Accent reduction and accent modification refer to terms used by businesses that strive to change how a person pronounces in English. "When I hear the expression 'accent reduction' that already makes me uncomfortable because it somehow implies that the stronger the accent, the worse it is and you want to trim away at it and get rid of it and that's not necessarily true." Murray Munro, a linguistics professor at Simon Fraser University, says accent reduction or modification is a 'strange idea to begin with.' A long list of professionals have used her accent reduction service at SpeechScience International over the last 15 years. (Martin Trainor/CBC)As a researcher, Munro calls accent reduction a "strange idea to begin with."

Source: CBC News January 24, 2018 10:00 UTC