Accent is a characteristic pronunciation especially determined by the regional of social background of the speaker. There are different accents like American, British, and Australian etc… But, your aim should not be to learn a particular accent but to neutralize & globalize your Accent.

The spoken form of any language can't be learnt directly from its written form. This is so because no language is written exactly as it is spoken.

Components of Accent :-

There are 3 main parts to an accent:

1. Intonation

2. Pronunciation

3. Rate of Speech


Intonation :

Intonation is the term used to refer to the distinctive use of different patterns of pitch that carry meaningful information. Pitch is the rate of vibration of the vocal folds. When we speak, normally the pitch of our voice is constantly changing.

Let’s consider the following example :

Question: What is the difference between the two sentences?

1. He is going tomorrow.

2. He is going tomorrow?

The melodies of the two sentences are different. The melody of the first sentence drops at the end making it a statement. The melody of the second sentence rises at the end making it a question. These sentence melodies are called intonation.

Rate of Speech - 

Number of words spoken in a specific given time is called rate of speech. We Asians are to known to speak at almost twice the pace as people in the west, making business communication very difficult. A fast rate of speech gives the impression of an anxious and in effective person. Speech is very hard to understand. It’s your job to make an effort to understand and to be understood

Pronunciation -

The way we pronounce the words.