One Tip For Attractive Accent In Greek
And a good way to reprogram your brain.
When we dream of learning a language and mastering it at any level, we have a picture of ourselves speaking quite fluently in as good accent as possible.
When we go to the practical part though, many people get dissapointed when they hear themselves reading words and sentences.
The words and the possibilities sound better in our ears and we feel that now we have a big mountain to climb.
We are not talking about the important part of memory in this article.
Today we will talk about the practical part of the accent in learning a language.
We will split this in two parts.
- Muscles of the mouth.
- Mentality of the student.
- Muscles of the mouth. To take things from zero,we need to see that by learning a new language we are trying to train our brain to work with the whole system of the mouth to create completely different sounds than usual. These sounds must make sense in order to be understandable. This is not easy.
You are trying to work with muscles. A muscle can work only when we train it. There is no other way. You can watch as many videos as you want about running, you will not get into it, unlesss you put on your shoes and get out there.
What is running for a language?
Reading.
Reading out loud.
Don’t be afraid.
Don’t be ashamed.
Don’t judge.
Just do it.
This is the practical part, the brutal part maybe that is all about training the muscles of the whole system of the mouth together with teeth. You can train it by reading out loud as much as possible.
We will explain later the techniwue of how to read properly in order to read correctly.
Let’s go to number 2 now.
2. Mentality. Many people come to me and at some point, in the beginning more often, they tell me they want to speak like a greek. I have talked about it a lot in my classes and I understand it is something many language teachers will disagree with.
I don’t want you to speak like a Greek. I don’t want you to try to immitate the sound in order to sound like someone else.
Your accent is your story. Keep it rare.
The way we speak, the way we create speech is unique just like our faces. I don’t want you to be like someone else, I want you to be the unique, wonderful person you are and put the Greek language on this. Your accent is your story, don’t try to speak like anyone else.
I speak English with Greek accent because this is my story. I am a Greek who grew up in the 90’s in a village in Greece and learned English in order to communicate with the world. When someone listens to me speaking English, they can tell I am Greek and I love it.
Put your identinty in your accent, it is attractive and it shows you have worked with yourself.
Tip to have attractive accent in Greek
Let me tell you a story so as to understand how important it is to read slowly with the techique I will share with you in this article.
When I was little, my two sisters taught me how to read and write as a game. I could read and write quite earlier before I went to school. So, when I went to school, I started bragging and reading fast, because I could.
When I started reading in front of the classroom, the teacher stopped me and asked me to read more slowly.
I told her that I didn’t have to as I knew how to read and then she told me that this has nothing to do with the procedure of reading Greek.
She explained the technique is this:
Read in syllables. In Greek we call it συλλαβίζω (syllavίzo). I look carefully in every word of the sentence and read every syllable slowly.
What is a syllable?
A syllable requires to have one consonent together with a vowel or one combination of vowels. It can also be one vowel or combination of vowels together.
For example:
γά-τα (gata)=cat
έ-λα (ela)=come
δι-α-βά-ζω (diavάzo)=I read
παι-δί (paedi)=kid
The Greek Language was created together with music. It is a phonetic practice and we read just like music.
This technique is a wonderful way to obtain an attractive accent in the greek language, a sure way to be understandable, while you keep your identity and you are able to communicate perfectly.
This way you keep track of the tonos, you train yourself not to forget it, you pay attention to the spelling and rules and you give your brain the time to comprehend the information.
I know we are programmed to want things fast. This is a great game for your brain to reprogram itself and be patient for the good outcome.
You will practice your patience with this small trick. Your brain will be going back to the habit of fast.
It doesn’t matter.
Start over and over again.
With Respect,
Efi Asvesti
Founder, Teacher & Copywriter
@ MyGreekTeacher.com
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