Well hello.
How do you do?
Well met.
Pleasure to see you again.
Top of the morning to you.
Okay, so we don’t actually say that last one anymore… Also, top tip: the correct response
to ‘how do you do?’ is
‘how do you do?’: they don’t actually care how you are, it’s
a greeting.
- subscribe to discuss more Britishness weirdness like… ‘why are we obsessed by the weather?’,
‘why isn’t yorkshire pudding a pudding?’ and ‘what is with the constant apologising?!’
Yes, I asked on my Instagram whether you’d like to see more about British stuff and…
since my country may very well either not exist or be on fire by next year-
- That’s a Brexit joke and if I don’t laugh about that drama
I’ll cry-
I thought it would be the perfect time to memorialise it. A lot of the responses to
my post (and if you’re not following me already on Instagram, you should be, get over
there, the link is in the description)
A lot of the responses to my post wanted to know
about my voice and in particular my incredibly British accent because, if this is the first
of my videos you’ve watched:
- surprise, I’m deaf!
Yes, deaf-deaf. Deaf. The kind where you can’t hear things.
Deaf.
Cue people asking “So how do you know you have a British accent?”
Which is a good question...
-ish?
We’ll get to that in a minute.
Firstly, I talk about this on my channel a lot, but deafness isn’t binary, it’s not
the black and white of ‘I can hear perfectly’ and ‘I couldn’t hear if a ten tonne lorry
honked its horn right next to me.’ It’s actually a spectrum that moves from minor
hearing loss, through being hard of hearing, moderately deaf, severely deaf and finally
to profoundly deaf.
My hearing loss is severe enough that I don’t understand what people are saying or often
even realise that they ARE speaking unless I put in my hearing aids so I can’t actually
hear my own voice.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure all of those people would be aware if a massive lorry was making
an- excuse the pun- ‘
deafening’ noise.
That’s thanks to the wonder of vibrations.
I put my hand on the speakers to feel the beat while I'm editing
so I know where to cut the video.
It’s a question with three main answers though:
Answer 1: I AM British.
I used to get comments on my really early film review videos complaining about my fake
British accent. Which… was confusing. It probably didn’t help that at that time I
was recovering from a mini stroke of sorts and had a very slurred, very measured way
of speaking…
To be honest though, I couldn’t hear my voice then and I can’t hear it now so I’m
only going off YouTube comments, which is never a great way to build one’s self-esteem.
Or self image...
Some people tell me that my voice sounds very American or Transatlantic but most people
say it is incredibly British. And posh. Which…
Which... yes.
In no way is my voice the voice of every British person out there.
Obviously.
Like every other country
in the world (minus the really tiny ones like Monaco, San Marino and Leichtenstein) you’ll
discover that people born in different parts of Britain will have very different accents
- and some will even grow up speaking a British language other than English. Shout out to
anyone watching who speaks Welsh or Gaelic!
Should probably also point out that ‘Scots’ is possibly a language.
- but some people would argue that is not a distinct language,
it’s a variety of English.
- But I don’t know anything!
I’m not a linguist!
- Don’t come for me!
My mother will be annoyed if I don’t tell you that Cornish is also a language. Cornwall
is that pointy bit of the UK that looks really sunny, unless you’re in Poldark, in which
case it’s ~dramatic~ and likes to think that it definitely has a shot at independence
and is really, really into its county flag but only has 500 thirty thousand something people.
Look, Wales has 3.1 million and we’re not letting them escape any time soon so wait
your turn!
- terribly sorry, Wales.
Cornwall, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland all have very distinct regional accents as
do many major cities within England such as Manchester, Liverpool, London, Bristol, Birmingham
and many others.
Yet my accent isn’t specifically regional and is best described as RP or ‘Received
Pronunciation’, similar to what you might know as “Queen’s English” or…
posh.
According to Wikipedia, that excellent resource of facts that are 100% true, it’s known
in North America as BBC English.
And when I say ‘it isn’t specifically regional’, I do very much mean: ‘southern’.
I sound like I’m from the south.
Which I am so… no one is shocked.
Although, fun fact,-
- and I did warn you there would be more fun facts-
Whilst RP is most commonly associated with southern England, it actually has the most
in common with the Early Modern English dialects of the East Midlands. That was the most populated
and prosperous area of England during the 14th and 15th centuries but by the end of
the 15th century the accent had migrated to the City of London.
Along with a lot of wealth...
It’s probably the easiest British accent to use when abroad because people in other
countries have become so used to it thanks to…
David Attenborough.
I was going to say ‘the prevalence of the BBC’ but…
it really is just Sir David.
[pats heart] National Treasure.
It’s traditionally the voice of television and radio but there has been a move towards
more regional voices recently. However, most dictionaries published in the United Kingdom
use RP in their pronunciation schemes and voice apps like Siri and Google Assistant
apparently speak with RP voices when switched to ‘British’.
Examples of RP words include ‘bath’ rather than ‘bath’ or ‘glass’ rather than
‘glass’ and over pronouncing your ‘t’s as in ‘better’. I’m not sure why I’m
giving you examples actually... this entire video is an example!
This isn’t exactly ‘Queen’s English’ or the way we think of the Queen’s voice-
which is the original ‘conservative RP’.
She would rhyme ‘lost’ with ‘exhaust’
to make ‘lost’ and ‘gone’ with ‘dawn’ to make ‘gone’.
[Imitates Queen’s Accent] Should you be interested in an entire instalment devoted
to the Queen’s accent do please say in the comments below.
[Sparkling sfx]
- But how does this deaf girl know what RP sounds like?
Well, I only started to lose my hearing at 15. That’s Answer 2.
I could go more in
depth but I do actually have an entire playlist with videos that explain my deafness and history
which you will find in the card above...
However: Does my voice sound the same as it did when I was 15? No.
According to the people
I’ve known for that long, it doesn’t.
I mean don’t get overexcited though, it’s not as if I had an incredibly thick Scottish
accent as a child. [Attempts Scottish accent] Scottish... I can’t do that… Scottish?
Scottish...
Sure...
I think, like most teenagers, I was probably a little lazy with my pronunciation and overly
affected by watching episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on repeat!
But as I lost my hearing I became more and more precise with my pronunciation because
I couldn’t hear myself very clearly and I subconsciously wanted other people to reply
to me with the same clear sounds so I could actually understand what on earth they were
saying to me!
Which brings me to Answer 3:
I practice.
This video right now is practice.
Me watching my own face whilst editing is practice.
If there is a new word that I need to learn (because new words are invented all the time
and I’m constantly meeting people with names I’ve never come across) I’ll ask someone
else to break it down into rhyming components and then practice it over and over and over
in the mirror.
Basically, I’m incredibly lucky that as a small child I had a lot of access to very
literary, wordy books and adults who would take the time to explain exactly how to pronounce
that word and why.
I now I can use that skill myself.
I practice to maintain pronunciation because talking is my job and I want to be understood.
Sometimes I do slur my words but it actually comes out weirdly posher…
like ‘off’ when I mean 'off'
or ‘house’ when I mean ‘house’
Did you get that?
when I mean
or
when I mean
because I seem to trip up and
eat the word.
Will my voice always sound like this? Maybe not. Perhaps as I get older, and move further
away from the last point at which I could hear clearly, my voice will become either
more precise or
more slurred or
more choppy.
Who knows, I guess you’ll just have to subscribe
and keep watching to find out! [wink]
Let me know if you have any weirdness in your accent: were you raised in two different places?
Is your voice very different to your parents’ or siblings’? And also how do you pronounce
‘glass’ and does that follow through to ‘Glastonbury’? Because my friends all
laugh at me for pronouncing it that way: Glastonbury.
Glaston-bu-ry
You know what, nevermind! See you in my next video!
[kiss]