The Mechanics of Accents with Toby Ricketts

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Hi there, and welcome to Vox Talk, your weekly review from the world of voiceover. I'm your host Stephanie Ciccarelli from Voices. Just how hard is it to perform an accent? Returning to the Vox Talk studio is Toby Ricketts from the wilds of New Zealand. Toby was with us in an earlier episode discussing accents in general. And today we'll be taking a deeper dive into what it actually takes to perform an accent when with many helpful tips that you can use to better your performances, you could say this episode is all about the mechanics of accents. Welcome back to the show, Toby.

Toby Ricketts:

Thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Oh, my gosh. You've already put one on. You got your American accent just came right through.

Toby Ricketts:

Exactly. I'm going to be kind of delving into a bunch of different accents today just to keep everyone on their toes.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Yeah. Oh, and they're a new one. A new one again. So, as we all know, you are the master at accents in the world of voiceover. You seem to have this market cornered, if you don't mind me saying, so far as just understanding from your own perspective what goes into accents, but also all the linguistic end of it. So, Toby, while performing an accent is fun, as we know, many people want to perform these accents and they don't quite realize that perhaps there's a bit of a science behind it, not just the art, the fun part. So what role does technique play in the mechanics of performing an accent?

Toby Ricketts:

Absolutely. Well, it's worth sort of starting off by saying accent performance kind of happens on a spectrum. I think everyone tries to put on an accent at some point and speak differently because it's the primary mechanism that we use to communicate with all other humans is our voice. And it's fun to experiment with the control of that, to put on accents or to pretend to be someone else or there's a bunch of ways that we can reshape our voices to kind of predict a different person of ourselves or to just have fun at parties, for example. So with accents, I always like to think there's sort of like the party end of the spectrum where you do a fun, oh, ‘I'm going to go to this party, I'm going to talk like an Irishman or listen to me, I can do accents. It's all fun,’ and it's like, that's great at a party, and everyone is very impressed, but if you try and do that to an Irish person, as an Irish person, they will be like, ‘what are you doing? This is offensive.’ So it's always good to know where you stand in that spectrum right through to being able to fool a native so they don't even know. I'm always amazed when you see a movie or something with a star who maybe you're not familiar with and you assume that they're British or you assume they're American and then you see them in an interview and you're like, ‘Hang on, I didn't even know they were doing that.’ When they really nail the qualities of that accent and all of the hallmarks, your brain just completely gets fooled and that's like at the other end. So as far as techniques go, I feel like there's two schools because I've definitely heard people talking about how to learn accents and they come from a more mechanistic approach of like, you've got to do the work. You sit down and you've got to repeat and train your brain how to do this accent and learn every one of these little hooks and every one of these techniques. And you do that enough times, just like driving a car and then it becomes thoughtless, you can just sort of coast along and improv in that accent and everything. Like, it's like a suit you put on. But there's also this kind of intuitive way of learning accents where you kind of just get into the vibe of it and you almost develop a character. I kind of feel like my accents are kind of like characters where you just move sideways into a different way of talking and then you start talking with that accent and it just feels right. And then you listen back to the recordings and you say, oh, that didn't feel quite right. And so you sort of listen again and try it in a different manner. And that's the thing that you push into your subconscious and your motor cortex, so you're not really thinking about what you're doing. So, yeah, I feel like there are those two different ways of doing it. One is very much focused on the details, and one is focused on the kind of broad feeling of the accent, where it sits in the mouth, et cetera. But they're not mutually exclusive. It's not only have to choose one path, I think both have their merits and it's more about how you learn best as to which path you sort of choose to go to.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

I like that idea of having an outfit that you put on, like, as I said, ‘oh, you've already put one on.’ It's kind of like you had a ready made just jump into this outfit of this is the American accent, this is my British accent. And I love also the idea of there being some kind of a character element because then you can do all kinds of neat things to say, well, this is how this accent feels, or this is this person. You can envision a character, right?

Toby Ricketts:

Yeah

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

And that is a really powerful thing for those who like to visualize and just kind of have that in their mind. Some of us just want to have a step by step, this is how it's done. And it's great to have the feeling of it and to kind of get that sense as well, but just wondering, all of it goes together. I think that those two that you spoke of, those two schools, they do intersect. They might overlap a little more for some people than others or whatnot, but it's so important to know from a technical standpoint, ‘is this how I do that vowel with a New Zealand accent?’ What should I be trying to do? And for someone like you, who has largely for most of your life at this point, had that accent, because I know you were born in the UK, but you've learned it, but now it's second nature to you. I don't know. Do you even think about how you make those shapes anymore?

Toby Ricketts:

Not with the New Zealand accent. And it should be mentioned that the New Zealand accent is famously one of the most difficult to pick up because it goes all over the place and it's got these really strange, sort of, like, flat vowels, like building and milk and all these sort of, like, funny ‘oh, it's so sort of flat.’ And there's not many other accents that inhabit that palette. Some parts of South African and some parts of the Chicago accent. It's funny how accents have these different links between them, but I think we're going to talk a little bit more about that later on. When you're learning a new accent, it feels like a new pair of shoes in that there's going to be discomfort, there's going to be parts that aren't right. And the more you wear them, the more you wear this accent, the more that's going to come right. As long as you're identifying where you're listening back and you're thinking, ‘oh, no, that didn't feel right,’ or like, as you get better, you can hear as you do it, or ‘that didn't sound right.’ So when you start to just put accents on, you can hear if you don't hit a certain thing right, right. You can experiment with all these different ways of putting the vowels in your own time. And the great thing about having home studios is that you can experiment and no one's listening except you. So if you get it wrong, then you're the only one that's hearing it. So I think it's a really safe place to practice accents and then listen back and be a hard critic and find, like, a YouTube video or someone you want to imitate. And then you just listen to their sample and then listen to your sample and think, ‘what am I doing differently?’ Read the same script as them. Sometimes get stuck in accents as well. Just kind of fun. But, yeah, I think like Mnemonics, which can be really useful, which you mentioned before, but, yeah.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Wow. And you know what? I'll give you some great feedback and for everyone who's listening, if you heard Toby's previous episode with us, I actually heard from someone who was like, that's a great idea. I'm going to get a buddy from overseas and we're going to connect and I'm going to learn their accent, they’re going to learn mine. So thank you for dropping those great ideas for people. I just love that someone's already acted on it, and that's great. So as we're talking here, obviously you kind of talked a bit about this before, about a few accents that kind of play in the same playground, if you will. But are there accents that use the same basic structure mechanically? And if so, what are they or some of them, and how are they similar to each other?

Toby Ricketts:

Absolutely. Well, you find similarities in that sense where there is a geographical similarity or there's lots of cross pollination. Canada and the US is a great example, right? It's a very subtle shift between Canada and the US. So much so that because America is so much larger. Whenever I've sort of come across people from North America, you say, ‘Oh, you're American’ and instantly, and then it's not until you say, like ‘a boat’ (about) or something that you're like, ‘Oh, you're Canadian,’ or there's probably a few more subtle markers than that. But that's the classic one, isn't it? A boat (about) that's kind of like a mnemonic right into the Canadian accent because that's kind of one of those definitive hooks. So, like, it so, you know, the links are very similar between US and Canada. And I mean, you know, we should mention that within accents, within, like, the American accent, whatever that means, there are all these subtle shifts and you take one, like, American extreme examples, but mostly, like the UK. If you look around the UK, everyone's speaking English, but if you listen to a very strong Scottish accent, it's almost not English. The accent has taken it so far over the edge that someone from one end of the country, from the south coast almost can't understand, like, a strong Glaswegian accent because there's that distance, I think, and as you go down, it gets more and more mild and it gets more and more similar. So it's always useful to look at where accents have come from and how they've spread and how they've kind of developed. And I think you'll find it in any country that there's always going to be variation, it's going to be socioeconomic or it's going to be geographical or even, I mean, yeah, the class, like I said, socioeconomic. But there can be a number of factors that kind of mean that people split off into, like, because it comes your identity and it's your access to a certain sort of club, if you like. So you speak like the locals and you have access to all the things that locals get. And so those who can, like, accent shift, potentially, maybe they have more power socially because they can code switch into different groups, which I think is fascinating.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Wow. I was just thinking, like, being in the Netherlands, in Holland, and then going into Belgium, it really would be hard if they were all speaking English, it would be harder to know because it's the Germanic language. And then if you cross over to Germany, it's very similar ways of speaking, the same emphasis, the same. So it makes sense that geographically, whoever you are closest to there is possibly because not all countries are like this, obviously, but there is likely some shared heritage of some kind, like we were, I don't know, discovered, the New World was discovered largely by this group of people and they populated most of it up here in Canada. Of course, there's French and English as our two national official languages in the country. But it's funny because you go into Quebec and everyone sounds so different, because it's not just the same, it's a different language entirely.

Toby Ricketts:

Actually, here's a question for you about living in Canada, because I've always been fascinated about the dual languages there. Do you come across people who sound almost Parisian? They're kind of like, ‘Hello, I am from Canada, but I only speak French, I don't speak English.’ Is that common from Quebec? Right, yeah, but there are some people who only speak English in Quebec, too, and they have enough French to get by. The entire province is not just French speaking, although it is very Francophone and they have not a lot of resources for the English people there. Not as much anyway, but the whole country, the labeling system here, you might find this interesting, but all of our cereal boxes, cleaning products, whatever, it's in English and French. So whoever's doing the copywriting translation jobs, they like Canada because everything has to be, and especially government communications, everything has to be in both official languages.

Toby Ricketts:

Gosh, that's so interesting, isn't it? Yeah, it's fascinating how that sort of coexisted and it hasn't become more sort of amalgamated, but I guess that's that barrier. Speaking of barriers, like, we talked about geographical separation and I remember one of the biggest shocks I ever had accent wise and language wise, was when I was doing a tour of Europe and spent a lot of time in Italy and then took a night train. And so you get used to this lovely, like, Italy, it's all passionate, and then crossing the Alps on a night train and waking up in southern Germany and everything goes, I still got it's a completely different mindset. And it's like these people have never spoken together because there's this massive mountain range in the way that's very difficult to get over. So it's fascinating when you see these geographical boundaries and what that does to how people express themselves, like, culturally and through their accents. Sometimes you get really strange links between accents. And one of my favorites is the link between the Welsh accents in the UK and the west of England and Indian accents.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Really?

Toby Ricketts:

It's such a subtle shift. If you listen to a Welsh person and they're all done the column and then you listen to some from India and they're India, and the music about it is very similar, even though they're vastly different in sort of where they're located. There is this profound similarity between the two accents, which I find absolutely fascinating, and other areas where you get more of a subtle shift across continents. Like, I've always living in New Zealand and Australia. It's really interesting because a lot of people can't tell New Zealand and Australian accents apart, except if you're from New Zealand or Australia and it's like daylight. The differences are amazing. But I feel like the Australians hang out on the vowel side more like the American vowels, and New Zealanders hang out more like on the British side of the vowels. So there is this kind of interesting spectrum where you go from us to Australian to New Zealand and then into English like that. And, like, one day, when I have enough time, I want to come up with, like, an accent color wheel. So you have all the different accents and then line you draw lines and put the small similar ones together and see how they link up through different vowels. I think that'd be a fantastically interesting exercise, but I have yet to put a time aside to do it.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Wow. Well, whenever you do that, Toby let us know and we'll be happy to share it. That's really interesting. Wow. So I'm just thinking all the rhythms and the different feelings of a language can be felt and seen and depending on geography, like, if there's a huge mountain range in between you, maybe you don't share any of that. Right. But if it's a little more lowland, a little easier to get across, and maybe a bit more cross pollination, as you'd said before. So, as we're talking about this whole idea of rhythm and speech and the way that we form our words, how does placement affect the execution of an accent? Because in your head, you think you know what to do, but if you don't have the mechanical, the physiology side buttoned down, it might not come out sounding the way that you think it should.

Toby Ricketts:

Yeah, potentially. I mean, it's worth remembering that every human is born being able to make the same noises. There's nothing actually physiological that separates people from one country to another. Like, we've all got the same equipment, if you like. It's just the things that our brain gets taught very early on what to take notice of and what to ignore. And the classic example of this is, like, in Japanese, in some of the Asian languages, where they don't hear a distinction between the L sound and the R sound. So instead of, like a little they'd hear little ritual and, like and they cannot hear a difference between those two, those two things. And I remember they did a study once where they took toddlers in Japan and they played an R sound and an L sound and they had to make a noise when they heard the switch between the R sound and the L sound. And at some stage, I think it was about four years old, they lost the ability to actually tell the difference when that vowel shift was happening. So it is purely like a psychological thing. We get used to the way we are used to talking and everything else kind of falls by the wayside and I think but like learning accents, one of the foundational things you have to do is to give yourself permission to make any sound possible. Like it's really a permissions thing because so many of us are afraid to do accents or speak differently or step out and it is really freeing to be able to say I can make absolutely any sound I want. And so it is unpicking some of that old stuff that this is the way you talk and if you were told off for speaking a certain way as a child or whatever, that can come into it. So placement it's great in two ways. It really helps in terms of forward and backwards where certain accents sit. There's a really good video on YouTube which I encourage people to look at, which is by a YouTuber called Sara (S-a-a-r-a), and she does this video called “What Accents Sound Like to Foreigners.” And if you search for that, I'm sure you'll see it in the top results there. And she goes through and she is a polyglot, she speaks a bunch of different languages, but she goes through and speaks in these languages, speaks just random gobbledygook, it doesn't make any sense. Which is clear when she comes to the English ones because that's the language that we speak. And you can hear the different attitudes and the different placement where it comes from and what the body language is of these different kind of stereotypes, but all like hooks into the accent of what makes those accents tech. And the Slavic accents, they always sit quite back in the mouth. It's almost like in the throat, the classic the Russian and the Eastern European accents, just by shifting your tongue back and changing some of the thing in the front, you can have quite a good Slavic accent. Whereas, like British, I always like to think it's kind of defined by the two front teeth. It's all very wide and very precise like that. By playing around with where you imagine the sound coming from in your voice, even though it's still, let's face it, in your vocal chords. But just the psychology of where it's placed in the mouth can be useful in reproducing that accent. But also it's a great way to remember those accents. Like when I start to talk about Australian, I just imagine it slipping back down to the beach, down to have a barbie on the beach or something, and just suddenly you're in this nice, relaxed Australian, which is one of the kind of hallmarks of that accent. So, yeah, the placement, I think, is useful for those two reasons, and it can help you reproduce an accent to start with. But also remember, it like putting on that pair of gloves or putting on that that suit. Like, it's like, oh, that's right. That's what the suit feels like. And then you just remember that feeling, and then you can when you're good at it, you can just ad lib and you can, you know, speak your mind through that accent, and you don't really have to think about every word that you're saying.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Wow, I love the idea of just like, you put it back on. Like it's like a glove that fits. It's muscle memory at the end of the day, but that's really cool. And I wonder if you're doing accents all the time. I wonder if when you dream, you dream in a different accent. Do you ever do that? Yeah. No, I can't say I have done that. I feel like dreams almost transcend the accent. They're almost like thoughts, aren't they? But I do wonder whether people who speak different languages, you know, I see. I feel like that's a hallmark of when you become fluent is when you start dreaming in that accent, because your subconscious is obviously taking notice as well.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Right? Yeah, I heard that, too. That's definitely something. Yeah, for sure. Maybe someone just write in if that's you if you speak multiple languages and you find that you dream and different ones, or ones that are other than the one you grew up with, your mother tongue, let us know. Very interesting. Toby and I love the whole, like, when you talk about the Slavic accents, how the tongue is further back and just kind of how your throat will feel different, probably, and just getting your mind into that and using actions like the Italian one. You cannot do an Italian accent without using hands. I don't care who you are, you better be using your hands, capiche? I think that we need to remember that there's a lot of physicality that goes with the accent. It is not just that the psychology, although the psychology really helps you get to where you need to be. So as we're wrapping up this conversation, which, of course, is always too short. It's always too short when talking to you, Toby, because you're just so knowledgeable. So what are some good ways that we can remember how to do these accents? So do you have any tips? Maybe people keep a journal or record themselves.

Toby Ricketts:

Absolutely. That's all part of it. Deciding which accent you want to have a go at first is always kind of fun, because you think like, well, what am I going to use this for? Why am I doing this? What is the motivation to do it? But finding one that's adjacent to your own one is kind of useful because then it's a subtle shift, although sometimes that can be the most difficult thing, is just making a big shift is kind of easy because you're doing everything new, but it'll take longer. So find examples on YouTube. There's this great thing going around YouTube where it did a few years ago called Accent Tag, and you just write Accent tag and then your language. And it's a bunch of just real people from those countries doing their accent, reading the same set of words and answers to questions in their own words, which gives you a really good sense of all of the different vowel sounds and consonants, et cetera, or just the vibe of the accent. So that the YouTube Accent tag is really useful. Then the same as last time, actually, I've got for Vox listeners, I've prepared a page on my [email protected], vox, sorry, Toby Ricketts voiceover.com slash Vox. And this includes Lexical sets. And what these are is this amazing set of vowel words. So, for example, you've got the Kit vowel sets, that use that sound, and it's got a bunch of different like, words that use that sound so sick, miss busy. And then the dress vowel, which is step, neck, edge, shelf, friend, ready? And then when you switch into an accent, like if I I'll go just go into my US one again. Trap, tap, back, badge, scalp, hand, cancel. And so you can start to feel how it works in different words. And then the good thing about having a consistent set of words to practice on is that you can see what your progress is like as well. You can see how you improve over the time that you're trying to learn this accent. So download these resources. The Lexical sets are fantastic. And there's also a download there which is called Scripts for Accent Practice. And it's just a script that covers all the vowel sounds. So I had John fix the car, I had my hair cut. The teacher made the students work in groups, and this is really handy for like, covering a bunch of different accents. I had John fix the car, I had my haircut. The teacher made the students work in groups. You can really pick up what's different about those two accents and just start to practice with it. Recording yourself is really important, like, it's the only way you can get better by yourself, because when you're doing something, it's very hard to direct yourself or to listen at the same time as you're doing. So I'd encourage you to just open up your audio system, make a new file, and just talk in the accent for like ten minutes and then listen back and think, is this good? Listen to those YouTube accent tags and think, am I getting closer? Am I getting further away? And you can get a long way just by doing that, getting some accent feedback. Get forensic on the accent. Instead of trying to do ten minutes of talking or something. Choose like literally one sentence, he got the mechanic to repair the machine and then try it again and again and just think. He got the mechanic to repair the machine and go through word by word and really start to, like nut it out and see how that feels and then listen back. Of course, consulting a pro or a mentor is really good. Like at Gravy for The Brain, we have forums where you can go and post recordings and get feedback from pros on like, is this a good accent? Is there anyone here from Brazil that thinks this is a good Portuguese accent or something? So allow you to reach out and find people who are in the know, as we said in the last episode, find a voice buddy. Try and find on a voice over forum somewhere. Try and find someone who is from the place you want the accent from. Maybe they want to learn your accent. Like British and American is always a kind of a good swap because there's quite a lot of ties between those two countries and the same for sort of Canada and New Zealand, Australia, perhaps, but put it out there and see if there's anyone who you can buddy up with. And then when you want to start stress testing your accent and this is the fun bit, is like, go to a bar across town or something where you won't be known and just put on the accent. Just walk in and you're like, today I'm American. Oh, hi there, guys, I've just arrived. What drinks do you have here? This is acting like you have to inhabit that character and there's nothing like a bit of social pressure to just push that learning right into, you know. And I feel like that's why I adopted a New Zealand accent so quickly when I came to New Zealand, because I was in the start of high school, like the first year of high school. So the social pressure there is enormous. It's like you have to conform because otherwise you're like the odd one out. So there was this immense social pressure and you can apply the same thing in adulthood by just going out among other adults and doing something different that only, you know, is not your usual way of doing it. So that's a very fun experience, is to try and not break character. And the great thing about that is, if you do stuff up A) no one's going to notice because people have all kinds of accents from all over the world. You meet people that have lived one place but have this accent and it's all a bit mixed up. So it's not that you'll get found out necessarily. And if you do, it's kind of an interesting story and people will like it. That's my challenge to everyone.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

People say, “Wait a minute, all this time you've actually been so and so.” Oh, that is hilarious. Yeah. Great tips, as always, and wonderful suggestions for people. I love the idea of the stress testing it because then, you'll know, if the proof is in the pudding, if you can fool the locals, right? So wonderful. All that's amazing. Well, thank you again, Toby, for sharing all of this with us. And we'll be sure to send you any feedback we get from the show from people who are telling us what they're doing with what you've shared.

Toby Ricketts:

Fantastic. Absolutely. I talked to one of the world's foremost accent experts, Amy Walker, actually, who has a lot of great tips in my podcast, VO Life, which is on YouTube and Spotify, so people can tune into that. It's the most recent episode there just the other week that we had a chat, which was really good. And also a really good resource is Erik Singer. He does some stuff for Wired on YouTube. And it's really worth looking up that because he is an absolute expert in terms of picking apart accents and telling you what's what with accents. So it's very inspiring to go and check out that stuff.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Wonderful. Well, thank you again, Toby. We'll be sure to see you sometime soon.

Toby Ricketts:

Fantastic. Thank you.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

All right.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

And that's the way we saw the world through the lens of voice over and accents this week. Thank you so much for tuning in to Vox Talk. We had Toby Ricketts here. Just a wealth of information all the time. Just go listen to the other episodes featuring Toby. Go check out the resource that he mentioned. I'm going to have to check out the episode of Toby's podcast with Amy Walker because now I'm really intrigued. For Vox Talk, I'm stephanie cicearelli. We have Geoff Bremner as our producer. Everyone at Voices.com wishes you all the best and we will see you next week.