- Hi, my name is Erik Singer.
I'm a dialect coach.
You may have seen me here before
talking about accent performances in movies.
What do Texas accents and South Asian accents
have in common?
The answer's retroflexion.
So today, I'm gonna offer you
some quick and easy ways
to tell one accent apart from another
when those two accents are pretty similar
in a lot of ways.
Can you ask somebody to say a simple phrase
to try to tell whether they're from, say,
Australia or New Zealand?
- I'm originally from Sydney, Australia.
- From Philly, PA.
- Yorkshire.
- New Bedford, Massachusetts.
- Number one, how to tell an Australian
from a New Zealander.
We can use the kit vowel.
In Australia, there's a realization
that is not too far off
from my own American accent, for instance.
Something like an ih sound.
An Australian might say that something like this.
- Myth, Myth. Myth.
- New Zealanders tend to centralize this sound.
So instead of the tongue being arched up a little bit
towards the front of the mouth,
it's relaxed down a little bit
towards the middle of the mouth,
and you get something closer to a schwa.
Uh, cut.
You can hear that here.
- Myth. Myth. Myth.
- Myth.
- And myth.
So there's one, actually very famous
phrase that you can use, uh
that you could ask somebody at cocktail party
say, to pronounce to try to tell whether
they're an Australian or a New Zealander if
you're not sure. And that phrase would be
fish and chips.
And Australian might say that something like this:
- Fish and chips. Fish and chips.
- Where as the New Zealand version might sound
more like this:
- Fish and chips. Fish and chips. Fish and chips.
- Fish and chips.
- Number two, how to tell somebody from
the north of England from somebody from
the south of England.
Many accents in both places, of course.
But the cool thing is, you can draw a line
straight across England. North of that line
strut words, words like cup, under, mother, love, son
are going to have a vowel sound something like
ooh, very similar to the vowel sound in foot words
like wood, butcher, woman, look.
Here is a Northern English person and you can
hear their strut vowel.
- Cup, cup, cup.
- In the South, they're going to be two
different vowels. One is strut, and one is foot
and they won't sound the same.
And here's a speaker from the South.
- Cup, cup, cup.
- From the North.
- Mother, mother, mother. Son, son, son.
- From the South.
- Fun, fun, fun.
- Son.
- Fun.
- Son.
- Fun.
- So, if you meet somebody and you're pretty sure
that their accent is from somewhere in England,
but you want to know whether it's from the North
or from the South, you could ask them to say
the following phrase:
Did you cut your foot?
From the North.
- Cut your foot. Cut your foot. Cut your foot.
- From the South.
- Cut your foot. Cut your foot. Cut your foot.
- Cut your foot.
- So, of course there are many different Northern
English accents. Two famous ones are
Geordie from Newcastle and Brummie from Birmingham.
One way that you could potentially tell
a Geordie accent from a Brummie accent would be
to take the face vowel.
A brummie is going to have a sound that's kinda
similar to a London sound. It's a diphthong,
it's a vowel sound that starts ahh and ends up
ee. Moves from ayeee, it takes a journey.
So if you hear something like this:
- Great cakes. Great. Great. Great.
- You're dealing with a Brummie.
If you hear something that's much more monophthongal -
aye, something like this:
- Great cakes. Great. Great. Great.
- Then you're dealing with a Geordie.
A phrase could be, David bakes great cakes.
You can hear that here:
- David bakes great cakes.
- Bakes great cakes.
- Next up, New York and Boston.
Now this one's probably easier to hear and place
if you're American, probably less so if you're
not an American.
The lot vowel
is going to be
very open, fronted,
no lip rounding.
In a New York accent,
lot, hot, not, God.
Here's a New York speaker.
- Not. Not. Not.
- It's going to be a little bit lip rounded in a
Boston accent so more like lot, God.
Here's a Boston speaker.
- Not. Not. Not.
- Not.
- So here's a phrase you could ask somebody
to say, that's not a lot of pots.
If they say it with an ah, that's not a lot of pots,
they're probably from New York.
- That's not a lot of pots. That's not a lot of pots.
- If they say it with an aw, that's not a lot of pots.
That's Boston.
- That's not a lot of pots. That's not a lot of pots.
- That's not a lot of pots.
- Next up, New York City and Philadelphia.
So both New York City and Philadelphia raise
the trap vowel in certain circumstances
so you'll get ahr instead of ah.
They do it in different places. In a New York accent
you get trash and traffic, you also get sad and bad.
Here's a New York speaker.
- Trash. Trash. Trash.
- Where as in Philadelphia, those are not some of
those trap words that are gonna get raised.
We're going to get other ones like man and hand.
So you'll get something more open like my own
ah, traffic, trash, sad, bad.
Here's a Philadelphia speaker on similar words
with a different sound.
- Traffic. Traffic. Traffic.
- So if you want a quick cocktail party test
you could have somebody say trash or traffic.
- Trash. Trash.
- Traffic. Traffic.
- Trash.
- Traffic.
- Trash.
- Traffic.
- That's it for accent party tricks, I'm Erik Singer.