I know our brains are trained in a certain way from childhood, but could someone elaborate? It seems physically impossible yet it is very much possible
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You know how you cross your arms, or fold your hands together with fingers interlaced? Ok do that now, but the opposite direction than you normally do.
Weird, right? Or how about signing your name with your opposite-than-normal hand? Or getting on/off your bike from the other side?
We don’t think of pronouncing words as a physical skill, but it is. Every much as the stuff I just described. Each sound you make is a careful coordination of breathing, voice, mouth shape and tongue positioning. Unfamiliar sounds = unfamiliar motions. Habits from pronouncing one language, showing up in another = accent.
Some people are better at un-learning or learning new moves (in speech and elsewhere) than others are.
To all those who think you *can’t* learn new to pronounce new phonemes after some certain age: of course you can. It’s just harder. Think of actors learning to do accents, or of accent reduction training. Same process
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