Hello and welcome to British English with Joel & Lia. Today's video is all
about BBC English so sometimes referred to as RP English, Received Pronunciation
or BBC English which is the way everyone used to speak on the BBC way back when
so in this video we're gonna talk you through three features of BBC English in
the second part of the video we're gonna explain that this is no longer really a
common way of speaking in the UK or in London but you can absolutely use these
features if you're learning a BBC accent for perhaps an acting role or
just out of interest and we're gonna just talk a little bit about what people
in the UK think about BBC English so here we go the first feature of RP or
BBC English is the 'u' sound such as the word Duke or during so in contemporary
London English we would probably say during or during which is 'djuring'
or Duke (juke) the Duke of Edinburgh had a great time during his trip to London
which is perfectly fine but it's not technically correct and not correct in
the BBC English accent so we're taking away the 'j' sound and we're just saying D
U next to each other during Duke so it might be really hard to hear maybe you
can't hear the difference but certainly when you speak to someone
who's very much old school RP and you hear them say during or duke
and often these people are a lot older and they will correct you if they hear
you say juke they'll say it's Duke yeah similarly I had a teacher tell me
it's tissue not tiss(h)ue and the same with the word issue instead of I said
what's your iss(h)ue so you know there's like there's no correct way to
say it both are acceptable it's just that if you are trying to learn a BBC
English accent for whatever reason it's these tiny tiny things that will
make the difference the next one is to do with stress placement in words like
cigarette so the correct way of saying cigarette in an RP accent would be
cigarette in the same way that you would say laundrette not laundrette yeah
cigarette, laundrette it's cigarette laundrette hmm it's a very silly thing
it's a tiny tiny thing but again if you want to do a BBC English accent it should
be cigarette not cigarette it's just it's just stupid, it's a really silly thing and don't feel you have to speak like this if
you're learning British English if you're learning British English then
you're in the right place because our channel is actually about how people speak
in 2017 that are sort of our age if you're
looking for a TV programme perhaps to help you with BBC English I might recommend I
might recommend that you watch something like Mr. Selfridge where most of the
actors speak with BBC English because it's set in Selfridges an English department
store back in the... when it opened so ages ago yeah definitely or The Crown on
Netflix which is a series all about the Royal family and when the Queen was
younger so of course they've all got BBC English accents so it's a really good
one as well yeah so the third example that we found for sort of tweaking this
BBC English sound that you might be going for is the T U sound after
each other so similarly to the D U sounds from Duke and during we've got
the TU sound in words like tuna instead of t(ch)una what we would say or
Tuesday instead of a T(cho)uesday or I'm getting on the tube
instead of I'm getting on the t(ch)ube or I'm watching YouT(ch)ube you should say I'm watching
YouTube I'm watching YouTube which sounds so weird to us. it almost sounds
American, like if you really really listen, I'm watching YouTube and that's probably
quite important that's how it differs to American if you really listen they would
say YouTube but we would say tube so we've got a slight it's called a
diphthong where you go from one sound to the other tube instead of tube it's like
you're dipping, you're actually dipping your tongue. So instead of tube
it's tube. Thank you linguistics expert Joel. Clapping myself. I've got a cough, I'm sorry
I've been coughing all the way through this
Thank you. You're welcome.
He doesn't like to be touched. You're fine.
this video isn't saying that you should speak like this it's simply to help you
learn a BBC accent if you're perhaps going for an acting role or you're just
trying to learn it out of interest yeah this is how some people still speak and
it's useful for you to get some context in how British English was pronounced
back in the day to how it is now it's just good to get that a little bit of
history I think hmm people are still talking about this because very recently
in the news a guy who works on a mainstream show he
works for the BBC he announces the lottery so in September of this year it
kicked off people were phoning up and complaining about a guy who works on
mainstream television because he pronounces the 'th' sound 'f' so he replaced
his words like Funderball instead of Thunderball. Or Free instead of Three
and people were phoning up and complaining and radio stations were
talking about this and there was an article in The Guardian where he sort of
told his story we'll link it in the description it's really interesting to read
that there's people out there which are called prescriptivists
prescriptivists who still care that people who are on television don't speak
the way they used to fifty years ago yeah it's just silly it's just really
stupid most people are like us which are called descriptivists where we
just think there's no right or wrong ray.... *making fun of Joel's mistake* descriptivists
think that there is no right or wrong way to speak the way that everyone
speaks is perfectly valid and we are just describing the way that people
speak which is what we do on our channel yeah whereas prescriptivists will say
that is wrong this is the right way and it's just totally stupid. it's only a
very small proportion and again it tends to be older people. I just noticed the
word stupid I've just s(h)tupid that's another one in BBC English would be
stupid yeah stupid so TU in like tuna and tube
stupid so you've just you gotta just sort of accept it this is the way the
older generation usually tend to be and this association comes with sort of like
people that are on television have gone to a private school have been educated
in say Eton or Cambridge, Oxford but it's not true and there's so much
diversity now in the UK on TV and mainstream media there's no correct way
to be this is just what's happening. Definitely, I think we said it at the
beginning but just to reiterate people used to only be able to get a job with
the BBC if they had the BBC English accent whereas now you get people with
all sorts of regional accents on the BBC so it's just not a thing anymore it's
just a silly attitude to have and it will probably work in your favour if you
don't have a BBC accent because they're trying to move away from that old-school
mentality and just bring other people onto the platform whether it's the way
you speak or the way you look so yeah diversity is king gotta tick that diversity box
Tick that ethnic box. Greek! Did I mention I'm Greek? Give me a
job. Give US a job! Connected to a Greek exactly... I'm a male and white so it's not really um
and RP... not really diverse. So fingers crossed for Joel Wood everyone!
anyway that's it for today's video if you enjoyed it don't forget to give us a
thumbs up and if you did find it useful if you're working on a BBC English accent
let us know if you found it useful in the comments yeah and don't
forget to follow our social media as well we're @JoelandLia on Instagram
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