People have told me that I speak both Italian and Spanish without a foreign accent. It would seem that this ability for
me has been a combo of hard work and somewhat of a natural ability to pick up on accents.
One thing that has helped me a lot is the idea that both Italian and Spanish are spoken in the front of the mouth and
not in the back of the mouth as with English.

These are the things I have done to learn both Italian and Spanish and eliminate my English foreign accentYou can do the samething.

1. Oral out loud reading of Italian from books, text books, magazines, newspaper and all writtten material. My Italian books on tape(CD)are ideal for this. I listen to them in my car and then read the books later and or read along with the tapes/CDs.

2. Reading along with native speakers and having them correct me.

3. Studying Italian and Spanish phonectics. Italian and Spanish are highly phonetic languages. This means that each sound is (almost) always graphically represented by the same combination of letters (vowels and/or consonants.) Compare that with English where, as Bernard Shaw once famously said, the word "fish" could be written "ghoti": F as in enough; I as in women; SH as in the ending -tion.

4. While living in Italy I watched only Italian TV and listened to Italian radio for 2 years straight without watching English
TV or listening to the radio in English. Did the samething with Spanish for 2 years when back in the U.S.

5. Listened/and him listening to Italian/Spanish tapes/CDs with walkmen type equipment while working around the house inside and out.
While lifting weights, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, washing the car, sweeping the driveway, writing on the computer etc. etc.

6. I watch 2 Italian movies a week. You can rent them from Nexflicks.

7. I have friends who speak the language and I speak to them.

8. I Read a little Italian every night in bed before going to sleep.

9. Teaching other people is a sure way to learn something better.

10. Flash cards. Use them with a partner or by yourself.

11. Singing in Italian and listening to Italian music. Amazon.com: Singer's Italian: A Manual of Diction and Phonetics ...Amazon.com: Singer's Italian: A Manual of Diction and Phonetics: Evelina ... Webster's New World Italian Dictionary: Italian/English, English/Italian ...
http://www.amazon.com/Singers-Italia.../dp/002870620X - 222k - Cached - Similar pages

Not to mention going to Italy again and studying Italian at the Universita di Perugia.

Villa,
Great ideas. But I have seen you say that Italian and Spanish are "spoken in the front of the mouth" before and have never been able to figure out what that means exactly. Can you explain a little more fully? Grazie mille.

I once had a series of audio cassettes which were developed only for the pronunciation...that's not to say it helped me out so much!!! But, probably worth a try if you can stick with it.

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fmaggi
www.touringtracks.com
http://burntbythetuscansun.blogspot.com

Being a foreign langauge teacher and somebody who has been studying latin based languages for quite some time, I can say for certain that it is very very hard to eliminate the accent! I have been told that my French and Spanish are very good but that I still have a slight accent in both languages. Once a person reaches age 12 it becomes almost impossible to master a language to 100% efficiency unless you put out a lot of effort like Villa has done! For that reason, the United States should have its youth being to study a foreign langauge at a much earlier age than 12. This is an area in which we are lacking greatly!

I really like the part where Villa states that it is good to teach something to somebody else as a way of learning! That is so true. In fact, that is how I learned Spanish.

This is true suppongo about the 12 year old cut off date for learning languages without having a forgein accent. Glad I never paid a whole lot of attention to it since I didn't start learning Italian until I was 19 and didn't start learning Spanish until I was around 22 or 23.

The thing to do is to shoot for as good as accent as you can. What's really important is just communicating at first and not worry so much about your accent. Then poco a poco improve your accent. Forse not even worring about your accent at all prima.

Took a phonetics/phonemics and analysis class in college. The book had examples of all the letters and sounds of Spanish and we would drill them. Goes right along with Italian phonetics a proposito.

Per esempio let's take the Italian letters D and T .

For Italian D Say da de di do du or dah deh dee doh doo

In English you will notice that you touch your tongue to the roof
of your mouth while in Italian you touch your tongue right behind your top teeth. We call this dental. Try it again. First the English then the Italian or visa versa. This is an example of English spoken in the back of the mouth and Italian in the front.

dama debole diamonte domanda duro (all Italian words) DAH-mah DEH-boh-leh dee-ah-MONH-teh DOO-roh

Now do the samething with the letter T. Press your tongue right behind your front teeth

ta te ti to tu tah teh tee toh too

tanto teatro tigre topo turista (all Italian words) TAH-toh teh-AH-troh TEE-greh TOH-poh too-REES-tah

This along with rolling your "Rs" will take you a long way in avoiding your English accent while speaking Italian.

What villa is talking about is something called linguistics. The study of linguistics is (or at least can be) rather difficult. I know that I found it difficult. Where your tongue is located in the mouth...back or front will make all the difference in how the sound will come out. Also, the tone and intonation changes greatly from language to language. I used to have a French Professor who would make us draw stairases to represent how a person's voice would go up and down throughout a sentence.

As for losing the accent. It's just a matter of listening to native speakers of Italian and trying to imitate them. Watch movies, watch RAI, try to surrund yourself with native speakers of Italian such as Paolo or Zidanie who think in Italian!

i wanna thank you a lot, villa for this true useful ways to learn italiano
and i think MOVIES is really good for the learners .. and that's how i improved my english

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What is a friendship? A soul dwelling in two bodies

Well Falco this website will be good for your Italian and for practising your English as well ...we hope