Hello, hello, hello.
So you're in a hurry and you need to have a British accent now.
You don't have time to learn those phonetic charts.
Put marbles in your mouth
and pull faces and make funny noises
and contort your tongue into strange positions for hours and hours.
No, none of that, because today
I've got six tips on how you can sound
British right now.
By the end of this video,
you'll sound more English than a cast member of Downton Abbey.
But before we start, I'll just tell you that I'm teaching here.
Standard British English
known as S s b e.
Standard Southern British English, which is a middle
class accent, mostly from the south of England.
And this is the accents you'll use in
British dictionaries
and English teaching textbooks.
It's sometimes referred to as RP,
which stands for received pronunciation.
But I don't like the term RP.
We'll go into that another time.
And by the way, I'm from London
and my accent may differ very slightly from
SSBE because I have a little bit of a London accent.
But for the purposes of this video, I'll just use SSBE
If I deviate from that accent, I'll let you know.
And without further ado, let's go.
We'll start with the rounded
O sound at the end of a word such as go.
It's not go.
As I often hear. That's a common mistake.
Here, it's go.
Try it with me.
Go. It has a long tail and kind of
melts into a W at the end.
Try it again. Go.
Some words ending with this O sound include halo
memo hero zero.
Now you say the next words.
Very good.
Also, mango, tomato.
If you're Italian and you go to the café,
you might order a cappuccino.
But a British person would say a cappuccino.
Can I have a cappuccino, please?
Often words ending in OW have the sound.
Words such as grow shallow.
know, slow.
Window.
Try, this sentence.
Go to the window and you'll know about the cappuccino.
Try the next phrase.
Also, the slow tomato is a hero.
You even have this oh sound in.
Hello.
And that's why most of the time.
Most of the time you can recognize someone is,
shall we say, not from these parts.
From the very first word they say, I might say hello.
Hello. No, no, it's hello.
So practice saying that. Hello. Hello.
Next we're going to look at the R sounds.
The SSBE accent is non robotic,
which means we don't roll the R's.
If you're learning American English, that's different.
Or in fact Scottish English.
But not in this English accent.
When you see an unstressed R
after a vowel, it lengthens the vowel.
Okay, so for example, cat has a short vowel,
but when you put an R
before the T or after the AA, it becomes a long, soft vowel.
It becomes called CART
bid, put in an R and it becomes BIRD.
A common mistake is to roll the R, but we don't do that in this accent.
It's bird. It's not bird.
Third. Not third.
Try these words.
very good
Board. Murder.
mother. Not mother.
Okay.
At the beginning of a word and before a vowel,
we do say the R, but it's super soft.
So, for example, run, arrest, parade.
A third of the words were heard.
And try this one.
Very good.
My mother's bird was murdered.
The other case where will use an R is
with what we call the linking R and the intrusive R.
This is when you insert an R between
two vowels - two vowel sounds rather.
So for example, I saw a man.
I saw a man in English.
We don't like to have too many vowels together.
We find it difficult to say it, so we often put
a consonant in between them.
So try it again. I saw a man.
And what about this sentence?
China is a big country.
Very good.
China is a big country.
Law and order.
The other type of R is the linking are
when the word contains and are at the end of a word.
It is followed by a vowel in the next word.
For example, far and wide, you try the next one.
Her old car.
Very good.
Let's move on to the A sound.
Now, this one is difficult.
It's not found in many languages, including some European languages.
So it's
a sharp high
sound from the back of the mouth with the mouth open.
So you say cat not cut.
Angry has a different vowel to hungry.
I can't tell you how many times I'd be confused by someone telling me
that they're hungry or angry, and I'm not sure which one.
Can you hear the difference? Angry.
Hungry. Okay.
Now you try these words.
Fat attack.
Black.
Very good.
Try this sentence.
I lack the knack to hack the sack.
Try this one.
Zack was back and his black cat was in the flat.
Good. Let's move on.
T's are pronounced as T's in American English.
You might hear a T pronounced more like a
D between vowels.
So, for example, Americans might say Saturday,
so I can't really do an American accent.
That's an approximation.
But in RP, it's a T sound.
Always a T sound. Saturday, Saturday.
It also contains that A sound I talked about before. Other words,
containing this T sound, butter, bitter, water.
Now you try the next words.
attitude, fatter.
And try this one once again.
Tomato
Try this phrase.
On Saturday, the water was bitter.
So we stressed those T.
And by the way, as I already said, I'm from London.
And here sometimes we replace this tea with what we call a glottal stopped,
which is kind of a sound from the back of the throat.
So you might hear London as saying water
instead of water and butter instead of butter.
But today I'm not speaking with a London accent, so I'll just say
water and butter.
But I just tell you this so that you are aware of it.
If you if you hear that accent.
Next, we have the long A sound you'll find in words
such as bath calm dance.
And here are some more say them after me
fast after half
laugh can't not count,
but can't.
So say this after me.
I can't laugh fast.
Now many words that have this sound.
You have an A followed by the ah.
Take this sound.
For example, target farm car, bar party.
Try this.
At the party.
I asked her to dance at the bar.
Now we say arse in British
English a thing that you'll see on the moment.
And it's ass in American English.
And this is the only case I know where the spelling is different in British
and American English to reflect the vowel sound
difference of British English.
American English.
I got grass on my arse and she laughed.
Finally we have the O sound as in lot
got rot, not god of what?
Even though what doesn't have an O in it, it's pronounced that way.
Now you try.
Very good.
Stop. Cost flop.
This all sound exists in British English but is absent
in most North American dialects, though not all, I believe.
So you might hear an American saying, I got hot a lot.
Once again, sorry for my bad American accent.
And in British English, it's.
I got hot a lot.
So if you want to sound more British than American,
then master this all sound.
Now it's time for some practice.
Here are some sentences, and I want you to say them
in the British way.
On Saturday.
I was also far and away drinking a lot of espresso
and tart.
I can draw a better picture
of a cat on a mat next to the bath
when I go to the show and I'm not hot.
There you are. And now you sound British.
So go out and wax your bowler hat, make some cucumber sandwiches,
and discuss the rules of cricket at a Buckingham Palace
garden party while drinking warm beer.
Cheerio, guys. See in the next video bye.