Native sound: Intentionality versus Mimickry
A lot of people want to learn a skill to a "native" level.
But guess what?
Native speakers of a language didn't learn in a native way.
They just learnt.
And they learnt through probably two filters:
The intention to be understood;
The careful model of clear, intentional enunciation.
TL;DR:
Don't try to mimic the sound of a native.
Instead, learn the clear model.
Because, when you speak, you shall relax — this is not a choice, it will just happen.
To have a natural sound that is still intelligible, you have to start from a higher point than the output.
So, find the model, derive it for yourself if needs be, and practise pronouncing in that way.
It will be more extreme than how you hear natives speaking. Don't worry about that — do it anyway.
If you are water and you want to get into the next valley, first you have to evaporate into the sky before you can rain down onto a mountainside and run into that valley.
Do that.
Put your enunciation up much too high, then allow your voice to naturalize by raining down into the forest and running down the mountainside.
This is how natives speak, actually.
Native speakers have a subconscious awareness of the phonemic model of their vocabulary and the phonetic model of their mouths.
If you try to mimic their native pronunciation, you are skipping the origin phase. You will have to try with inordinate effort to replicate their complex emergent phonetics, and you will have to use 100% of your energy when speaking to maintain that phonetic construct.
The sounds they produce as natives are already emergent relaxations from the pure phonemic model.
So, to develop a native sound, you must do the same.
Grammar
This same concept can be applied to grammar, too, but we'll cover that in another section.
(Essentially, speak with the highest grammar available, then relax your grip on the grammar over time. Test what you can get away with while still being understood, and also model yourself after how natives/locals speak.)
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