[Standard American accent] Congratulations!
You've made it through all five parts of the Standard American Accent Tutorial.
Welcome to the bonus.
Time for some fun!
I hope the whole things been fun, I've had fun.
But this, I thought we would go through some of the regionalisms of the country,
because it's a huge country.
No two accents sound the same,
even if they're from the same city.
So, I thought we would start with, you know, the
[New York accent] East Coast. Like New York,
and, um, you'll definitely get more of your consonants here, a little bit harder.
Your 'T's won't be 'D's so much, um,
you know, just focusing on New York for a minute,
you get kind of this 'trumpet' effect, I call it the 'trumpet'.
'Cause it's like,
here we are, and it's really crowded in the city,
so you gotta make your space,
you know, announce your space.
So, if I say 'talk',
you know, the sound is going 'aw', out,
and I'm marking my territory, right?
So, then you
[Southern accent: non-rhotic] come down South
and it's a little bit different, you gon' take all that
and bring it home, bring it down,
calm it down a little bit.
[Southern accent: rhotic] Or, you have your Southern accents
we call rhotic,
meaning you pronounce the 'R' at the end of the word
or the sentence.
So, there are many different Southern accents where you will pronounce the 'R'
and kind of lean on it in that charming kind of way.
[Southern accent: non-rhotic] Or, the the ones where you don't pronounce the 'R
Now in general, y'all slow down a little bit,
y'all have to lean on somethin' a little bit more.
'Cause it's hot on down here
[affirming] Mmmmm
[Southern accent variations] Y'know, y'all can have your accent quite fast, wanna pick it up.
Some, we don't have any consonants, pretty much, y'know?
Y'know what I'm saying?
[laughs]
[Standard American accent] Lots to explore, and then
[Midwest accent] when you bring it up to the part of the country where
the land is wide and flat
you're gonna get more of a wide flat sound to your accent,
up in Minnesota, Wisconsin.
So, they call that the 'Midwest'.
I don't know why,
it's really the North, or the middle.
Maybe 'cause at one point when it was just the East Coast
everything else was West
so you can get that up there.
But, in general it's like you can just pull the rubber bands of your cheeks wide
and then 'too' and you go from 'ooo' to wide and that's fun.
[laughs]
[Californian accent] And then, you know if you bring it sort of
to the West Coast, really more like to California, you know,
I'm just gettin' a little bit heavier
a little bit kinda louder
and just kinda, "Here I am, you know, nothing to hide! I mean I'm just here."
and... yeah!
And then if get really into kinda this 'now' thing
[with rising pitch] you can even bring it up at the ends of your sentences.
And things like "sen'ence"
[Standard American accent] I wouldn't say "sen'ence", I would say sentence.
That's just me.
I tend to articulate a little bit more than that.
But you can bring this kind of West Coast thing
up to Oregon and Seattle as well,
some people in Washington say "Wer-shing-den", "Wer-shen-den"
but that's not kids, that would be of a particular generation, "Wer-shen-den".
And these are total generalisations, there are infinite accents within.
In fact, you get things like
Your newscaster, where you have a very particular training
to sound like you know what you're talking about.
We vary our melody quite a lot
so that people can stay attuned to what we're saying
because if we level off what we're saying
and don't vary our pitch very much
it's a lot harder to follow what we're saying, so we vary it a lot!
Or, you've got your flight attendant:
"Okay, thank you very much here,
now if you just put your seat backs and tray tables
in their upright and locked position for me
we'll get under way.
Take a moment and find the exit nearest you,
bearing in mind it may be behind you. Thank you."
Many different regionalisms, this is just a sampling.
But the more you get into some of the differences,
the more you watch, and practice, and soak it up,
you know, pause a movie or just sit there and... [mouths silently copying an accent]
it'll help you develop your ability to mimic,
to hear a sound and know what your mouth needs to do,
what your body needs to do, in order to recreate that sound.
So, it can be fun to just hear something random,
[makes noise] "Wharh"
and go "Wharh", again.
Or,
[makes noise] "Bebo" "Bebo"
Or difference languages will help you too.
[speaking French] Trois, trois
You know, don't just say "to-was"
[laughs]
Or a velociraptor,
[makes sounds of velociraptor roar]
So, the more you practice these different things
it will help you with your American, I promise you.
And then that will help you with any other accents you wish to bring into yourself.
Expanding your identity.
Expanding who you are
to include these other things.
That with this, it doesn't mean that you're not who you were before
you're just adding to that some of these other tools
Thank you!
I hope you've had a wonderful time
and maybe I'll see you back here again soon.
Take care.
Vibes to you, and all you do.
We are connected.