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Tom - Hello and welcome to a very special lesson because today I'm joined again by Joel and
Lia. Hello!
Tom - Alright now today we're looking at accents in London. Now these guys are absolute experts
when it comes to accents in London and you guys have asked me so many times for a special
video looking at different accents around Britain and so we are going to focus today
on London. So we're going to look at received pronunciation (RP), we're going to look at
cockney and we're going to look at multicultural London English. Ok, so who's going to do what?
Lia - So I'm going to take the RP accent. So everything I say for the examples is going
to be said in received pronunciation. Joel - I'm going to take MLE which is multicultural
London English, so yeah everything I say will be in that accent. Tom - And I'm going to
do the cockney accent. Now shall we just quickly talk about what is multicultural London English?
Where does that come from? So multicultural London English is probably the newest of these
accents. I don't know exactly when it came about, I think it was twenty or thirty years
ago. Basically it's heavily influenced by African, black African communities and Asian
communities that have come to London and it's sort of a blending of Cockney and this this
multicultural language. So it's a fairly new accent but now it's probably the most widespread
of all of these accents. Tom - Yeah absolutely, I think you described it earlier as the 'rebirth
of cockney' Lia - Yeah it's kind of like the new sound of London. All young people, inner
city London born and bred sound MLE. Tom - Right, I'm going to be doing cockney. Cockney is
the traditional accent of the East End of London. So there's a church in East London
and if you were born within the radius of that church you are a cockney and therefore
you have a certain accent. This accent isn't maybe a widespread as it used to be and maybe
it has blended into the MLE accent that Joel was talking about there but yeah it's still..I
mean anyone from London might have a cockney accent these days. In fact it's kind of spread
out as well so as people from the East End have moved out of London they've gone to outside
of London it's kind of spread and become something else, it's estuary English. Lia - and it's
with that older generation as well. Tom - Yeah definitely, it's a slightly older generation.
Lia- And I'll be taking on the RP accent which is also known as BBC English. It's received
pronunciation and it's often known as sort of the correct way to speak English. But that's
not necessarily true. Tom - Yeah of course there is no right or wrong way to speak English
there's just your accent. That was the first thing I learned on my teaching course when
I started to teach English was that it doesn't matter what accent you have you just teach
with your accent and you guys learn whatever accent you want to have and speak with whatever
accent you want to have. I think old course books used to have RP. It used to be you could
only hear RP but these days, thankfully, there's a variety of accents that you are going to
hear so we want to reflect that today. Lia- Excellent.
Tom - Alright, so there's the sentence. Our first sentence, let's hear how it's said in
RP. Lia - 'I want a bottle of water'. Tom - In cockney 'I want a bottle of water' Joel
- And in MLE they say 'I want a bottle of water.' Ok, alright so the features there.
i don't know if you picked it up. So the /t/ sound, we are particularly looking at the
/t/. In RP how is it said? Ts are pronounced in RP. In contemporary RP there are sometimes
dropped a little bit, it's unlikely you'll hear someone say water but you will hear water.
So 'I want a bottle of water' it's actually more likely to be said 'May I have a bottle
of water?' because with RP comes sort of correct manners Tom - Well structures yeah definitely
but then that was reflected in the MLE, right? The /t/ sound there was also dropped. Sometimes
is, sometimes isn't. Joel - Yeah it's sort of interchangeable. I think whereas, you'll
come on to this with cockney in a moment doesn't have any /t/s MLE sort of takes a bit of both.
It sometimes pronounces /t/s, sometimes doesn't so you might say 'Give me that water' or you
might say 'Give me that water.' You can do either. Tom - So if you want to emphasise
then maybe you would use the /t/. Joel - pass me the bottle T - Right yeah so but then in
cockney you are dropping the /t/ so it's a glottal /t/ so we'd say 'water' or 'daughter'
as well so dropping that /t/ it's right out of there, gone! L - Perfect. T - Sentence
number two, let's hear how that would be said L - happy birthday T - happy birthday J - happy
birthday. T- What was going on there? L - Nice, i noticed in the MLE that it's kind of like
quite strong on the consonants. Whereas with the cockney you roll over that /h/ and just
go straight to the /a/ 'appy birthday' T - Quite punchy J - Yeah in MLE you don't drop /h/s
like you would in cockney so you would say, again it's a mixture so you keep the /h/ like
RP does but you drop the /th/ like cockney T - Yeah which we are going to get on to All
- Woah! L - Slow down! T -But yeah in cockney I drop the /h/ so generally its 'appy birthday
L - Hell bent T - Hell bent yeah so you are dropping the /h/ right out of there. L- He
was saying hell bent. Yeah and in RP it's just, say all of the, just say all of it.
Happy birthday. T - Happy birthday, yeah. Nice! L - happy birthday Tom T- Thank you
very much. T - Number three, let's hear the RP. L - My mate's really tall.' T - 'My mate's
really tall.' J - 'My mate's really tall.' L - And an additional one here 'My mate is
really tall.' So pronouncing the /t/ in mate is not unusual. Mate would be contemporary
RP and mate would be RP. T- Ok, interesting. So a slight difference there. Again a slight
mix. People are kind of fusing the accents together? L - Yeah definitely and also the
younger generation of RP. So say your parents are quite strong RP and you're sort of you
know, you are living in London and you've got of sort of a friend from everywhere, you
just start dropping them. So it wouldn't be cat, cat. But you are still RP. T - Yeah no
absolutely yeah. That definitely works. The feature we were looking at there was the /L/
sound at the end so in RP in tall you use the dark L right? So it's 'tall' L - Yeah
T - Whereas in a cockney accent it's 'tall' so it's almost like a /w/ sound I guess L-
and what is it for you? J - Similar. I think it's the same in MLE as a cockney. You drop
the /L/ at the end you say 'tall' but the vowel is slightly tighter but the /L/ is the
same. T - Yeah at uni we had a friend called Paul and he was from south-east London. And
we'd be like 'Paul, come here Paul' it was just really fun to say. L - 'Paul, he's really
tall.' T - This one time he was asleep and we all wanted to wake him up so we all just
went 'Paul. Paul! It must have been strange for him anyway. J - This is an interesting
thing that in cockney the words 'pull', 'pool' and the name 'Paul' are pronounced the same
so it's pull, pool and Paul. Whereas in RP it's Paul, pull and pool so it's slightly
different. L - So Paul the person, pull and swimming pool. J - Yeah, it's all different
but in cockney and probably in MLE it's all the same. T - So yeah we could get deeper
into this, there's so much to talk about but yeah amazing. L - We'll do a part two. T - As
I said, these guys are accent experts. J - Oh stop it! T - Alright number four L _ 'I live
in South London.' T - 'I live in South London. J - I live in South London. T - Alright so
the feature here is that /th/ of south. In RP what are you doing? L - South. /Th/. South
London. T - Whereas in cockney I'm putting an /f/ there so south. The 'outh' is a larger
vowel sound there and then the /f/ south / north. There's a /f/ sound. J - Same in MLE it's
south. T - Yeah it's kind of similar, isn't it? Ok so those are sort of four of the main
features. There's so much more to explore here. In terms of your accents guys. How do
you L - Identify? T - Yeah how do you identify? what do you do? L - So I would identify as
someone who has a midlands RP. So I'd say I have received pronunciation but with a midlands
twang and that's because I was born in Warwickshire. So, I might say 'laugh' instead of 'laugh'
or 'bath' instead of 'bath' and that is a whole other video because there's midlands
and then you've got Birmingham and there's so many accents going on in the midlands specifically
West Midlands where I was born. So yeah I would say I've got quite a neutral Midlands
RP. T - Ok, Alright and Joel what about you? J - Kind of similar to Lia but not the Midlands.
So a neutral contemporary RP. I would say 'bath' and 'laugh' instead of 'bath' and 'laugh'
which Lia would say but other than that I think are accents are pretty similar. T - Yeah
definitely. Joel you do a lot of voice over work, right? So you have to play around with
accents quite a lot. You have to know the features of different accents, that must be
really challenging right? J - Yeah it is difficult. I think mainly the work that I do, people
do want RP so I think there's still a slight bias to saying we like this accent because
it's neutral. But yeah you do have to sort of do lots of different accents and know your
mouth and what it's doing. T - Yeah. I think for my accent it's changed a lot and it really
depends on the situation. I was saying to you guys earlier if I'm with my mates and
I'm at football then I'm full cockney. Like I'm going 'come on you ....' L - beep! T - But
then if I'm with my grandma I'm RP as anyone 'Hello grandma. how are you?' You know, so
it rally depends. I don't know why i do that L - It's like being a chameleon in life. You
do it to sort of survive. T - Well you adapt to your surroundings, right? Absolutely. I
think being a teacher here and living abroad has sort of neutralised, not neutralised my
accent but has changed my accent because yeah you need to be understood and maybe speaking
clearly whatever the accent is, speaking clearly is maybe the most important the thing. L -The
key yeah definitely. T - But yeah it's an interesting one. And I definitely identify
with all three I think. You'll find me doing little features of everything. L - I don't
know, I find accents can be so entertaining and so interesting. T - Yeah definitely. And
it's all about identity, isn't it? You really are displaying where you are from geographically,
who you are socially, your age L -Everything. T - There's so much in there, it's fascinating.
J - We love accents. T - There guys have done some amazing accent videos so I'll link those
just below. But guys, thanks again L -Thanks so much. We've also got you on a video on
our channel. T - That's right so what's that about? What did we do? L - What did we do?
J -We did a video all about the different communities there are in London.So if you
are interested in knowing where the communities are in London or you are moving to London
yourself it should be quite helpful. T - This is super fascinating. I loved this one. Looking
at different nationalities. So where is the big Korean community in London or Italian
community or whatever. This maybe the best video of all time, I don't know. it's a good
video. So yeah make sure you go and check that out guys. But thank you so much for joining
me guys. If you would like more accent videos then let me know in the comments below. Which
accents would you like me to do? And maybe you guys can come and help me again. l - We'd
love to. Awesome, bye! J - See you! T - See you guys bye!