Name: 5 Real British Accents You Need to Understand
Uploaded: 2020-10-24T01:16:01.000Z
Duration: 19 min 6 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm Andrea your RealLife English Fluency Coach,

Present continuous

and today we're taking an in-depth look at a range of British English Accents.

If you haven't seen it already I highly recommend you check out this lesson that we did

on little known secrets of the British accent where we had a look at how the British accent

can tend to get confused and misinterpreted in American TV shows and movies.

In today's lesson, we're going to travel around Great Britain to see a range of accents

because there are so many and most of these don't get depicted in TV series and movies,

so we don't have time to look at all of them.

There are very, very many but we're going to start off by taking a look at a few in today's lesson.

So Emma Watson is really famous for her portrayal of Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series,

but as she has become older and I think because she's lived in America more,

you'll find that her accent has changed a little bit.

She does have a modern RP accent which is quite popular with youngsters today,

particularly in London but also in other parts of Britain.

That is to say she does speak more like the Queen's English but a more modern version.

It's a little bit less formal and you'll hear it  when you see the clip.

Now, the first thing we're going to take a look at is the way that she says "that I've."

You'll actually hear her saying it more in American English. She says "that I've"

and that is with the Tap T sound so in American English when you don't pronounce the T

but your tongue hits the roof of your mouth, that is called a Tap T.

And that is how she says these two words.

Now in British English we have something similar called a glottal T and there are usually two ways of saying the T.

So if you heard me the first time I said "that I've"

so there that is called a true T where you  actually hear the T sound.

Now remember Emma used an American accent here

and she said "that I've" so a glottal T in British English is where you don't hear the T but there is a sound there.

It's more to do with the stopping of the air so I could say "that I've".

So you don't hear the T but i'm stopping the air from coming out of my mouth

and then it's released so it's quite subtle,  but you do hear a difference.

"that I've" you can have the true T "that I've" and then you have the glottal T "that I've"

so you can notice the difference there if you listen very closely.

So just to explain it a little bit further the glottal T is used when the T comes in the middle of a word

If a T is at the start of the word we always pronounce it.

So you can hear a glottal T in words such as "water".

So that's a true T where I'm pronouncing the T "water" but with a glottal T we would say "water".

So that's kind of very Cockney but it is also found in many other parts of Britain where people use a glottal T.

Other words such as "city" so with a true T: "city"  and with the glottal T "city".

So, I'm holding in that air when I'm not pronouncing the T sound, and then I release it so "city"

It's quite in the throat, and there is a sound there so there is a sound there but you cannot hear the T

and when you have that T sound at the end of words, it might sound like this so instead of saying "light"

I would say "light" and instead of saying "right" I would say "right".

Now if you listen to the way that Emma says "put together" you'll notice that the first T is not sounded.

This is because T is a plosive speech sound.

That is to say, when you make that sound some air is released.

So what happens when two T's come together at the end of one word and at the start of another

is that first one is not released because it just wouldn't sound right.

It would be really strange to try and pronounce them both, and say "put together".

It just seems like too much effort, so to make it easier that first one comes away and we say "put together".

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Now the schwa sound which you may have heard about is probably the most common sound

and the one that you would really need to learn about if you want to sound like a British native.

So where words end with "er" for example we don't really pronounce that R again.

It has more of an sound as in "umbrella".

So rather than saying "together" and pronouncing that r or like in american english saying together,

So you can hear it in words such as "together, brother, mother".

So I hope you can hear that at the end there that is the schwa sound.

So it's more of an "uh" sound. You'll hear it in other words as well not just words that end with er.

For example, you'll hear it in survive so we don't say survive we say survive it's very very subtle.

So next we're going to travel up north and take a look at the Manchester accent which we actually call a Mancunian accent.

We're going to take a little look at Liam Gallagher, who does have quite a strong accent

but we're going to look at how he pronounces some words so as I mentioned before even in Cockney London

accent the h at start of words is often not sounded out and you'll hear Liam Gallagher do that as well in this clip

so instead of saying "have" he'll say "av" so instead of saying "I had a good time"

some people might say "I ad a good time".

another interesting word that he pronounces here is glasses

so he actually says glasses and this is really more in north of england as well as scotland and wales

it's only more in the south and in particular london where we say these words with a longer r sound

so generally in britain you'll hear words like glass dance pass with a shorter a sound

glass dance pass but in london and accent we have that elongated r sound.

Did you notice how instead of saying myself he actually said myself

now i think historically this was an influence from Irish English because in the north of england

especially liverpool is very close to the um to the sea and very close to ireland and so over time

the irish actually influenced the way that brits would say particular words so definitely in the north of england

you will hear people often say myself instead of myself

so we're now going to journey back down a little bit in between london and manchester to birmingham

so birmingham is found in the midlands and we're going to be looking at a clip from peaky blinders

now it's worth noting that even i struggle to understand them when they speak sometimes on peaky blinders

and i do actually watch the show with subtitles to make sure i don't miss anything

but if you do ever visit birmingham itself you'll find this accent is not quite as strong as in the show

and you will understand people a lot better so one thing that's really distinctive in this accent is the way

they pronounce the uh so it's that u sound that's found in the middle of words or sometimes at the start

and in london for example we would pronounce this as uh so when i say us it has that sound that you would

associate with the letter but here you can hear them say "ooz"

and you hear it in the way that they say pub as well

so in the south of england we would say pub but as you can hear in the birmingham accent we can hear pub

so it has more of an uh sound quite a short uh sound maybe as in good this sound is synonymous with more

northern accents you will hear it the further north you go up um in the british isles so it's not just a birmingham