Hi, students.
Hope you're well.
In today's English pronunciation lesson,
we're going to find out if you are "posh" or not,
based on your pronunciation of a single word, which is "mmm."
Now, what I would like you to do is say this word aloud,
how you normally pronounce it.
And we're going to find out based
on the history of the pronunciation of this word,
whether you are at the top of the social scale
or down below somewhere.
By the end of this lesson, you will know
whether you are "posh" or not.
And we will also go over some commonly mispronounced words
in the second part of the lesson,
which share the same pronunciation issue,
but more on that later on.
We're going to start here with a few words, which
are the reason that this word has two pronunciations.
And it's all about, should we pronounce the /t/ in the word
or should we not?
So having a look at these words here,
the /t/ is always pronounced.
"Oft" is an old-fashioned word for "often."
If you read classic literature or poems,
you may have come across this word,
but we don't use it anymore in our everyday speech.
A quote for you is, "Despair and genius are too oft connected."
And that's a quote by Lord Byron.
He's a famous English poet--
"was," past tense.
Soft, fast, haste.
When you do something in haste, you do it very quickly.
So we can see the word "oft" is an older version of this word
"mmm."
I'm still not going to say the word for you.
So now let's look at the history of the pronunciation
of this word.
If we go back in time to the reign of Queen Elizabeth
I and I have drawn her here with a book next to her
to represent what we call modern English, the English that we
speak today because that emerged during her times.
A recognizable English that we still speak today.
Think, for example, of Shakespeare.
Her reign-- not this kind of rain--
the time that she was in charge was between 1558 and 1603.
Let's look at how she pronounced the word.
She said the word--
pronounced the word to include the word "off" in it, "Off-en"
"Off-en."
So she did not pronounce the /t/ in the word.
And in her times, there could be no question, no doubt about it:
she was the poshest person in the country.
Then we go a little bit further in time.
And there is another influence on the pronunciation
of this word and that is all because of a great man called
Samuel Johnson who created the first English dictionary,
all by himself.
And that was a very big undertaking.
It took him a long time, but he eventually did it.
He created the English dictionary
and he decided to spell the word with a 't'
And because the English dictionary became an authority
on spelling, people were influenced
by the 't' in the spelling.
Before, they didn't think so much about spellings.
And it influenced people to start pronouncing the word with
a /t/ in it.
So more and more people in the time of Samuel Johnson would
have said, "Off-ten" "Off-ten."
But it is believed that the upper classes, the aristocracy,
they were quite satisfied with the way they pronounced
the word and they didn't see any need to put the /t/ in it.
And because of this, moving later on into Victorian times,
people started to look down on the pronunciation with a /t/.
You're saying "Off-ten."
Oh, that's terribly lower class; that's terrible.
So moving on again in time, we come to our times
that we're in now.
Here we have clean Elizabeth.
I hope that she is.
Queen Elizabeth II represented here
with crown and her beloved corgi.
I don't know if she's got any more actually.
She use to have beloved corgis.
And her reign has been from 1952 to the present time.
And this is how the queen pronounces the word: "orphan".
"Orphan."
The word sounds the same as a poor child
that's lost both of its parents, like Harry Potter.
Harry Potter is an "Orphan."
So whenever she says this word, she says "Orphan."
So we could say, to be considered, very, very
posh today.
You have to say the word, like "Orphan."
However, the queen has a very special pronunciation,
which is based on what's called high RP.
Put very simply, this is an old-fashioned pronunciation
that is in upper-class English.
However, these days, you won't find
many people who say "Orphan."
Notice, there is no T, "not."
There is no T in her pronunciation.
But I will say, if you want to modernise this a bit;
don't say /ɔː/ say /ɒ/ /ɒ/ "off-en".
So we want to have this vowel here, /ɒ/ "off-en."
Now, we're going to look at some similar words where we have
this confusion about whether the /t/ should be pronounced,
leading to common errors.
Let's begin by looking at these two words, which have
two different pronunciations.
About 50% of people will pronounce them with /t/
and about 50% of people without.
So you can hear "off-en" or "off-ten," "Sof-en"
or "Sof-ten."
Whichever pronunciation you choose, it doesn't matter.
It's up to you.
However, these words here, they should never be pronounced with
a /t/ in them.
That is because the /t/ has been lost from the pronunciation.
It's disappeared.
So the same process in terms of the sound changing
has happened in these words, but it's been completed.
The sound of /t/ has been lost.
So we'll go through them now.
Listen-- listen to the music.
Fasten-- fasten your seatbelt. Moisten--
moisten your lips, that means lick your lips.
Castle-- the queen in her castle.
Wrestle-- a wrestling match.
Look at those sumo wrestlers wrestle.
Hustle-- when you hustle someone,
you push them out away.
So he was hustled out of the building.
Bustle is a lot of lively activity.
The hustle and bustle is an idiom.
It means lots of things happening, the hustle
and bustle of city life.
Gristle-- when you are chewing some meat
and there's a part that has a lot of fat and tendon in it,
that is the gristle.
Thistle is it makes me think of Scotland.
It's a type of flower that they have there that you don't want
to sit on, because it makes you go, "oh!".
Then we've got Christmas, which is a celebration.
And Christian-- again notice, no T, "Chris-chun."
And then we've got two other words here
that are also associated with religion.
We've got apostle, like the 12 apostles of Christianity.
And then we have epistle, which is not a very widely used word.
But this means a letter sent to a group of people.
So just to recap everything, all of these words are spelt with
a 't' but no /t/ is pronounced in them.
And you should never pronounce a /t/ because that would be
a mispronunciation.
And bringing everything together from earlier on; it's up to you
how you pronounce the word "often."
About 50% people say it with /t/ and 50% of people without.
But the no /t/ pronunciation is considered the posh one,
or the prestige one.
Thank you so much for watching this lesson
and be sure to come back to my channel
again for more lessons like this.
And while we're here, take a look at my clear accent course
as well, which will teach you a clear and easy to understand
accent.
Thank you for watching this, and I'll see you soon.
Bye.