tricks about changing your English accent?

[zozzen]

My friend from UK arrived in China three months ago. It was very difficult to understand his oral English, and he found it hard to understand Chinese accents and pronunciation too because he always needed to double check what we were saying.

I met him again yesterday, but this time i think everything he said was comprehensible and he seemed having no troubles understanding Chinglish too.

When you're in China or Asia, do you change your accent?

Besides trying to speak slowly, what else do you do for it?

Any tricks to share?

[self-taught-mba]

When I spell things out and for numbers I do. There was a post about this earlier.

[Lu]

I learned British English, so I always have a bit of a British accent (on top of the Dutch accent). It gets more British when I talk to Brits, or when I feel insecure; it gets more neutral (whatever that may be) when I talk to people whose English isn't too good. It's not really a trick, it comes rather naturally. I think generally people will try to mimic the way of speaking of the people around them, which would explain why your British friend got more understandable in three months, and of course if you hear a certain accent a lot, you get used to it, which explains why he learned to understand Chinglish.