I know it can be done, not because I've done it but because I know especially one woman, who's German, and speaks Swedish at a native level. Germans are SUPER EASY to spot with the help of their accents. She might say one word in a whole evening with the wrong stress but if it's rare enough she might just have read it and never heard it pronounced (I don't pronounce all Swedish words properly either, because some words are just rare) and if it's a not so rare word, well it might startle you but you still would be 98% sure she's Swedish.

"Nobody can sound like a native speaker." "Here's someone who did it." "Yeah, but they're an actor" "Nobody can run a mile in under 4 minutes." "Here's someone who did it." "Yeah, but they're an athlete."

OMG FINALLY!! Thank you for making this video! I HATE when people discussing language learning say a non-native can never sound native. Its simply a flat out lie, I am a native English speaker and on several occassions I have met people who I presumed were also native, later to find out infact that they weren't. The argument that non-native speakers may make mistakes with certain things is also a huge oversight; NATIVE speakers of any language also make mistakes and slip ups from time to time, we all do it. How can you tell me someone will never sound native when Ive been fooled several times into thinking someone was? I think the reason people say its impossible is because they don't think it should be a focus when learning a language, which is a fair point in its own right, you don't NEED to sound native to be fluent and get by, but saying its IMPOSSIBLE is a flat out lie.

the age of 20, I lived in Denmark for about 1 year. In the beginning, everyone heard that I was Swedish, but after less than half a year, they thought I came from a special Danish province. Yes, I am Swedish, but our languages ​​differ enormously in pronunciation.

My great great uncle came to the US at 14, and 80 years later he still had an accent

It's possible, but not everyone will put the necessary effort. Because, man, it's hard work!

I've had experiences of both. A landlord was Norwegian, and he was so proud of it that he had the flag everywhere. Otherwise, you would never guess. I also grew up with a lot of third and fourth generation Russians who had a detectable accent. As with everything, it depends on a person's motivation and time.

There was a Slovenian actress whose name I don't currently remember, who moved to Italy when she was in her twenties and she used to be dubbed over when acting in Italian, but now sounds 100% like a native Italian speaker.

I completely agree with your 3 points. It was definitely the case for me when I was an exchange student in Germany at 18 years old. I knew no German to start with and I had a GOAL that when I met people at the end of the 10 months, that they wouldn’t know if I was German or not, aka me having a native-like accent. So I had a motivating goal/will, but on top of that, physically living in the country definitely gives an extra push or NEED for the language that pushed me more than if I was learning it for fun, I had lots of exposure to the language everyday by living in Germany and then I would also say that I have a strong interest & ability to do accents more than the average person. So will, time & talent definitely resulted me in reaching my goal by the end of the 10 months. My German wasn’t perfect & still isn’t, especially since I don’t live there anymore, but a German is more likely to figure out I’m a foreigner from a grammar mistake than a foreign accent. Everyone’s goals in language learning are different, whether you are learning in order to understand your favorite book or TV show in the original language, or to be able to be to talk to people in the language without problem, or to be able to talk without an accent, or all of the above. But I know because I focused on having a good accent, that created results. It is definitely possible, but like you said, very difficult to achieve. I had the privileges of the right circumstances to have the accent in German that I have.

I have seen this with English from many foreign friends in college. I would argue it is possible in more than one language (as adult), though extremely rare. Next video should be about the deliberate practice of this (which very few actually do). Speaking is about accent & pronunciation, vocab & idioms, and fluency and expression, not just accent. My 2 cents: Shadowing everyday, Reading (Extensive & Intensive), Flash Cards (then reading again to soak it in), and spaced repetition speaking. I have a theory on this that you master speaking by topics if you keep returning to the basics before moving on. I feel like online you spend one or 2 sessions on a topic before moving on. It never gets mastered... anyway, love the topic!

I absolutely agree. I've always disliked the common notion (even among linguists) that adults couldn't learn a native-like pronunciation and I have often argued against it. First of all, there are examples of people who did it which automatically disproves the "it can't be done" claim. The naysayers also never really dissect the language learning process and methods used to understand why native-like pronunciation is so rare among foreign language learners. When you analyze the usual language learning process with time and effort spend on the different subcategories of language, you will see that there is a huge disparity between time spent on pronunciation and the other aspects of language. Usually, people spend a bit of time on pronunciation at the very beginning of their learning process until the point their pronunciation is "good enough" to be understood and that's it. They rarely spend much more time later on while they will spend years on grammar and a lifetime on vocabulary (i.e. by checking unknown words in the dictionary). How do people expect their pronunciation to significantly improve¿

As a Turkish speaker from Turkey i went to the US for the first time for working there and most of them thought i was american! I always tried fixing up my accent and my pronounciation but never realized native speakers wouldn’t point me out as a foreigner. I believe it really depends on the person. If one really focuses on its accent, eventually it’s possible for that person to sound entirely native.

Lamont, I absolutely loved this video. A topic that definitely needed to be explored and you did it superbly. This could very well be your best video. One of the best language videos I have ever seen. Keep up the excellent work.

This video is spot on. I'd point out one more reason that native(-like) accents are so rare: Most learning resources do not stress pronunciation. When phonetic training is integrated into language learning -- at the start and then continually reinforced -- the results are much better. If this were standard, we'd shift the entire distribution.

What an interesting video! Thank you for talking about this, because there's definitely a lot of misinformation out there about whether or not it's possible.

Really enjoyed the video, thanks for putting the work. Very informative and interesting!

Great video! Yeah I'm also a Swede and I could only hear a very minor hint of some Slavic accent in Claudia's Swedish. But her Swedish is so amazing that it almost feels ridiculous to bring it up, since there were only a couple times I could hear something being slightly off ... in a 50 minute interview :D And you are absolutely right about Scandinavians not being some omniscient Gods when it comes to English.. I myself speak English with a very thick Swedish accent because I have never made any good attempts to improve my English accent. Cheers!

I have to say, this is the best video I've ever watched on the topic. Great job :)

This is the best video on this topic I've seen so far. I like that you give actual real life examples, not just theorize. Keep up the good work!

A logical and well argued piece Lamont. Having the désire and determination is as you say, a key factor in aquiring a native accent. That said, a slight or light accent is often charming! Thanks for all your videos.

That's a good (and much needed) one. Well done. And nice to be featured again! Thanks!

The video quality and editing is really fire tbh

I think you are 100% spot on with every point you made in this video!

Outstanding video, Lamont. Really thoughtful and well done.

Excellent video. You're exactly right that it's very hard to talk about a native-level accent without people getting emotional, defensive or critical. People never criticize someone learning more words or learning esoteric grammar, but very often working on one's accent is. Considering there have been soviet spies who had to learn English to a native level of accent, it seems obvious that a motivated person could do it.

Hard work and consistency always works out 💪🏼

although practically perfect, there was some tiny part of her speech that still gave it away, maybe some nuance in the amount of force she used when speaking or something. would probably never realize if i wasn't actively listening for it though.

thank you for the idea of the "point of unreasonable doubt" i happen to have this goal but wasn't able to articulate exactly what it was

Really insightful & great examples! I get why people stress over having accents, especially if they're discriminated against or particularly difficult to understand. I always strive to hone my accent at the beginning of learning a language so I don't have to unlearn anything later. People never expect people from the US to speak any other language let alone have a good accent, so it's always a nice surprise when they see I've put in the effort. I get lots of comments from Brazilians that I have a good accent in portuguese, and I hope it's not just flattery. I think it's definitely attainable

Rich Brian, Dogen, NIKI are just a few example of ordinary people that I can think of that can master their 2nd language to the native level before going popular. I also know some foreign people that can absolutely speak Indonesian without any foreign accent (some of them even speak in local accents), and when I tried to spot their mistakes it turns out they only make mistakes that we natives do too, and sometimes speak even better than some of us. So the only thing that is limiting oneself to do things like that is his own mindset. If you work hard and smart enough, that's absolutely not impossible

I was surprised to see an extract of that unknown masterpiece called Coherence. Props to you!

THANK YOU for making this video. Particularly as someone who just learns languages for fun and selects them almost exclusively because I like the way they sound, I've always striven to speak as much like a native as possible (I mean, if I wanted to sound like a foreigner I would simply just speak English?), so whether it was possible or not never came into question because it would've invalidated my reason for wanting to be able to speak German in the first place. Well... it "only" took like four years to get to that point, but that was long before I got diagnosed with autism and realised my ability to mimic accents is in part thanks to neurological predisposition. I think the fact that so many English learners in particular struggle to attain a native sounding accent has a lot to do with the fact that they don't get consistent exposure to a single type of accent for the overwhelming majority of the time they spend learning, as they end up mixing (chiefly) British and American dialects together in an clumsy sounding mishmash, but of course this goes for any pluricentric language with wildly differing varieties (and heck, even natives have problems with this from time to time).

Thank you! Finally, I have all my arguments in one comprehensive video to send to ppl when I can't be bothered to explain it all.

Great video! I'm an English tutor and I will definitely share this with my students.

Haha the mere fact that your making such assumptions over what we would say is so funny xD cheers to the vid man!

Great video, I've seen several people who achieved native level in foreign languages, and I've never been suspected of being a Swede myself. It's important to want to improve your pronunciation too if you want to sound native. I think a lot of people are pretty much satisfied when they can communicate unhindered in their second/third/fourth language, getting from there to "absolute native pronunciation" takes a lot of effort for what could be seen as very little gain.

damn! wasnt expecting a coherence reference. that movie is really good. worth watching.

You really took on the topic in an educated and nuanced way. Great stuff! Klaudia is absolutely amazing, freaks me out listening to her. However, she does have an accent. I tried to trick my wife asking her to spot Klaudia’s Swedish dialect, and she could tell Klaudia is not native within 10 seconds. Klaudia is so good though, but there are just lots of very subtle tells.

Thank you for mentioning talent. I happen to have some and managed to speak a foreign language I learned as an adult to a native level I actually got a bit tired of people assuming it was my native tongue. I also tried to sound less native, but it simply didn't work because my ears and tongue (and I guess eyes too) are like a sponge which absorb the language down to such details.

Fascinating topic and video. Great channel. I am attempting something like this with Gaeilge. I am Irish but English is my first language. My great grandmother was a native Gaeilge speaker (there are about 60,000 native speakers left in the country). I have found a native speaker from the exact village she grew up in to help me (whatsapp calls, recordings, feedback etc) as well as listening to tonnes of content (radio shows, tv programs) from native speakers of that region and reading books on the phonology of that dialect. One of my main motivations is to pass on the language to my daughter (she is a newborn) as it is part of our heritage. I still have time to get to a high level and raise her through both English and Irish (I'm probably high B1 now). I feel that no matter what there will always be SOME tell tale signs that someone is a native speaker but with years of effort you can get to a really high standard that passes for native some or most of the time.

I'm Swedish, but my father was Norwegian. I talk exactly like the people from the place he grew up, Hardanger, so I speak 'haring', which is a dialect of Norwegian that is a bit difficult to understand for some people. I have never had anyone ask if I wasn't Norwegian whenever I was in Norway, unless I was speaking Swedish first. I'm also really good at copying pronounciation, so I have always been told by my teachers in French , English or Japanese that I have really good pronunciation, and that I sound like I'm a native. (I usually speak British English, but I have been falling into US English a bit more, and it irks me. :P We're taught British English and spelling here, so it goes against what I've been taught to sound like an 'american'. ) I have't spoken French or Japanese for a few years, and I guess that my pronunciation and intonation might be a bit worse now, but I'm currently learning Thai, and my goal, however long it might take, is to sound as native as I can. The key is to speak as much as you can, and not just speaking. I actively try to copy everything in the clips I hear, from intonation, to melody, to pitch and to which syllable is stressed more. Is it a glottal stop, or an aspirated consonant? Analysing the language as you learn, makes it easier to understand it, and it helps you to sound more native. I've gotten a few compliments that my pronunciation is really good for a 'farang', but I want to get to the point where it's simply 'really good', without the addition of me being a 'farang'. :P

Excellent video!!!

It's absolutely possible. My mum learned swiss German in her 20's after getting married to my dad and now speaks accentfree. And it is worth it because the sad truth is, she faced more discrimination before she mastered the language to this degree because in Europe it's mainly important how well you are integrated in compre to what skin color you have in terms of discrimination. Not saying racism doesn't exist but as a rule of thumb, people are more acceptive of those who put in the effort to learn the local languages.

Wow! This was hilarious! And so accurate!

Great video! I've certainly met people who've fooled me into believing that they're native english after talking for maybe 15 minutes, but in my experience something subtle usually gives them away after spending a larger amount of time with them. I can think of someone I've met who comes close to the "point of unreasonable doubt", but it's hard for me to judge, because I learned this person was non-native after only having ~15 min or so of interaction (I thought they were native based on this), so I started to know what to listen for. Nonetheless, I think prior to watching this, my views would have been closer to Steve's, now they're a bit closer to yours. After all, if someone like the person I met can get really close to the POUD then why couldn't they, with some more effort, eventually reach it?

Awesome video.

A good distinction to bring up! On a side note, saw Dogen in the thumbnail and expected Dogen in the video, but he never came up lol

11:32 this point here is very relatable. People say I have a knack for accents in different languages, and I myself am someone who loves to spend time learning languages. However, my experience is that I would learn for a month or two, but then would burn out, give up and start the next language. So I would always never get past the beginner stage. In college I was learning Hebrew first semester. At the same time, I was also learning the Telugu language, which I started learning a month after learning Hebrew. It came to the point where it was so hard learning the both of them, so I decided to drop Hebrew so that I could focus on just Telugu. My entire life I always felt like I was switching between things, becoming super passionate for a thing and then dropping it cold the next day. It made me feel like I wasnt able to accomplish anything, even basic commitments like doing homework or showing up on time. Which made me feel bad because I felt like I would let people down all the time that I was so bad with commitment, which is a virtue. I thought to myself, "Hey, what if I decided to stick to Telugu for four years?" Four years was the perfect time since Im a college freshman. And I decided, I would REALLY COMMIT to this for the next four years. Its a promise I made to myself, because I felt like I could go so far if I simply committed to something instead of dropping it, like I do with so many things my entire life. And so far I have not regretted this. The reason I was able to commit to this language was because of powerful personal experiences that I had with people of this langauge. I think its most beneficial to focus on one language at a time and get to a high level-- at least, thats my goal anyway. but Because my time is split between being a content creator for the language, as well as creating language learning resources for Telugu, I dont have much time to learn the actual language itself so the progress is slow. but all of this is definitely rewarding!

Dude your channel is seriously so underrated. I wish I had known about Emily Baldoni before I said "PEWDS" on the community post lol. I totally see what you mean now about "charisma vs actually sounding native". That little clip of him really put it in perspective for me.

A few things: 1. Great video production quality as always--I hope you know that the effort and skill you're putting into editing these videos doesn't go unappreciated! 2. Swedish accents in English are adorable 3. Australian English is definitely a challenge. I'm a yank and can do a pretty good imitation of English and Scottish accents, but Australian feels impossible. I've wondered in the past why that was, and your point about the very open vowel system makes sense. 4. Relating to point 2, sometimes mild accents in a language can be very charming, so that's something worth taking into consideration when deciding whether or not it's worth investing in a perfect accent. Good pronunciation is absolutely important and helps you connect better with natives, but not sounding identical to a native can have advantages too.

I'm from New Zealand, there are Americans who have told me I sound like a non-native. I'm completely native I just speak a version of English that is so uncommon people don't even recognise it as English sometimes.

Ohh and thanks for teaaching me new words in English. Ive learned two new English words today thanks to reading your comments. :)

I love to do impressions of other English accents for fun (Scottish, New Zealand, South African, etc) because at parties and family outings, my friends and relatives crack up and tell me how good my accents are. Does this carry over to language learning? I believe it does. I think that because I have a knack for doing accents, I've picked up on the pronunciation of Spanish and Finnish pretty well. Teachers in both languages have complimented me on it. Moulding your mouth, imitating the sounds and getting the "vibe" of the language comes easier to some than others. But believe me, I'm not talented or advanced in my languages yet. Vocabulary and fluency-wise in learning these languages, I still have a lot to work on. So where my strong-suit is pronunciation, my weaker areas are vocab, fluency and overall comprehension. I don't know how close to native I will be, but I believe that if you start learning a new language, if you're already good at doing accents/impressions, I think that you'll have an edge/advantage to your target language's pronunciation.

I juste wanted to say that Luca actually sounds like a native speaker in french and it's really impressive. At first I thought that he was french so I was confused about his nationality haha

I am almost there with my American accent. I'll try to improve my accent deliberately soon, but right now my main goal is to improve my Japanese comprehension. Reaching a native or near native level in a foreign language is fun but I feel like the most enjoyable time period with a foreign language is when you slowly start to comprehend previously incomprehensible input.

Thank you for the video, I really enjoyed it! I only wish you'd talked about how age plays in when adopting an accent, I think that's a very interesting subject. I'm Swedish btw and I absolutely have a Swedish accent. xD Sure, we learn English from third grade, and most people are exposed to a lot of English through media and the Internet, but that doesn't make all Swedes "native speakers". My English only started getting better in say upper secondary school.

Tack så mycket

Yes it’s possible. My Wife’s done it twice. She’s Swedish by the way. When she was 16 she moved to Paris. She didn’t know any French. The people she was staying with spoke only French to her. She also watched a lot of French TV. Within 3 months she was fluent. I’ve personally seen multiple separate French people be surprised that she’s not French. She left France a long time ago so I’m sure she’s lost a few words but is still Fluent. I met her in the UK when she was 24. She spoke great English but had a definite accent. A year or so later her accent was gone. She doesn’t have any specific regional accent, but people think she’s a native English speaker. We moved to Sweden in November. Ironically she was told that she didn’t sound quite Swedish when we moved here. Not surprising I guess as she lived outside Sweden for well over 1/2 her life. Swedes often speak English with a slightly American accent. A lot of television and movies aren’t dubbed, but have Swedish subtitles. My 7 year old Daughter seems to have inherited her ability. Swedish people say she sounds like she was born here when she speaks her limited Swedish. Unfortunately both laugh at my clunky pronunciation 😂

y r u so gr8 m8 channel so nice I subscribe twice

I think motivation or cost/benefit plays a huge role in this. If I ever decide on living in a foreign country for a few years, I might deem it worthwhile perfecting my pronunciation, just for the heck of it. On the other hand, if I can already communicate everything I want to, or I'm only there for a bit, then why would I? Especially if the place is very accepting of foreigners and nobody cares that my accent sticks out. Heck, some might even appreciate my effort to learn their language and be interested in my background, but once I sound completely native, they won't even notice anymore. Not saying I need that, but anyways, except for my own satisfaction, what do I get for putting in the time and effort to hide my real origin, after I'm already able to communicate fluently?

It's 100% possible lol, I don't understand the people who say it isn't. But I've got a friend of mine who speaks English as if he were a Brit. His accent is even a little Northern (I'm in Newcastle). Yeah, it may slip once in a blue moon - I've only heard that type of slip once when we were talking - but you wouldn't be able to tell he was Polish. Also, I should add, he came here when he was 19 and has lived here for 7 years.

You’re right that I wanted to discount her for being Scandinavian. Not because Swedish is close to English but because they get full on English immersion from a young age. But to completely change your speaking habits after all that time at age 28, I think I have to agree that she proves the impossible, possible. So how much talent and dedicated focused study is required now becomes the question. And do I have enough talent 😂 (I’m thinking not to get this good). It would be nice to know just what she did to achieve this. I’m guessing I could imitate what she did and not get the same results but still.

i am completely comfortable in english, i make still some grammar mistakes specially when being exposed recently by a lot of spanish (my native lenguage) and danish (my target lenguage), but my accent in english is SUPER thick haha and i dont mind! people can understand me and i dont need or want a native accent. But i would like sounding like a native speaking danish 🤭 idk if i will be able to get there, and is not the most important thing for me, but i think it'd be cool to try. I like the lenguage and enjoy studying it, and i dont plan on learning any others, so i can just take my time with that!

Great video! I agree with you on the topic! Would you consider doing a video on your favourite Swedish KZfaqrs or mention them in a comment? I need compelling Swedish content (ideally with subtitles) 😭 thank you so much ☺️

My wife grew up in the USA bilingual in English and Italian. She later became a French teacher, and when she speaks French, French people think she's French. We've visited France several times and I've witnessed this innumerable times. Eventually, someone French asks her where in France she's from and when she tells them she's American, they're astonished. However, when she's in Italy everybody knows she's American because she speaks Italian with an American accent. Why the difference? Because she worked really, really hard for years on her French accent and has never worked on her Italian accent.

Hehe. my friend from Oz thought I spoke Scotts the other day....that comes from my years in Edinburgh and Edradour

Nice, Emil Hansius.

My mother and aunt came to the US as children from a Spanish speaking country (at 8 and 5 i think), and they both still have slight (but noticeable) accents. I'm sure it can be done, but i don't think most accomplish this

Yeah, I was among those who confuse "practice" and "deliberate practice". The former can go into automatic mode and pushes fewer boundaries than the latter. It took lots of background listening that wasn't very useful to realize that. I have met many people from countries like Germany, Vietnam and Brazil who sound like native English speakers.

YES It's possible! You'll have to work for it, you need discipline, time, patience and a list of key techniques, both muscular/mechanical as well as psychological. It's definitely possible.

I‘m a native German and french speaker from Switzerland, and I remember my french teacher in high school was not a native speaker. He grew up in the German part of Switzerland and never even really came in contact with french before he started high school. Funnily enough he only told us (the class) about that two years into high school, and before that I would never have guessed that he isn‘t a native french speaker. Addition: I have yet to come across a non-native speaker of Swiss German that speaks like a native speaker. If the argument were true, that many Scandinavians speak good English because their language is so similar, surely you‘d think that native Germans could learn to speak Swiss German in an instance, but I know people who have lived here for over 30 years and don‘t even come close to sounding like native Swiss German speakers.

I haven’t finished the video so what i’m saying might be said in the video as well 😂 but! I started immersing myself in the english language when I was 11. I watched tv shows and movies, english speaking youtubers and only listened to english music. I’m now 17 and I pretty much sound like a californian white girl 😂😂 my accents pops up for some words that have a lot of r’s and l’s like the word “regularly” because the Dutch r is different from the English r, but I absolutely think it’s possible to sound like a native speaker.

I actually think that it can sometimes be more difficult to learn a language close to your own. But it certainly has a lot to do with musicality and willingness to step outside your vocal boundaries

I mean, I hope so, as a German learner...

Thanks for this video. I think you addressed the key points and it was very insightful, but I feel there was one glaring omission. A significant factor in reaching Native standard in a language- in addition to learning to changing your entire intonation - is to change your entire mannerisms. Every language (and by extension the culture of a language) will have have certain mannerisms, quirks and habits. Not changing your mannerisms, would definitely give the game away. For example, UK English is very polite and so are most people who speak it. If you learnt to speak British English to a Native standard (a tough task, very few do), you’d need to change your whole character. 😃

Kind of unrelated to this video, but I just had an online Swedish lesson, so it's fresh in my mind. Do you have videos about how to transition from reading/watching/listening in a target language to actually speaking it? It's so difficult to find people to practice with, and limited vocabulary can make even simple conversations very difficult to plod through. What advice do you have for people at that stage? For me, I know I need practice speaking, but even online lessons have not been that great. It feels to me like we need a better way to get actual practice, but in a less formal, much more casual way. I know that my brain locks up and my vocabulary shrinks to about 25% of what it normally is, and whatever proper pronunciation I have also goes out the window as soon as I start trying to speak Swedish to a native Swede. Strangely, this doesn't happen when I practice sentences with a non-Swede. Maybe I feel less pressure. Super weird. lol Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for the great content!

To any swede that says that no foreigner can sound like a native speaker I would like to suggest you listen to Cornelis Vreeswijk. He was born in the Netherlands and he speaks the most beautiful and "correct" Swedish I've ever heard.

I'm a firm believer that it can be done, just not by anyone and it does require a lot of effort and linguistics knowledge. I sound pretty close to an American, but I do slip up, especially because nowadays I don't care what I sound like as long as I'm clear. If I really put in the effort, I think I could convincingly sound American even after speaking for a while.

I'm a native Arabic speaker who has made American friends online. My accent was so convincingly American that many refused to believe I am not American lmao.

Some people have an accent and others don't. It depends on how much work you want to do to perfect your accent. Just because some people can't doesn't mean it's impossible for everybody.

100% agree, I speak 5 languages fluently, a couple intermediate, and the reason I don't sound native in some languages is precisely the same reason as Lucca , which is that dedicating time to several languages hasn't allowed me to focus on one particular to it's perfection. On the other hand and at the same time, knowing several languages opens your mind, ears and gives you experience on how to reach higher levels in the other languages. Also, although languages are my passion, I am far from disciplined (my bad, but always good to be aware of it and know that it's my responsibility and not that "it's not possible") and don't spend the time I wish I would spend practicing languages, and besides, unlike Lucca, I have worked in different fields and was never fully dedicated to learning languages. I wish I could dedicate myself solely to languages. It's important to be organized. I have a book on how to learn languages which is "on ice" since a few months back because of other occupations, but I hope to finish it this year (it's almost done actually).

Would love to see Steve Kaufmann do a response video to this.

Favourite Aussie KZfaqr

Great video. (follows yet another long post with no real point, so read at your own peril ^^) One thing the "unbelievers" might sometimes trip over is the fact that they'll read papers or hear linguists say that it's most likely impossible to reach native level for an adult learner. And that's not wrong, but they might miss the fact that we're talking about two very different things. In academia you usually find it expressed as "linguistic indistinguishability" vs. "perceptual indistinguishability". Basically, the first means you're indistinguishable from a native in the eyes of a scientist who is dissecting every last bit of your speech. The second is the "I can fool a native into thinking I'm a native too". And those are two very different things. Language learners are interested in the second. But linguists are mostly interested in the first. You don't find much research where the indicator is "can you fool a native". Usually, when you do have research that uses that indicator, the point is just to use that as a baseline to say "these are the high achievers" and then try to look at that group and see what separates them from the rest as a demographic (i.e. to get an idea of the correlates that might explain why some people reach high levels of proficiency whereas others don't). But for the rest, they'll use other indicators. And those indicators might be things that are completely unnoticeable outside of a lab. Maybe your reaction time to activate the lexicon is slightly slower than the average for native speakers, maybe a spectrograph can pick up on slight abnormalities in speech patterns that the human ear just doesn't pick up on, etc. etc. So you end up in this situation where linguists might say it's impossible, and they may not be wrong, but they're referring to something different than what most language learners have in mind. Well, maybe I'm extrapolating. Maybe not "most", but at least that's what it's like for me. I mean, if I can fool natives into thinking I'm a native, then I honestly don't really care whether a scientist in a lab can pick up on tiny differences. The other thing is that some people just have a very hard time letting go of this idea that they're immune to bias. I'm not kidding when I say that I've seen people literally hallucinate an accent when I speak. The reason: my name doesn't sound native. That's it. That's enough for their minds to go haywire and start blaring "stranger alert! stranger alert!". The only way around that, to check that our biases aren't calling the shots, is to blind test it. But as soon as you know anything at all about the person speaking and their background, you just can't trust your judgment anymore. I remember interpreting once for a company that was organising one of those consumer group things to test a new product. So the way it's set up is that you have one person talking with the participants in the room, and then you have the researchers behind a tainted window watching the whole thing (and I was interpreting for the researchers). In this case it was a brand testing out new food products. The first thing they did was to make the participants taste the exact same product twice, except the first time they said it was X brand, and the second they lied to them and said it was Y brand. And of course, everybody started hallucinating small differences even though it was the exact same product. It was honestly pretty hilarious to watch. ^^ Because you can just see how people are rationalising these supposed differences they think they felt. The researchers just do that to get a baseline idea of what people's biases are, and they can then correct the results from the rest of the test according to that. But yeah, no matter how smart or sensitive a person thinks he is, it's just not humanly possible to be immune to bias. That's just how our brains are set up, for better or for worse.

We had a taxi driver in Honduras that spoke perfect English and he learned it completely of the tourists. For my own experience, I'm not that broad In vocabulary for Chinese but I'm so paranoid about accent that people think I'm better than I am at it. The positive thing is, a few times native speakers thanked me for bothering to use the tones because many learners don't and it's terrible sounding and makes the language awkward.

its about exposure and whatever accent you learn. in germany we have to learn oxford english in school from german teachers (german natives i mean to say) and most of the english media we consume is american. you can already guess that this will mix up our pronounciation and accents a lot. i dont even know how i would consider my accent to be honest and it honestly changes over time if i speak it a lot. perhaps i start off sounding more german because it is my main language, but then i will shift in whatever direction i am interacting with... if its a brit it will be more british if its an american more american. is it native sounding, i dont think so. but english is a difficult language to choose, just because there are so many types of english and it depends on what you are exposed most to.

Yes! I rarely see people talking about this but you did! What most people don’t realize is that languages may share the same alphabet, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the letters are exactly the same. Even if the letters sound similar, they are not the same. People don’t usually hear the difference, and not being able to hear that difference doesn’t allow you to pronounce things like a native. It’s not just about saying words, it requires physical abilities, different countries speak with different intonations, they flex different muscles when speaking, even if the letter is the same they might put their tongue in a slightly different position when saying it and people don’t realize that! You HAVE TO pay attention to how natives are saying it. How are they pronouncing that R? Are they rolling the R? Are they pronouncing it with the back of their mouth? or maybe their throat? Are those vowels supposed to be high pitched? And of course it requires a certain ability and a certain intelligence to be able to identify those details and perfectly reproduce those sounds, so of course it is totally okay to have an accent, but every time I get complimented by a native speaker and my friends ask me HOW? that’s what I always explain. I’ve sounded like a native english speaker all my life (with an american accent) even though I’ve only ever left my country once before. I still make A LOT of mistakes, of course, but natives still dont believe me when I say I’m a foreigner. People often tell me I have a great pronunciation in other languages too, but I’m not fluent in any of them. Anyway, that’s an important detail that people rarely talk about!! If you wanna sound like a native you have to focus on that.

I'm pretty sure I have reliable method for anyone to acquire a native accent. The problem is that it requires niche technology. To learn anything we can simply apply Kahneman's 3 requirements: 1. Repetition 2. Feedback 3. Reliable environment So what we need is a tool that can in real time check tongue position, mouth shape, vocal cord pitch etc... And then we need to visually present this (with one or multiple graphs, or a 3d model of the parts being mimicked). Then we need native material recorded in this format that users can compare with. With such a tool, practise would be optimized without relying on talent in sound perception and or general mimicking intuition.

I'd say it's certainly possible. The problem is diminishing returns. It could take thousands more hours of additional study to go from 'very advanced' to 'native like' proficiency. For most this trade-off isn't worth it - you could get solidly proficient in a brand new language in that time, which in my opinion is time better spent. But it all depends on what your goals are.

Is it possible? Yes should that be the ultimate goal? No. I believe fluency, ie being understood and understanding language at a high level, should be. Not ever sounding like a native shouldn’t derail your goal. Another great video 🙌

It can be done, but it's extremely hard and in most cases, not worth the effort. Even after passing the CPE exam and having an English girlfriend for years, I still feel like I'm far from sounding native. Maybe if I lived over there for a few years and worked really hard on my fluency and pronunciation... but it's much more interesting to learn other languages!

I can't remember who it was, mattvsjapan or maybe Steve Kaufmann. He said something in the lines of if pronunciation and accent is important you will be able to master it. But most never have the goal of speaking a language to that level. Most of the Swedish or Norwegians (I am Norwegian) just want to talk and be fine while speaking English. The end goal is not to sound native like. I do want to sound native like so I have made a big effort to reach that goal. keep up the good work with videos btw !

I definitely think you can speak perfect swedish, at least so close that it might as well count as perfect. and like you said, swedes can’t say every single word correctly either, probably goes for every language. However, i think there are subtle things that are less about pronunciation and more about the timing and melody of an entire sentence (or even some facial expression/mannerism) that might give some away. This is SUPER subtle and situational though, i don’t think it really counts in the end since it isn’t a vital part of it. But worth a mention just for fun and sake of discussion. :)

I agree!

my father came to sweden when he was 21, before i was born, he learned to speak the language in like 2 years, but even now 30 years later, he still has a thick balkan-accent. I think i am a native speaker, like i can tell dialects apart and such, but people say me and my sibling still has traces of my fathers accent in our speech, but i think its due to us hanging around him and mimicing his and others speech

tbh while speaking casually, I keep making weird mistakes in my first language too, so I don't think weird grammar is automatically a giveaway for being a non native speaker. Though somewhere along the way I messed up with learning German (my first language), because often people seem to think it's my second language when they talk to me, but that's probably the reason I became interested in language learning. So I guess it's also a good thing, when people continuously ask you what your first language is, while you are not fluent in any other language than the one you're talking at this moment.

It really depends, first off, the language itself, English is easy, and most people learn it when they are young, study many subjects in school in English so it's easy for them to sound native esp. that most movies and tv shows and culture around the world is impacted by English and they spend hours listening to it growing up anyway, when it comes to other languages, it's hard because it's hard for people to spend time watching motives and being immersed in those languages in the same degree as English, me for example, years ago I reached an almost native like fluency but not so much now because I don't use it as much, I listen to it a lot, the bottom line here it comes down to the usage (speaking the language), someone who speaks it everyday for hours or lives in the country, it can be done yes, but not for most people, some people have the skill to pronounce the words correctly and pick up on the sounds, others don't pay so much attention even if they were living in that country for decades, they just are ok with the minimum required for them to communicate.

I think it’s almost impossible (though not truly impossible) due to a few realities: 1. I don’t think our brain ever acquires a language quite like our native language (which is why it can take many years to get to the point where we don’t make errors, even when we’re already able to talk about complex topics) 2. Very few people get enough exposure to catch up with years and years of 8-16 hrs a day in their target language, like native speakers generally get (since sounding fluent is a combo of pronunciation, idioms, grammar, cultural references, and social norms about how to speak/react (I’d call it “cultural fluency”)) 3. I think many people aren’t willing to put as much work into pronunciation and/or their hearing isn’t sharp enough to master the subtle nuances of sound/intonation (I actually just made a video on this) That said, I’m still working on my Spanish and Russian as if it WERE possible for me to get a native level of fluency, and I’m hoping it is! I try and do the best I can to pronounce sounds in Spanish/Russian (which is why I really dislike phonetic spelling of words when I’m trying to learn how to say them - I think the IPA is better, though I’d need to learn it first 😅) Do you think singers/actors have an advantage because of voice coaching/training?

Some can, others can't. It all depends on the person and where they come from. It takes lots of time and dedication to learn the right sounds etc. That can still be hard if language are close. And yes, we do speak "swenglish". And Polish are not even close to Swedish, at all... So yes, you are right.

I completely agree with you, l learned English in 6 months, l have 30 years speaking but with a very heavy Spanish accent It's now that am really correcting it I have a year learning French and is a lot more different and difi cult than English, l speak Spanish