Name: Different Ways to Say ''No'' in English (& British Pronunciation)
Uploaded: 2020-11-06T20:00:14.000Z
Duration: 7 min 47 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...

The superlative

the word No, it's probably one of the most basic words in English.

Basic quantifiers

However, being British, I'm aware of many different ways of saying No, it's part of our culture to make things sound, less negative, less aggressive.

You'll find British people changing the way we say no.

So we'll use different words to kind of soften the way that we say No, and that's what I'm here to talk to you about today.

Hopefully, by the end of this lesson, you'll have some alternative ways off declining people saying no by both sounding formal, informal, relaxed and perhaps a little bit mawr like a native with my pronunciation tips.

Well, this is actually quite easy to pronounce.

We have the sound at the beginning where we just push the tongue against the top of the mouth and make the sound through our nose.

We then have what we call a defeat on Oh, which is when we combine two vowels together.

I've talked about this many times on my channel.

Oh, so we're moving the mouth between two sounds the first thing I'd like to mention is that we can actually say the word no in many different ways, with different tones on this will actually completely change the meaning off the No, for example, I could say no, it's a way of showing that you're kind of shocked and you don't believe what the person is saying.

However, I'm not here today to talk about the different tones we can use to create different meanings that's a little bit more complex.

And we need to go a bit more into detail for that.

Which is why it's in my course, which you can find in the description below.

How about we add a peep sound onto the end of the word?

This is just a different way of saying no.

So what I'm doing here is just pronouncing the end.

And then I'm pushing my tongue forwards and down and doing an ah sound, but I'm making it a bit longer?

And it is used in different parts of the world as well.

But I do find this this way of saying no tends to be quite British.

Someone might say to me, Elliot, did I see you earlier in the city center?

It's this kind of way that US British like to make no less negative.

So, you know, if somebody offers you something like, would you like my last slice of pizza?

You could, of course, be a bit more aggressive and just say no, which is fine, but it does sound a bit aggressive.

This is what we would call softening the blow.

We're not declining them in such aggressive way.

Sometimes no Consume a bit blunt, A bit harsh.

So if we just say I'm good, thanks or I'm alright.

Let's say someone has offered you something or asked you if you want to do something with, um Let's say your friend has invited you to go to a theme park for the day instead of saying No, I don't want to come.

I'll pass that You could even say I'll leave it now.

I'll leave it this time That word pass pass.

We're doing something different with the tongue.

We're pushing it down, but we're pulling it back more towards the back of the mouth.

Opening the mouth nice and big are pass pass.

Now, in some other British accents you might hear pass, so either is fine.

But if you're looking for a modern RP accent pass are now you know when you're looking in a shop, maybe you've been looking at some clothes, or maybe you're looking at a camera.

The salesman is kind of gathered a few cameras that you're looking at in your deciding or you know, this one has this.

Maybe you need some time to think about it.

The salesman has has plunged deep into the sales process and you need on escape route, but you want to sound polite or you could just say, I'll leave it for now.

So it's a bit like saying no for now, Maybe later.

Now, if we want to go a bit more extreme, we want to really emphasize than know.

So take a look at the pronunciation of the word.

This is one of those words that confuses a lot of my students.

You technically don't have to pronounce that T you could just say definitely.

However, you need to know how to use the glass.

Instead of saying on just removing the t, I'm cutting the sound out.

No, Uh, imagine you're really tightening your throat on that vowel.

It's like you've caught the t in your throat and you can't push it out is trapped in your throat.

It's kind of hard to explain without diagrams and white boards, so no way.