Your oral apparatus – lips, tongue, jaw, throat – functions likes a machine, a precision tool to produce the sounds of your native tongue. To learn a different accent you have to understand how that machine works, take it apart and reassemble it. – PRI World, Why People are Still Trying to “Lose” their Accent

This delightful episode takes you on a linguistic ride into people’s attempt to rid themselves of their accent. From immigrants to Bostonians to Southerners, people trying to lose their accents share their motivations and challenges.

This episode has it all: tonal languages, tongue stretches, survival words, writing accents into novels, and questioning why its still acceptable to make fun of people with accents. Listen as a Russian woman moves from a Russian accent in English, to a British one, to an American one. It’s an amazing linguistic feat.