Luke Thompson

I think that should be interesting for my listeners to hear a native English speaker talking about his processes for learning another language.

It's just interesting to hear someone's approach described in English.

So what I'm trying to do with this is to help you map the sounds of English as it is spoken, meaning the various accents.

But in this particular case, we're going to focus mainly on London.

I want to raise your awareness of different accents.

I also want to help you understand the importance of being able to understand English spoken in a variety of accents.

There are also considerations which you need to think about.

And questions that you might have, including what accent should I have?

What accent should I be trying to learn?

And should I try to remove all traces of my accent when I speak English?

So wherever you come from, that might be something you've thought.

You just think, where do I stand when it comes to learning English and my pronunciation?

Should I be attempting to sound like a native speaker from London or something?

In which case, which one?

But should you try to eradicate all traces of your accent when you speak English?

So there's all that.

Now, you will notice that during the conversation, Patricio and I both agree that when you are, let's say, teaching or explaining different accents, it's a bit tricky whether you should copy those accents while you're doing it.

That's a bit of a tricky thing, depending on the accent, maybe depending on the person who's doing it.

But the point is that, let's say, if we're trying to teach you four different accents from London, naturally, we will want to demonstrate them and show you what they actually sound like.

But we've got to make a decision there, because if we choose to actually copy those accents, unless we do them perfectly...