When You Speak Another Language, Do You Still Sound Like Yourself?
- Persefone Coaching
- Aug 3
- 2 min read
Ever sat in a meeting with the words fully formed in your head, only to hear yourself sound colder, flatter, or more formal than you meant to? It happens to a lot of people speaking English in international settings. Not because their grammar is weak, but because their tone does not feel like theirs.
They speak, but something feels off. They finish a sentence and think, “That’s not quite how I would have said it.” The words were correct. The voice was not.
I remember trying to carry my sense of humour into Italian and Spanish. In English, I use wordplay a lot. It is how I show playfulness, or irony, or just lighten the tone. But in another language, people often did not realise it was a joke. Sometimes they thought I had made a mistake. I would find myself explaining the pun afterwards, which of course defeats the point. Over time, I noticed something. In group chats, someone would occasionally spot what I was doing and explain it to the others. That moment of recognition mattered. It reminded me that I had not lost my voice completely. It was still there, just harder to access.
A lot of people I work with feel the same. They become fluent, but their voice becomes flattened. Too many softeners. Too many disclaimers. Too many polite phrases that never feel quite true. You go into a conversation clear about what you think, and come out sounding like someone else.
What helps is not more vocabulary. It is not grammar drills. It is not repeating phrases from business English textbooks. What helps is learning to build a set of short, reliable phrases that reflect your tone and thinking. Not stock phrases. Signature ones. The kind you reach for naturally when you speak your own language.
Phrases like:
• “Here’s what I’d focus on.”
• “Let me think aloud for a second.”
• “I’ll be honest, this bit bothers me.”
These phrases do not just help with clarity. They help you sound like yourself. They reduce the friction between your thought and your voice.
I’ve put together a short worksheet from my course Between Languages: Speaking English Without Losing Yourself. It helps you identify and shape a few personal phrases that feel closer to your actual voice in English:
If you want to explore the full course or ebook, you can find them both on my website:
You might be fluent. But that does not always mean you feel present. This worksheet is not about getting it perfect. It is about getting it back to feeling real.
What part of your voice do you find hardest to carry across in English?
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