen to songs by Canadian artists, TV shows, and films with authentic conversations in this accent to learn the language better. Close your eyes to notch up your sense of hearing to grasp the accent better. Listening to native speakers will definitely give you the accurate pronunciations too.

Read

To speak better, one has to have the right and enough vocabulary. Reading not only helps in increasing the vocabulary, but also helps in understanding cultures and history of the place.
Sometimes, knowing the background of a certain language and getting a grip of its generic etymology can help you in polishing your accent.

Read Aloud

Reading silently is one thing, but reading aloud in front of an audience will help you gain confidence about your language skills. This will also help you practice your accent.
In case you do not understand the pronunciation of a certain word, refer to an online dictionary, listen to the way it is said, and practice it till the time you get better at it.
Make a note of the words you fumble at, and practice them till you can say them with absolute ease. Reading newspapers, short stories, and poetry are some ways in which you can improve your accent and diction.

Take Classes

If you are inherently an English speaker, but are trying to master the Canadian-French accent, join a class.
Taking a class will offer you a chance to meet like-minded people, a proficient professor, and help you understand the language in a greater depth. The regular conversations in a class will also help you polish your accent to a point where you sound like an actual Canadian!
Attending a class will also expose you to the language more than what you would have been otherwise.

Interact with Natives

There are a lot of students who travel to other countries for educational purposes. Meet these students and find out how they can help you with bettering your attempts with the accent. Look for a class that is conducted by a native to learn the accent with absolute finesse.

Travel

There is no better way of learning a Canadian accent than actually traveling to Canada. The finer nuances of a language can only be grasped well when they are regularly heard in varying contexts.
Talking to locals, conversing to find directions, to order food, to see the enchanting sights, and to live the true Canadian experience will help you master this accent and language.
An important tip to remember while picking up an accent is to keep conversing. The more you talk, the better you will be at it. Hope these tips will help you to speak no different than a native.