How to Learn Nasally Accent?

Typically people want to get rid of nasal sound qualities in their voice. However, voice-over artists sometimes require to produce a nasal voice for a character with such a voice. Especially some accents require nasal qualities.

Therefore, in this article we will look at how to learn making a nasal voice.

Nasal sound is produced by air moving through your nose. Normally, some air naturally moves through your nose, but that is only a small fraction of what we breathe out. To sound more nasal or, in other words, speak through your nose you will have to learn to produce more air through your nose when speaking.

Let’s look at how we can do that.

Practice resonating voice in different areas

When we speak, our voices resonate in different areas of our body. It might resonate in the tummy or throat, which would bring a deep, bassy voice. If it is resonating more towards the mouth, then you will sound average, neither high nor low pitched voice, somewhat in-between.

To start sounding nasally and brittle, you will aim to speak more from your nose.

To be able to control where your voice is resonating, you will have to practice controlling it. The best way to do it is trying to create sound from your throat at first, then move it up a bit to your mouth area and finally speak focusing on your nose.

You should notice how focusing on different areas in your head creates a different variation of your voice.

When you can control which parts you are using when speaking, then you will find creating a nasal voice easy.

Listen

Listening to someone that has a nasal voice can help you to understand how their mouth and facial expressions change when they speak with a nasal voice.

Look for small details such as how open are their mouths, what is their posture and speech mannerism. It will help you to better understand how a nasal voice is created.

You can check out Viggo Mortensen for reference.

Use limited range of mouth movements

Certain nasal accents will require to sound unclear. To achieve an unclear voice, try limiting the movements of your mouth. Don’t open mouth fully and leave your teeth relatively closed when speaking. Also, restrict the movements of your tongue to a minimum.

All these limitations will add to sounding unclear and nasally.

Conclusion

To sound nasally try these methods:

• Practice speaking from your nose
• Listen to actors with a nasal voice
• Limit your mouth and tongue movements