Mother tongue influence or MTI means the impact of the way your first language is spoken on the second language you are trying to learn. for more info https://voiceskills.org/

1. Minimizing Mother Tongue Influence in English Speaking

2.  Mother tongue influence or MTI means the
impact of the way your first language is
spoken on the second language you are
trying to learn. For us, it means effect of our
mother tongue on the way we speak English.
So, when you see someone speaking
English with a heavy Bengali or Punjabi or
Telugu accent, you know the person has an
MTI problem.

3. WHY DOES MTI HAPPEN?
 If till an advanced age, the only language we speak is our
mother tongue, a lot of the speech patterns get set really
hard in our brain. Every language as its own specific way
words are pronounced. Each language has peculiar
sounds specific to it. If we start speaking more than one
language from early childhood, we easily retain the
flexibility of uttering sounds from different language
systems. Our brain can be easily trained for different
sounds from different languages. But if we do not receive
that training in our childhood, our brains get accustomed
to the sounds on only one language and at a later stage it
becomes pretty difficult to train the brain for a totally
different sound system needed for the second language.

4.  Essentially, bilingual kids do not face the MTI problem
in general because their brains have been trained in
the flexibility of two or more language systems and
they are able to easily speak two languages without
errors.
 It is believed that MTI is a training problem. A
student's brain and vocal system have been trained
in a certain way that makes it difficult for him to
suddenly open himself to a totally different set of
sounds and words. The habits and speech patterns
are rooted strongly in the learner’s mind and it takes
sustained effort to remove the MTI problem.

5.  The students are required to practice
speaking the new sounds that first makes
them comfortable with the new sounds and
then habituates them. Continuous repeated
practice breaks old set patterns and builds
new sound and speech patterns plus trains
the brain in the flexibility required to handle
two parallel sound and speech systems.

6. CAN I SOLVE MTI ON MY OWN?
 Theoretically yes but the probabilities will be very low.
The habit and speech patterns are so intrinsic and
natural to you that most of the times you would not
realize some crumbs of the MTI problem in your
English speaking. You need someone to point out
whenever you are slipping down that road. Changing
something as ingrained as native language speech
patterns is an extremely difficult task simply because
it is a very old habit strongly solidified. You are
inclined to fall back on to your default speech
patterns again and again. You need someone to point
it out every time and force you to not slip back to your
original speech patterns.

7. CAN MTI EVER BE SOLVED?
 MTI is solvable but an extremely complex
problem. It needs strong commitment and
intense effort for 4-6 weeks. Once you carry
the new speech patterns and get used to
them, slowly, those sounds will become a
part of your system. Once the new habit
starts taking root, the amount of effort
required will reduce and once it is solidified
enough, the effort required is very minimal...

8. THANK YOU
 Voice Training and Research Institute
 No.135, First Main Road,
K.K Nagar, Madurai- 625020.
 E-mail: support@voiceskills.org
 Ph no: +91- 95970 82692 / 95970 84540
Web: https://voiceskills.org