Modern-Day Henry Higgins Tames Many a Foreign Accent

Foreign accents have been called spoken language’s spice, tangy verbal flourishes that add bite to basic native stock of “normal” speech. Yet, for a great number of those who learn English as a second language, the best accent is no accent.

What’s considered colorful English to native Americans is often an embarrassment to the speaker, marking him as an outsider.

Enter Jack Catran of Sepulveda, a slight mustachioed fellow of 59, who has worked such diverse jobs as space engineer, radio announcer and author. Catran figured that, if accents could be taught, they could also be untaught. Armed with a theory in search of proof, he began tutoring a few local residents privately in his study.

One year later, Catran has tutored 60 students and says he can eradicate 15 kinds of accents, including Hispanic, Oriental, Arabic, Russian, Israeli, German, Italian and Scandinavian. Catran charges $20 a lesson, which lasts an hour and is generally held once a week.

Taught Accents to Actors

“At one time I had worked as a consultant to 20th Century Fox, teaching accents to actors,” Catran said. “And it suddenly occurred to me that I could erase accents as well as teach them.”

So, with no formal training, but equipped with a golden ear, Catran started taking on students. And now, after a year of this unorthodox “unteaching,” the Henry Higgins of the Valley says he’s fully convinced that most accents can be axed.

“Personally, I don’t think accents are undesirable,” said Catran. “In many cases I love how some people who speak with an accent pronounce certain words. However, the thing is that many people who do speak with an accent are self-conscious about it. They feel they want to get involved and join the pack and be accepted. For these people, there’s a tremendous desire to speak like an American.”

One of Catran’s students, Peter Gil of Northridge, a 47-year-old native-born Cuban who is now a U.S. citizen, found that his accent was an encumbrance in business.

Trouble on Phone

“You realize it’s a handicap when you identify yourself on the phone and it’s hard for the other person to understand you,” said Gil, treasurer of Vanguard Electronics in Gardena. “You have to spell your name, spell certain words, things like that. Yes, it bothers me.”

Although Gil is aware he still speaks with an accent, he says that, since studying with Catran, it has greatly diminished.

Asked if he’d miss his accent’s charm, Gil laughed ruefully. “Who wants to speak with an accent?” he said. “If you’re speaking American English, you want to speak it as best you can. While it’s all right for a movie star like Desi Arnaz or Ricardo Montalban to speak with an accent--after all it helps them make a living--it doesn’t help me.”

Clifford Prator, a professor emeritus of English at UCLA and author of “The Manual of American English Pronunciation,” agrees that accents do present hardships for many foreigners.

“There are people who feel it sets them aside, makes them feel as if they don’t belong,” he said. “They would like to change the way they speak so they can fit in, fade into the background.”

But Prator also noted that there is “an accent attitude” on the part of the public, fostered by widely held language stereotypes. “For instance, French is the language of love, Italian the language of music and German, for most people, is a harsh, awful accent to have.”

Can Be Trying

He further pointed out that getting rid of an accent can be rather trying. “It’s quite difficult and takes a great deal of motivation,” he said. “In many cases, an accent can be central to a person’s personality.”

Although Prator says many foreigners are eager to lose their accent in a hurry, they usually are frustrated to find it doesn’t work that fast. “They can’t expect something like this to happen in a month. It takes a while.”

The key to changing an accent, according to Prator, is making the person aware of the difference between the way he’s saying something and the way it should be said. “The hardest thing is making the new accent a habit, reducing correct pronunciation to a subconscious level.”

The method Catran uses to erase the accent is to make the speaker aware of how certain words are being mispronounced. “At first it’s very difficult for someone to hear mispronunciations. But, when you make someone aware of that, get the person to monitor his own speech, then, eventually, it spontaneously becomes a habit.”

Uses Conversation

Rather than have the student read from a text, Catran engages them in conversation. “It’s better to do it that way because, when someone is reading, he’s self-conscious. Having a conversation is a much more natural way to let someone hear mistakes being made.”

Each foreign accent, he explained, has its own problems. The lack of similar English sounds found in most foreign languages, Catran said, gives rise to the multitude of accents in the first place.

“Like the Spanish, one of the problems they have is with the uh sound . . . the sound you find in alone, final, sofa. They say ah . . . fahnal . . . sofah. And the Russians, they can’t say upstairs and umbrella, instead they pronounce these words as opstairs and ombrella. “

Catran says the hardest accent to erase is Chinese. “It’s a very difficult one because there are so many American sounds they just don’t have. And they only speak monosyllabically. The words are one syllable.”

‘Part of a Person’

Changing an accent, Catran concedes, is no easy matter. “It takes more than simply talking and having someone listen to you. The problem is, as soon as they go into spontaneous, excited talk, they revert back. It’s a psychological thing. An accent is part of a person.”

As Catran continued his analysis, becoming more animated, the unmistakable intonation of a New Yorker asserted itself, the verbal vestige of a boyhood in Brooklyn.

“See, what did I tell you? I sound like a New Yorker whenever I get excited.”