How can you learn to speak in accents?

Question:I would like to know if you have any info on learning how to speak in accents. Mainly English, Irish, Scottish, Australian. Or should I wait for when a role calls for it and learn it from an accent coach? I figure an accent coach would just be something else the budget doesn't want to afford...

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I would like to know if you have any info on learning how to speak in accents. Mainly English, Irish, Scottish, Australian. Or should I wait for when a role calls for it and learn it from an accent coach? I figure an accent coach would just be something else the budget doesn't want to afford...

You are correct to assume that many productions forego the accent coach unless you're doing something at the college level and the accents are kind of a class thing. Learn them yourself. Use tapes with voices that say the word or phrase and then ask you to repeat it back. Of course, with anything there are going to be exceptions, so if you've got a role with an accent, see if there's anyone in your community that you could get to come and listen to you at a run-through. For instance, the "St." in Saint Paul's Cathedral is pronounced "sunt." Another great thing to do is to feel how your mouth and jaw feel when you've got your dialect right and then before you go on, you have to make sure that your mouth and jaw are in that position, just like your character has a certain posture that he has to take before you go on stage, so to your mouth needs a certain "posture"

You need to take a speech class that teaches the International Phonetic Alphabet, then buy a book called Stage Dialects by Jerry Blunt used on Amazon.com or bookfinder.com.