....
What? What's he saying?
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening! Welcome to Smashing English! Before we start
this video, be sure to subscribe because we make new videos all the time and I don't want you to
miss any! So with that said, let's get on with the video! Today we are looking at Harry Styles- lucky
us. Now today we are particularly looking at his accent, now why on Earth do we need to look at his
accent? Because if you are learning English it's really really useful to be able to understand many
different accents because as lovely as she is, if you only ever listen to people who sound like Emma
Watson, you're going to be very confused when you listen to people speaking English in a different
way and Harry Styles has a very interesting accent so I want to talk you through it,
I want to explain the different features he has, why does he say some vowels like this? Why does
he say some consonants like this? Let's talk about it. Because the more you look at different
accents in detail, the better your English listening will be, trust me. So first of all,
let's look at a history of where Harry Styles has lived so that we can better understand why
his accent sounds the way it does. So, according to Wikipedia, Harry Styles was born in Redditch,
which is not far away from where I grew up, it's probably about an hour. It's in Worcestershire,
like the sauce, which is quite close to Birmingham but it's not a Birmingham accent, people in
Worcestershire do not sound like they are from Peaky Blinders, they have quite a standard English
accent with hints of Birmingham, Midlands in there but it's not extremely strong. But then when he
was a child he moved to Holmes Chapel which is in Cheshire and Holmes Chapel is not too far from
Manchester so I think this is where we hear most of his accent coming through, if you look back
at old videos of Harry Styles, he sounds a lot more Northern, Manchester, not really Manchester,
not like Noel or Liam Gallagher, he's not that far but he definitely has these Northern influences,
he's definitely not a southern boy. And now I'm guessing he spends a lot of time in London or LA
I'm guessing those are the places where he spends most of his time. So now that we know all of this,
we are going to watch a video of Harry Styles together and we are going to pick out the little
details we're going to see, 'oh! That sounds quite Manchester, oh that sounds quite LA,' to
see if we can understand what accent he has now. So let me get my very tangled... why,
why do headphones always get tangled? You can put them away in the best way but they will still...
Okay so we are going to look at Harry Styles's interview with Zane Lowe for Apple music for
when he did Harry's House, that's what we're looking at because he talks quite
a lot because it's an interview. So let's start right from the beginning, off we go.
Oh very interesting, okay, a lot of sounds here, a lot of sounds, so let's start from the beginning.
So straight away: my favourite thing about it, that went very kind of Southern American, he said,
um, my my favourite thing about it, that 'ah' can be found in Cockney but also a
lot of American dialects so I'm guessing that's an LA influence, also because he
doesn't say about it he goes 'about it' and he turns the T into a D, that's extremely American.
The most, I'd say his O's, the 'oh' diphthong, I'd say that's where he sounds the most Manchester,
most, because he wants to turn it into this 'oh' sound that you have
in Manchester and because he doesn't have a lot of other strong Mancunian vowels,
it always jumps out as a bit of a strange sound because if he was being fully Californian he
would go my favorite thing about it is it's the most, he would make it more like most,
but he does it, most, so that's why his accent sounds so random.
Yeah, that sounded quite London, take it off you, take it off, we love to drop a T,
they just take it off you, because he doesn't need to drop that T, because straight after
the T there's a vowel take it off, and if we were being perfect received pronunciation we would say
take it off you, and if we were in California we would say take it off you with a D but he doesn't,
he goes take it off you, he drops the T completely, so that's quite London.
Out, you're just out, a really wide vowel there, 'ow' that's really Californian, like,
from what I know about California, the vowels are really, like, relaxed and wide, you know?
Like sort of really open, that's an influence I can hear in him is he's relaxed, he's chilled,
and that's having an influence on how he says everything.
Dark L's, interesting dark L's, which is a feature of Manchester, actually,
so instead of going 'really' with a light L where we just tap the alveolar ridge, he goes
'really' and makes it a darker L where we push the tongue up to the top of the mouth and go L,
really, really, also he's doing a dark L which is not London it's not RP it's not
Californian, I think that's the Manchester in him.
'And, and, and,' like it's not 'and', he's not doing a wide British 'ah',
he's going and really tight like Americans do, you know?
I love his necklace, very pretty necklace.
'Alive' that's quite Northern 'alive', dark L, 'alive.' See if you can hear the difference:
this would be RP like Emma Watson she would say alive, he goes alive. Alive, alive.
I, stretch the vowel, Manchester, that's what he's doing.
A lot of, so he's got this habit of dropping a T before a vowel which is quite common in lots of
places in the UK, I'd say a lot of UK accents are getting lazier, so it used to be we only drop a T
if there is a consonant after it like fat cat, we might drop it there, fat cat, but now, especially
in London, especially with younger people, we drop the T even if there's a vowel after it, so we'll
say fat orange, I don't know why we would say fat orange, but we do. But if you are an English
learner and you want to be clear and understood, I wouldn't recommend doing this. So I wouldn't
recommend dropping your T before a vowel, I know you hear it a lot, I just did it there! Hear it a
lot. I know that you hear people like Harry Styles doing it, with this glottal 'hear it a lot',
where we stop it in the throat, but it's very hard for a non-native speaker to do this and for it
to still sound really clear and crisp because if you're doing that sound along with lots of other
sounds from your own accent it can just get a bit confusing, so get in the habit of pronouncing the
T's. Okay so so far the biggest Americanism I'm hearing is in the cat vowel, so this 'ah' sound.
Now if he lived in Manchester all his life or lived in Cheshire all his life, I would expect
him to say 'and, banned, cat' this 'ah' sound with no change, no diphthong, just a straight
'ah' but now I'm guessing because of LA, because of being around American people, it's become 'and,
band, cat,' like it's more, there's more of a diphthong in it, it's more changed by the
consonants around it, that's very different, so that's definitely an influence of the US on him.
'better'
'it matters'
I'd say at the minute he's like a 50/50 sound split so he's 50% making sounds of northern
England and he's 50% making- no, 70% making sounds of northern England, 30% making sounds of the US,
but the attitude that he has in his mouth like the way his mouth is moving is very California,
it's really relaxed, you know, if you think about colder countries,
colder countries normally have languages that are quite sharp and they have accents that are more
tense in the mouth and require your mouth to be closed a lot more because when it's cold,
you're tense and your jaw tenses and you don't want to open your mouth too much. Whereas hot
countries, think about Australia, you know, like in Australia, the vowels are so open and,
like, they talk sort of as wide as you can, you know, everything is wide like
that because it's warmer and they're relaxed and they can open their mouth. So he's doing
this relaxed hot country talking but he's not from a hot country he's from a cold country.
Suddenly, that's Northern England, that's Northern England when you have an 'uh',
a schwa and instead of going suddenly with an open 'uh uh uh', you go suddenly, same in Birmingham,
if you've ever heard the Birmingham accent, we say suddenly, people in Yorkshire:
suddenly. Ooh, making it an Ooh, so he's still got that sound from northern England.
Well so we can hear a lot of sounds there, I had a little bit of a chance to focus,
so we've got American, American, Northern, 'had a little bit of a chance to focus,' that oh,
Manchester oh, it's fascinating! I would say that Harry Styles's accent is something
on its own, so I would say Harry Styles's accent in my opinion is Northern England slash Manchester
slash Californian influences slash London T's, it's a whole different thing and that happens
sometimes and this is why it's so useful to listen to as many different people as you
can. If you only ever listen to people with news reader voices, you know, like RP, Standard English
then when you hear someone like Harry Styles, it's going to really confuse you because they'll say a
certain word with this sound but then they'll do this and it's just going to be very confusing to
your ears, so make sure that you're stretching your listening practice, make sure that it's
not just people who speak RP, make sure that it's people who have lived in five different countries,
people who speak English as their second language, people who have a very unique accent,
the best listening practice. Thank you so much for joining me, I hope this video was useful,
if you liked it please give it a like and if you want an online one-to-one English lesson
with me or my partner, Bez, the link for that is down below and I'll see you next time, tata!