Sounding Native is Overrated

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[00:00:00.53] - Oliver (Host)

Do you ever feel like you've been learning English forever and you still sound absolutely nothing like the late Queen or Hugh Grant or whoever your favourite British voice belongs to? Yeah, same. Except in my case, it was French, and I cried, literally. Let me explain. Welcome back to English and Beyond. My name is Oliver. As always, there is a transcript and free flashcards, free of charge, available to help you practise the vocabulary from this episode at www.morethanalanguage.com.

[00:00:42.23] - Oliver (Host)

I was a painfully shy teenager, not just introverted, I mean, agonisingly shy, the kind of kid who blushed when the teacher said, Good morning. But I loved languages. I mean, really loved them. I used to sit in my Latin class like a geeky little sponge. In fact, for example, I begged my school to let me do Ancient Greek for my final school exams, which they didn't even offer, and they created a one-person, A-level course just for me. It was literally just me and the teacher for four hours a week. That's how language-obsessed I was. But although I loved languages, there was a strange irony about my linguistic studies. I loved Latin, I loved Ancient Greek, but no one speaks those languages.

[00:01:39.29] - Oliver (Host)

They're dead. They're dead languages. The only language I was learning that real people actually spoke: French. I just couldn't do it. Not because I didn't try, not because I didn't care, not even because I didn't like it. I really liked French, but only if I could read or write it because I couldn't cope with the language because I was terrified of sounding stupid, of opening my mouth and being laughed at. And guess what? That's exactly what happened. You know how it goes. You're in school, trying your best to get into the language and the accent, and there's a ripple of laughter. Nothing very evil, just enough to make you shrink a little bit and feel embarrassed about actually trying to put on a French accent. As a result, you don't try to put one on, and you do the same as everybody and speak French, "speak French", in this weird British accent that we did in all of our classes. And that pronunciation in French, in general, don't get me started. I remember my teacher telling me that parlé and parlaient, spelled totally differently, sounded exactly the same. I was like, I'm sorry, what? I just didn't believe him.

[00:03:05.49] - Oliver (Host)

I just couldn't accept that French spelling could be that chaotic. I do understand the irony of an English native speaker saying that. So instead of risking sounding silly, I did what many people do, and I said the minimum that I could. I mumbled, I avoided eye contact, I avoided questions. I remember doing an oral exam practice session with my teacher and just freezing. I ended up literally crying. Me, the boy who liked grammar a lot more than football, who spent break time practising his Latin vocab. French almost made me feel like a failure. And so, what changed? Well, not much until I had no choice. It's a long story, but after university, I had to take just over a year off before I could start my training contract in a London-based law firm as a junior lawyer. With over a year to go till I could start working, I thought, What can I do with all this time? And I started studying Mandarin Chinese. That's right. I just casually decided to jump into one of the most complex phonetic systems in the world. Mandarin was a baptism of fire: the tones, the characters, the total lack of an alphabet.

[00:04:34.07] - Oliver (Host)

But, strangely, it helped. You can't mumble in Mandarin. Infamously, if you tried to say ma and say ma, instead, you've accidentally called someone's mother a horse. There's no pretending. So you have to speak up, you have to speak clearly, and you have to get used to being wrong constantly. And once I'd been wrong enough times in Mandarin, something shifted. I became a little bit more bulletproof, we could say. Later, I moved to Germany and then to Italy, and now I'm living in Spain, and I've embarrassed myself over and over again in many new languages. But by this point, I've accepted something really important. Embarrassment is a language learner's best teacher. In fact, now I collect embarrassment. I fumbled my way through conversations in Chinese police stations, German hospitals, Italian train stations. And you know what? I survived, and so did my ego. I've learned. And now, I really enjoy learning modern languages again. And surprisingly for me, that actually includes French. I've gotten over my teenage mini-trauma I started studying the language again. In fact, I'm spending this summer doing a residential language course in Montpellier. So the language that once made me cry in a classroom in front of my peers because of my terrible French accent?

[00:06:17.00] - Oliver (Host)

I'm now voluntarily paying money to study that language. Crazy. But do I sound native? Absolutely not, and I never will. And that's totally fine. Because I've realised something over the years, sounding native is absolutely not the goal. Sounding like yourself, clearly and confidently, is. If you are speaking in another language and people understand what you're saying, you're already winning. The pressure to sound near native is intense. I know. It's everywhere, especially online. You see these TikToks, How to Sound Just Like a Londoner in 30 Days, and you think, God, I've been learning English for 10 years, and I still sound like a robot reading the phone book on a good day. But guess what? Most native speakers don't even speak perfect English. They mumble, they mix up tenses, they say 'like' every three words, they have inconsistent accents, and they mispronounce so many words. And even native speakers don't sound like each other. So why should you sound exactly like them. But that said, I recognise that we do want to feel comfortable speaking in another language, and we do want to be understood without repeating ourselves hundreds of times. So working on our accent and our spoken English, regardless of what I tell you, will remain important to you, I know.

[00:07:53.48] - Oliver (Host)

Here are some strategies that actually helped me to sound better, not perfect, in Spanish, Italian, French, and even Mandarin, without losing your mind. Number one, speak out loud, even alone. You can't improve what you don't say out loud. You don't need a teacher or partner every day. Talk to your dog, narrate your actions. You could say, And now I'm washing a plate, and now I'm realising I left the kettle on, and now I sound insane. It's silly, but it works. Your mouth needs training, just like your brain does. Number two, start now. Don't wait to feel ready. Confidence comes after action and not before. Everyone thinks they'll speak once they feel more prepared. But the secret is, nobody feels prepared, ever. You just start, you say something, you get it wrong, and then you say it again. And that's how progress works. Number three, record yourself and prepare to cringe a lot. Yes, you will hate your voice, but that's normal. Recording lets you spot patterns and fix little errors you'd never notice otherwise. You'll also notice improvements faster this way. And no, you don't need to post it anywhere. It's just for you. Number four, learn to like your own voice.

[00:09:27.49] - Oliver (Host)

This one takes time, but here's the truth: your accent tells your story. It's your identity. It means you've lived, travelled, studied, made mistakes, tried. And that's way more interesting than sounding like a BBC presenter. So, if you've ever felt embarrassed or even cried in a language class like I did, keep going. If you feel ashamed speaking English, keep going. If you think your accent will never sound good, you're probably wrong, so just keep going. And even if you are right, it doesn't matter. Because this isn't about perfection, it's about expression, it's about communication, it's about someone else understanding what you are trying to say. So go out there, speak badly, laugh at yourself, and then speak again. Thank you very much for listening, and I'll see you next time.