Top 5 British Accent Secrets | Learn British Pronunciation
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SELF-INTRODUCTION
Career: Oral English Teacher (Part time)
Student: Postgraduates (Major)
content: British accent (Major) and American accent
OPENING
"Today we are learning some secret tips to help you achieve British accent. Hello everybody, and welcome to another ETJ English British Pronunciation lesson. As I mention just now, we are going to be learning some secret tips, some tips which will help you sound more British. Now, when I say British, I do have to say this because I get people from places like Scotland, and up in the north of UK, various of other areas complaining saying (compound noun) that I am teaching only one British accent, this the accent I teach and it’s my accent, it’s modified R.P., modern R.P. British accent, so if that’s the accent you want, then my video is (there) for you, (but) if you want a Scottish accent, go to find a Scottish Youtube, OK? So, it’s just a claim of that for those of you, sensitive people.
So these secrets, secrets? What are they? Well these are the things which I think are very, very important to the British accent, things what you need to do, if you really want people to think suddenly, ”woo…, they sound a bit British”, so that’s what we aiming for today, and these kind of few tips should help you with that. Now there are many, many (x4) different secrets and tips I can give you, but these are just a few, if you want to learn all of the tips and all of the ways of sounding British, you will need a full-length(th->f) course, and that’s why I have a British English course available, pronunciation course at ETJ English.com, the link (i)s in description below. But just for these kinds of free tips, I hope you find them useful and I really hope they help you with achieving your goals, so let’s get started. "
1. British Form of Speaking
The first thing I need to tell you in fact is to think about words. For example you’re speaking with a British accent or you’re trying to speak with a British accent but you say a word like trash(USA) instead of rubbish(UK) then you’re going to still sound American, you’re going to sound like a British person is struggling with the vocabulary and using American vocabulary. So try to avoid American, Okay, try to use the British form so as I said instead of saying trash say rubbish and of course you can find various other words which is similar where we have a British version and Americans have their own version maybe I’ll make a video about that in the future.
2. T Sound /t/
Now another really important secret I have for you is don’t forget your ‘T’’s (sound), the letter T, the /t/ sound. Firstly, let’s check that you can pronounce it, let’s say a word like two/tu:/, now, in the beginning, if you find difficult you might find that you’re spitting the sound out quite a lot, t/tu:/, but we need to learn to relax it to sound a bit more natural now. Now (we) remember that the tongue rises to the to(p o)f the mouth and we create some pressure and we release it, make sure it’s ni(ce an)(d) relaxed don’t do a big /tu:/, because you may blind someone with your spits, and we don’t really want any kind of germs going in other people’s faces, so just try gently produce that sound, /t/, /tu:/. Now the T is extremely important to British English, make sure you’re pronouncing your T between vowels, whoa this is really important, let’s take a word like city /’sIt.i/, So City , the T is surrounded by two vowels, right? So you have the T and then you have two vowels, now the important thing here is that you don’t pronounce it as a D which is what Americans do they would say ciDy, British English city, so make sure you can pronounce those Ts firstly and then make sure that between two vowels you’re pronouncing that T. Now there are situations where we can use a glottal T, I could say, for example, I live in a ci(t)y, this is what we call the glottal T, Now lots of people think that they can just remove the T and that’s a glottal T but it’s not, okay? Or it’s no(t), the glottal T is actually a sound but it’s not a sound at the same time, ci(t)y, what we’re doing is we’re creating some tension in our throat and we’re cutting off the sound before the T. So ci(t)y, imagine you have a long /I/ and you want to cut the sound out, you have to do it with the tightness in your throat, ci(t)y, so that’s how we do the glottal T, it’s tightening your throat, really tensing it and cutting a sound out to replace the T, it’s very advanced and it’s very difficult and lots of students say to me “Elliot I can do the glottal T.” I say okay, send me a recording, they send me a recording and it’s not right, so it’s really advanced and it’s really difficult. In my suggestion for now if you don’t feel like you’re a very advanced British English speaker start by pronouncing your Ts and then eventually if you want to, you can start using the glottal T and learning about it because it’s a whole new sound it’s not just a technique, it’s almost like a sound. So, just a few other words, Americans would say whaDever and we would say whatever /wɒt'evə/, or again wha(t)ever with the glottal T, so whaTever or wha(t)ever would be the British version. Water we would say waTer and an American would say waDer. Now the difference here is of course the Ts but also the vowel sound, and I’m gonna talk about vowels a bit later on. But it also happens between words you heard me then, I just said “’but it’ also happens between words”, now an American would say buD it, we say buT it, we have to pronounce that T or we drop it with a glottal T, those are the British way, American buD it, they use a D, so when we have a T which is between two vowels whether it’s in a word or it’s between two words we pronounce it as a T or we can use of a glottal T, Americans they use a D to join it.
3. R sound
Now as well as the ts the R is also very important R sound right? Like in red, so let’s just check that you can pronounce it, lift your tongue to the top of your mouth shown as Fig.1, In kind of the bend of your mouth, feel your tip of your tongue reaching up there, look at my lips, now if you’re having trouble pronouncing that you probably need a teacher to directly help you with that and as I said my course is available if you need some help with the R, but the thing I need you to know is that and I’ve taught this in one of my most popular videos the R is sometimes replaced by vowels, okay? So for example, “course”, we don’t say “couRse”, we say cou(r)se. Now the reason why I’ve told you before, we only pronounce the letter R, when there is a vowel sound after it, that’s it, so if you see a word and it has an R and followed by a consonant sound, then you know it will be replaced by a vowel(course), so that vowel could be /ɜː/, could like for example work /wɜːk/; it could be /ɔː/ for example course / kɔːs / could be the /ɔː/sound, for example, party /'pɑːtɪ/, we’re not pronouncing the R and there are lots of vowels which replace the letter R, so you need to know all of the British vowels to understand when they replace the letter R. Just remember, we only remember the R /r/, when there is a vowel sound after it. Easy?
4. Schwa /ə/
The next important part of British English, an important secret you need to know is the schwa /ə/sound and the schwa sound is about thirty to forty percent of British pronunciation. It’s everywhere, it’s in words like “teacher”, ”potato”, “about”, “adventure”, “to” can be pronounced as “tə” and if you didn’t realize by now the sound is ə and it’s a very easy sound to produce I’ve taught you this in lessons before just very quickly, so you know mouth is relaxed tongue is relaxed in the middle of the mouth. So, there are lots of complex kind of reasons for when and why we use the schwa sound, but you need to know about the schwa sound if you want to sound British, it’s so important to British English, for example, as I said before an American may say “teacher”, we say “teachə”, whenever a word finishes with ə, we pronounce it with ə okay? And that also goes for the spelling of “or”, for example, “doctor”, so you need to learn a lot about the schwa sound, about how it appears in words not just replacing “or” but it happens in lots of other situations. I’d be here all day if I had to explain it for you and that’s why there is a whole chapter in my course about the schwa sound, it’s that important. I guess just a few kind of important mentions I need to give you diphthongs. If you don’t know what they are, you need to learn about them sounds like "/ɪə/ ear, /eə/ air, /aʊə/ our", you need to learn those because they will make you sound really British, again. They are kind of sounds with replace the letter R, so make sure you know your diphthongs and you started learning them, but learn your vowels before you learn your diphthongs.
5. /ɒ/Sound
A sound which is really important as wel(l a)s the schwa sound to sounding extremely British / ɒ /, in word like “hot, not, pot”, so an American would say hɑt, we say hɒt. This very round shape with the mouth where we lift the tongue in the mouth / ɒ / shown as Fig.2, it creates such a British sound, you know, for example, it’s hɒt today, right? An American say
It’s hɑt today, but we say it’s hɒt today and this kind of ɒ sound really dose create a British sense about you, so make sure that you get this sound right and you’re not doing the kind of ɒ, open-mouth sound, you’re doing more of the round shape ɒ, and pushing your lips out, so as I said there’re hundre/ə/ds and hundreds of secrets and tips I could give you about the British accent, these are just a few I wanted to give you today because I think they’re quite easy to understand and they’re things which you can start looking at and studying right now and training yourself to do when we get more complicated things like stress and intonation, I mean that’s when things get a bit more confusing and that’s when you really need direct contact with a teacher, so if you do need my personal help and you want to learn more secrets and more ways of sounding more British, you could become my student and talk with me, with voice messaging on whatsapp whenever you want or WeChat, you just have to join my course at ETJ English.com, remember you could also use my podcast for listening practice if you need some listening practice but thank you very much guys please give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to hit the subscribe button if you haven’t already. I really hope you found it interesting!
Take care, I will see you soon, Cheers guys!
