Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

Understanding the accent you didn’t know you had.
Whether communicating in our mother tongue or practicing a new language, we all speak with an accent. But that’s not all, says Valerie Fridland — we hear with an accent as well.
Fridland is a professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Nevada, Reno, and author of Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents. According to her, we don’t just sound a certain way, we hear a certain way too, affecting how we understand others. “We’re hearing with an accent — a bias shaped by our own language and experience,” she says. But instead of expecting others’ communication to fit our preconceptions, Fridland says to meet people halfway. “If we want to make communication successful, it’s not just their job as a speaker, it’s my job as a listener.”
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Fridland and host Matt Abrahams discuss how empathetic listening opens the door to understanding. Whether you’re communicating in a context of mutual intelligibility or attempting to bridge cultural and linguistic divides, Fridland’s insights show how connection is a collaboration — shaped by accents on both sides of the conversation.

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Creators and Guests

Host
Matt Abrahams
Lecturer Stanford University Graduate School of Business | Think Fast Talk Smart podcast host
Guest
Valerie Fridland
Professor, Linguist, and Author

What is Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques?

One of the most essential ingredients to success in business and life is effective communication.

Join Matt Abrahams, best-selling author and Strategic Communication lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, as he interviews experts to provide actionable insights that help you communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact. From handling impromptu questions to crafting compelling messages, Matt explores practical strategies for real-world communication challenges.

Whether you’re navigating a high-stakes presentation, perfecting your email tone, or speaking off the cuff, Think Fast, Talk Smart equips you with the tools, techniques, and best practices to express yourself effectively in any situation. Enhance your communication skills to elevate your career and build stronger professional relationships.

Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes. Subscribe now to unlock your potential as a thoughtful, impactful communicator. Learn more and sign up for our eNewsletter at fastersmarter.io.

Matt Abrahams: How you sound and what you
say is critical to communication success.

Let's put an accent on accents.

My name's Matt Abrahams and I
teach Strategic Communication at

Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Welcome to Think Fast
Talk Smart, the podcast.

Today I look forward to speaking once
again with my friend Valerie Fridland.

Valerie is a professor of sociolinguistics
at the University of Nevada in Reno.

She's an expert on the relationship
between language and society.

Valerie is the author of Like, Literally,
Dude, arguing for the good in bad

English, and recently she released
her new book called Why We Talk Funny:

The Real Story Behind Our Accents.

Well, welcome back Valerie.

I am thrilled to be joined with you
again and to continue the conversations

you and I have had many times over
the last time since you visited.

Thanks for being here.

Valerie Fridland: Oh, absolutely.

It's always a pleasure
to talk with you, Matt.

Matt Abrahams: Excellent.

Shall we get started?

Valerie Fridland: Let's do it.

Matt Abrahams: You have taught me so
many things about how language works,

but none has fundamentally changed
my view than what you've talked

about in terms of filled pauses.

It changed the way I think about it, I
teach it, what I try to do in my own work.

For those of you who haven't heard
Valerie's complete description of this

checkout episode 91, would you mind just
giving us a quick summary of what filled

pauses are and what they actually do for
us as communicators and as listeners?

Valerie Fridland: Sure, absolutely.

Well filled pauses are things
we all use on occasion.

We all recognize because they're
the uhs and ums that populate our

pauses, and every language has them.

So it's something we find the world over.

They're not all exactly
the same form, but roughly.

But what we find is that um
and uh tend to occur when we're

doing more complex things.

So whenever we are having more complex
sentence structures, so we're putting

a lot of embeddings, a lot of different
sort of extra parts in our sentences and

and's, or or's, and relative clauses,
we find that uh and um tend to occur

before those points of more complexity.

We also find when we're coming up with
hard words, big words, unfamiliar words,

we tend to uh or um more in front of them.

But I think the most fascinating thing
is not just why we do them as speakers,

because we're signaling harder work
cognitively, but it's actually what they

do for a listener that's incredible.

And not only do they signal to
a listener like, hey, I'm doing

something really complex here.

It's gonna take me a minute.

So they're kind of just giving you a
heads up that we're taking a moment.

The reason we wanna do that is
because if I pause silently,

you might think I'm done.

But if I uh or um it's
signaling to you I'm not done.

I'm just pausing for a sec. But
the really, really fascinating part

is that they actually really help
with memory on the listener side.

So when we run experiments and we have
people say uh before a content word,

before some sort of word that we're
interested in people remembering, and

then we run the same experiment where we
don't have people uh before that word,

we find that the recall for the word
with uh in front of it is better than

in the cases where they didn't have uh.

Which tells us that they're actually
doing some pretty important work.

So if you want people to remember what
you say, a little uh won't hurt you.

But I wouldn't overpopulate
because we also don't like them.

So just be aware of that facet as well.

Matt Abrahams: It's fascinating to
me that these filler words exist

across different languages and
that they actually serve a purpose.

They signal that we're working hard.

They highlight that what we're
about to say is something

you should pay attention to.

And it turns out people actually do
pay more attention and they actually

remember that information more.

So the old adage, get rid of all the
filled pauses, is not actually accurate.

It's okay to have them
and they in fact help us.

It's when you have a lot of
them that it gets distracting.

And I would argue that my theory
is the reason when somebody uses so

many of these filled pauses annoys
us is we're actually trained to

expect something of value to follow.

If all that follows an um is another
um that actually is frustrating.

Valerie Fridland: Partially,
I think that's true.

I also think it's that the natural
tendency is that we're going to um

and uh more often in high stakes
context because it's things we're

not as used to saying, and it's not
anxiety or stress, there's actually

not that much evidence that really
increases our rate of um-ing and uh-ing.

When we go in front of the executive
leadership and we're talking about

something very important that we've
done, we're probably going to be

using higher level vocabulary, things
we're not quite as familiar with.

So I think when we're hearing
presentations or speeches and people

do a lot of um-ing and uh-ing,
that is something that annoys us

because we have an expectation that
they're very well prepared and they

know what they're going to say.

So things that signal
they don't disturb us.

Matt Abrahams: I think
you're exactly right.

I'd like to turn our attention now to your
second book, which is all about accents.

You write that we all have accents.

Why do we so easily notice accents
in others but not ourselves?

Valerie Fridland: I think the greatest
myth that we operate under every

day is that we don't have an accent.

You know, we don't notice our
accents because everybody around

us generally talks like we do.

So if you are moving to a new place,
that's really when you're first realizing,

oh my gosh, I'm the one that sounds funny.

Because when you are the one that
is the dominant speaker in an

area, most people are sounding
like you, so you don't hear it.

You're used to it.

Particularly when we're children,
we grow up in an area, we kind of

adjust or normalize to whatever
we hear most often around us.

Which can also be, not just the accents
that's sort of prevalent in your area,

but say you're born to a non-native
speaker and you grew up as a native

speaker in the US for example, you
won't hear your parents' accents because

you have normalized them as children.

So we don't hear the accents around us
because we're so familiar with them.

We also are very heightened
to notice difference.

So when people come into our communities
and they're not dressing like we are,

they're not looking like we are, and
really strongly not sounding like we

are, we notice that and that's where the
sort of the salience of accent comes in.

Matt Abrahams: I do wanna talk
about culture because accents

and cultures go together.

When communicating across cultures
we often focus on learning the right

vocabulary, the grammar, but you highlight
the rhythm and intonation, like English

as a stress timed language versus
Spanish or Mandarin being a syllable

timed, and I'd like for you to explain
those, are huge hurdles for people.

How do these, what are called prosodic
differences, affect how well speakers are

understood and evaluated by somebody in
the native language they're now speaking?

Valerie Fridland: Absolutely.

When we're learning a language, we work
a lot on sounds, but we really tend to

ignore some really important areas that
make a big impact on how comprehensible

you are and how intelligible you are as a
speaker, which is an area that linguists

called prosodic features or prosody.

And those include things like
word stress and sentence stress.

So what's highlighted by
a speaker in a language.

Tone, which can be like with Mandarin,
tone on a single word can actually

change the meaning of that word,
something English doesn't have, which

is obviously something really hard for
English speakers when they're learning

Mandarin, or intonation patterns,
which as an English speaker, I often

go down in my tone at the end of a
sentence to signal I'm done talking.

Conversely, when I have a question,
I often ask that question with a

rising intonation because that's
signaling that I'm asking a question.

So that's a sentence level pattern.

So those are different types of prosodic
features, and they're very difficult

to learn when you come in from a
language with one system prosodically

and you're learning a language with
a different system prosodically.

So for example, as I mentioned
a minute ago, an English speaker

trying to learn a tonal language.

Our intonation patterns where we
go up at the end or down at the

end, make it really hard when we're
trying to get tones on a word.

The opposite is when we have different
sort of structures to our language

inherently, and that's where we get
to the stress versus syllable timing,

where our fundamental way that we
stress syllables in our language

is different than another one.

So let's break that down.

Stress timing is a language like English,
Russian, Arabic, German, and this is

where particular words or syllables that
you're speaking get more stress than

others, depending on what the speaker
wants to highlight in that language.

So certain syllables are louder and
longer, and then the other syllables in

between actually get smushed together
they had to be said more rapidly to

fit into a sort of certain timing
unit between those stress syllables.

So in that language you have a rhythm
that's sort of like dum dum dum.

So you have the short syllables that
are really jam packed and that's why

you get things like vowel reduction.

So when I say the instead of the in
English or a instead of a, it's because

I'm actually having to squish them
between stress syllables interval.

In a syllable timed language, which is
something like Spanish or Chinese or

French or Portuguese, every syllable
has equal stress, so it's more like, bum

bum, bum, bum bum, bum bum of a rhythm.

Now this seems very complex and how would
I ever figure out how to switch over?

Well that's exactly the problem.

We don't get practice in that.

And this completely impacts
how well you're understood.

It may not seem like that big a deal
'cause it just is rhythmic, but it's

a huge deal because think of a word
as someone who might have a syllable

time language, like it'd elephant.

If you didn't know we were talking
about giant things with big ears and

trunks, you might have no idea what
I said because it's elephant for a

native English speaker, because I'm
stressing that first syllable and

then jamming the others really quick.

But if I have a syllable time
language, I'm going to stress each

syllable equally and I'll have no
a vowel because that's only happens

when I remove stress from a syllable.

So what happens, you can actually get
words that are completely unintelligible

because you're saying the stress
wrong because you used a syllable time

pattern on a stress time language.

So these are things that are really
rarely discussed in language classes.

There are often problems that people
encounter and they don't know why

they're having problems being understood.

And in fact, research suggests that
non-native stress patterns like

this can infect intelligibility
as much as not being able to

pronounce the sounds correctly.

Now there's no easy magic fix, but
the solution is really practice.

And a lot of that is generally
shadowing native speakers.

It doesn't have to be interactive,
but you could even record a TV show

and repeat exactly in the intonation
pattern of that television show, and

eventually you'll start getting that
rhythm down so there's no easy solution.

Matt Abrahams: So what I'm hearing
you say, which is super important, for

people who are trying to learn a second
language, yes, vocabulary and grammar

are important, but what's as important
and perhaps even more in some cases for

intelligibility, it is understanding
the rhythm, the stress patterns.

And as with everything communication
related, it's one thing to

understand it intellectually.

It's another thing to do it, and
that's really a way to help yourself.

I appreciate you identifying that.

I wanna switch the sides of the equation.

We often think of the burden of
successful communication as being

on the speaker, the non-native
speaker producing the information.

What role does the listener play
in this communicative dynamic?

And how can we train our ears and
minds to be better able to adapt to

understanding unfamiliar accents?

Valerie Fridland: We often really put a
lot of the burden on a non-native speaker.

Anytime we're having a conversation,
we have this expectation that

the speaker, it's their job
to make it intelligible to us.

It's their job to make
their speech understood.

There are so many different
problems with that equation, but

let's unpack it a little bit in
terms of why that's not the case.

First of all, communication's
a partnership.

Just like a marriage, you can't have a
marriage when one side is doing all the

work and you can't have a conversation
where one side's doing all the work.

If you've ever had a conversation where
it's only one sided, it's not a good

conversation and you probably aren't
gonna keep talking to that person.

So if we wanna make communication
successful, we have to go into it

with this understanding that it's
not just their job as a speaker,

it's my job as a listener to make
this productive and successful.

There are a couple things at play.

One is as a listener, I don't
realize sometimes that they're

not just speaking with an accent,
I'm hearing with an accent.

And we really put this belief system
around accent on speakers alone, but we

don't listen without a bias that is shaped
by our own language and accent experience.

And this affects us in a number of ways.

One thing is it makes it harder to
understand what sounds they might be

saying because we have an expectation
about what they're supposed to sound like,

and maybe they're not sounding that way.

But two, we also have a role
the brain plays in making people

better or worse understood.

So simply by being accustomed to
hearing a certain kind of speech

and having expectations going
into a conversation about what

we think someone will sound like.

So say they look like they'll
speak with an American accent.

But then it turns out they start speaking
with a French accent, that actually

causes cognitive disruption for us.

And I don't mean that in a negative way.

I simply mean there's an effect on the
brain of this additional processing

burden that hearing something
unexpected or unfamiliar places on us.

So there's a bunch of different aspects in
terms of why we're hearing with an accent.

You know, I think the long story
short of that is to recognize

that part of the reason we're not
understanding has nothing to do with

them and everything to do with us.

And there's often a power dynamic
that puts whoever is dominant in

that sort of social or institutional
setting in a position where they

feel that it's the other person's
job to make sure that they're coming

across clearly and intelligibly, but
that's an impossible task when you

are not willing to meet them halfway.

So as listeners and speakers, we need to
both accept our roles and our jobs and

our faults in speaking and listening to
contribute to getting to a place where

we can better understand each other.

One simple option for that as a
listener is if we know to expect

something unexpected that knowledge
alone decreases the processing burden.

So simply being more open in our
expectations actually mitigates

this effect on our brain.

But also the more accents we hear around
us, the diversity in our institutions,

diversity in our friend group, the
less unfamiliar accent sound to us, the

better jobs our brains do more generally.

So those are easy things to do.

Be more friends with more people,
be more open in your expectations.

So I think there's really a two-sided view
we can take on communication, and that's,

it's a partnership, not a one-sided event.

Matt Abrahams: Amen.

Communication takes two, right?

And we often focus on the producing
of the information, but the receiving

of it is critically important.

The idea about processing fluency and
cognitive load are really important,

and it's not just with accents.

It's when you're talking about technical
content, you're doing the same thing.

You're increasing cognitive
load and processing.

So some of the same advice holds true.

If you're a listener, have an open mind.

I like this idea of exposing yourself
to diverse accents and ideas, that helps

reduce the processing fluency and burden.

I've often thought about speaking accents.

I've never thought about listening
accents, and that's a really

insightful way of thinking about this.

Valerie, I knew this
was gonna be fantastic.

You know that when we end, I
always ask three questions.

One I make up just for you, and two, have
been consistent across all the episodes.

Are you up for answering these questions?

Valerie Fridland: Let do it.

I love it.

Yes.

Matt Abrahams: Excellent.

If you could give just one bit of
advice to somebody who's speaking

the language that's not their own and
has an accent, what would that be?

Valerie Fridland: The biggest
advice I can tell you is that not

to put so much pressure on yourself
to sound like a native speaker.

We have this weird ideal of what it means
to learn another language, what it means

to be fluent in that language, what it
means to be successful in that language,

and it's an unrealistic goal and it
causes all sorts of problems for native

speakers and non-native speakers alike.

As I'm entering this new journey
of a language, what my goal

should be is being successful at
having communicative partnerships.

That's really what we wanna do.

It shouldn't be, I wanna sound
like I don't have an accent.

What we need to do is embrace accents
because they're beautiful and they tell

us our history, and they also tell us
where we come from in our identities, and

we should never wanna get rid of that.

Instead, focus on what helps me
be more easily understood and more

confident as a speaker because that
is what will make you successful.

You can communicate very
well with an accent.

We just need to start believing that more
as a speaker with a non-native variety.

Matt Abrahams: So it's
really about mindset.

It's realize that you can be a
very effective communicator even

though you're speaking a language
that's not your own and you might

have an accent for those listening.

The goal is not to sound
like a native speaker.

The goal is to be successful
in the communication and

that focus shift can help.

The advice I always give people
is when you introduce yourself,

don't start with your name.

As you alluded to, we're very good at
digesting accents, but when something

important is said right at the beginning
our brain is still adjusting to,

oh, that's how that person sounds.

So I often encourage people who have
accents to start by saying something

else first before their name.

Maybe I'm really excited to be
here, or I'm somebody who's very

passionate about this, and then say
your name so that people have started

to adjust and adapt to your accent.

So hopefully those two bits
of advice can help people.

Question number two, who is a
communicator that you admire and why?

Valerie Fridland: I would say that one
person I really admire as a communicator

in the same sort of space as me, the
science communication, is Adam Grant.

He does a remarkable job of communicating
really technical research-based

information in a way that's both
relevant and very accessible to

everyday speakers, and so I enjoy that.

Matt Abrahams: Question number three, what
are the first three ingredients that go

into a successful communication recipe?

Valerie Fridland: I don't think it's
gonna surprise you that I start with

listening because we talked so much about
that, and I think we often just worry

when we go into a conversation about
speaking, what we really should worry

about is listening, for so many reasons.

One is, that makes us better
as a communicator, right?

Because we're genuinely paying attention.

It helps shape how we respond and a lot
of times when we spend too much time

worrying, and I think non-native speakers
sometimes do this, about what we're

going to say, we actually miss really
important nuanced points where we can make

connections because of what they said.

The other is self-awareness,
and this is different than

worrying about how I'm sounding.

This is about understanding that my
own background brings me to every

conversation with preconceived
notions of how things should go

and what people should sound like.

And as we talked about, this influences
the way that we process things.

So just being aware of that really can
reshape our interactions with people.

And then the third is smile.

Be friendly, be open.

I think sometimes we're so set
on presenting ourselves a certain

way or being a certain way in a
context, professionally particularly,

where we forget that just being
friendly and kind and open can

actually open a lot of doors for us.

It can be the best nurturing sort
of piece of the puzzle for a good

conversation, is when someone feels
like you really wanna genuinely have a

good conversation with them, that you're
happy to be there talking with them.

I think that makes them more interested
in conversing with you as well.

Matt Abrahams: That last
part is so important.

It's really about connection
and regardless of if you have

an accent or not, you connect.

I like your point on listening as well.

Thank you for connecting with us and
for sharing your insights on the value

and importance of accents and really
reflecting on ways that if we have an

accent that we can address it, as well
as those of us who are communicating

with people who have accents.

As always, Valerie, I
learned so much from you.

I appreciate your energy, your
insights, and your time today.

Thank you.

Valerie Fridland: Always a good
conversation with you, Matt.

Thanks.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you for
joining us for another episode of

Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

To learn more from Valerie,
please listen to episode 91.

This episode was produced by Katherine
Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abraham.

Our music is from Floyd Wonder.

With special thanks to the
Podium Podcast Company.

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