So, did you ever wanted to learn French on Skype? Did you find difficult to go to classes due to travel and busy schedule?
Why do I do this
I came to Canada with a strong British English (that’s what I learned in school) and I found myself not connecting with Canadians or Americans, the way I used to do in Europe. It took me a couple of months to put on the American accent (thank God for my acting background and techniques), but those few months were Hell for me.
It took me longer to learn idioms and what they really meant and when to use them. But worst of all was the accent. It killed me that still didn’t have a standard English accent (yes, there is such a thing!), and I had worked for years.
I was identified as a ‘not from here’ and that hurt, because, for what I was concerned, I was home.
Fast forward a few years
I had a coach for standard American and I got so frustrated because I couldn’t hear my own mistakes in pronunciation. The subtle differences of the vowels in English gave me more than a headache – a heart ache – because I have a good ear! I was telling myself: “I’m good at this stuff…”
But I didn’t realize that I only needed a small shift. In desperation, I resorted to anything outside of the box, and I stumbled onto the sense memory, a well known acting technique.
As soon as I used that, I had no problem producing the new sounds ‘on demand’, and even switching from a language to another without accents, as if the many years of suffering and frustrations were a far and exaggerated joke.
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