Tutorial Transcript

Hello everyone. Welcome back to my channel. Today, we will talk a little bit about accents, how to improve your accent when you speak Italian, but above all we will talk about how to feel good and at ease with your own accent. This topic is pretty important because there is a little bit of a drive, this desire to sound Italian at all costs. when you speak Italian and when you study Italian. In my opinion it’s necessary to review the objective a little bit. If you ask me, it's necessary to work on making the actual accent become neutral. Not so much to make it become Italian. How can we make our accent more neutral? The first thing to do to work on your accent is to pay attention to the sounds that are very different from the sounds of your mother language. For example the vowels. The vowels in Italian are pronounced and get pronounced in 98 percent of the cases the vowels are always full. They always have a full sound: A, E, I, O, U. So this is a point to reflect on. Go and see what are the sounds that are very different in Italian then in your mother language and work on these sounds. This obviously brings us to the discussion of the pronunciation. It’s important to have a good pronunciation and reflect on pronunciation. Because if I keep saying “grazi” Instead of “grazie,” It means that I don’t pay attention to what I’m saying. Before anything else, work on the pronunciation and think about the fact that maybe it's more important thing to have good pronunciation, and a neutral accent than have an Italian accent at all cost Imitation at all costs of the Italian accent, in a lot of cases, results in kind of a reproduction that sounds fake and stereotypical of the Italian accent, maybe it’s better to shoot for a neutral accent. I always say to my students that the most important thing should be the pronunciation because from great pronunciation then comes the natural accent. It’s a very natural result. In addition, I would like you to feel at ease when you speak Italian. If someone detects your accent, it's is not the end of the world. I am sure that when I speak English people can tell that I’m Italian, and for me it’s not a problem. It’s OK because I am Italian, and I learned English, and I speak it and I think I speak it pretty well. I go to great lengths to pronounce the words well, so I pay a lot of attention to the pronunciation. Sometimes I have a good accent, and sometimes I don’t. The important thing is that I don’t want to do a stereotypical representation of the British accent or the American accent. The important thing is that I have as my final objective in the conversation is to pronounce well, to speak well, but most importantly to be understood. Because obviously I am able to be understood if I have good pronunciation. So this exasperated quest in regards to the accent sounding exactly like a native speaker is, in my opinion, counterproductive. Because sometimes we concentrate on the wrong things when we should instead concentrate on the correct grammar of the sentences and the correct pronunciation of the words. I am truly interested In knowing what you think about this argument. and if you have all been on the frantic quest to have the Italian accent or if you all are satisfied with how you speak Italian. All right? All right,If you all have more specific questions in regards to this topic or even general questions like grammatical questions or questions in regards to the pronunciation of some words, write me, let me know, that way I can do another video on that topic. I thank you all as always for having watched this video. And I hope that it’s useful in someway or another. And we will see each other next time. Catch ya later! Ciao!

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