''If your accent is perfect, it means you are educated abroad''... That made me chuckle. True.

@isaaccraft2050

2 жыл бұрын

my ex-gf from Belarus said that I didn't say the letter 'h' properly; she said I had to pronounce it 'aitch' not 'haitch'. I dumbed her very quickly.

@annabelcaws8785

2 жыл бұрын

@@isaaccraft2050 lmao barely ever see any reference to Belarus

@bambino9235

2 жыл бұрын

@@isaaccraft2050 Oh my god, yes- my mum says "haitch" and it drives me fucking mad hahah

@sacredgeometry

2 жыл бұрын

@@isaaccraft2050 She is right.

@Chillednfunked

2 жыл бұрын

I’m South African and I definitely speak better English than most English people

Today I learned that when people refer to RP as "the Queen's English", they mean Queen, the band, not Her Majesty.

@powerarA

2 жыл бұрын

He basically said "I pronounce words according to the book written in 1926. That's why I sound weird." That cracks me up as well.

@hannahkruse4025

2 жыл бұрын

That's for sure the best example I have ever read. Stealing. 😁

@uzbekuncle

2 жыл бұрын

Myself build my pronunciation via listening to BBC far in the south of Uzbekistan. And that guy from Zanzibar had clear marks of Hindustan aligned RP.

@GirishManjunathMusic

2 жыл бұрын

@@uzbekuncle "that guy from Zanzibar" and "Hindustan" makes me feel such... interesting feelings. India, friend, is the generally accepted appellation right now.

@golden28

2 жыл бұрын

I'm not sure about that one, MrVovansim. I had a subject at the Faculty called Phonetics of the English and at some point we talked about the synonyms for RP. Among many synonyms, such as BBC English, there was the "King's English". The professor talked about it and said that today it is rather referred to as "Queen's English" since the Queen herself is the reigning monarch, after King George ascended the throne in 1936. So my assumption, although I don't know as much about it, is that before referring to RP as "Queen's English" it used to be "King's English" before the accession of Her Majesty to the throne. Sure, Freddie had a pure RP accent and that may be the truth, but there was also the "King's English" earlier, before Her Majesty, which doesn't really make sense if we're talking about the band. If you see what I mean :) I may be wrong, and correct me if I am, I'm just trying to learn more about RP since I think I'll do my PhD thesis on it.

Its worth noting that the key strength of RP isn't the number of people who speak it, it's the number of people who understand it, which is absolutely everybody who can understand english. If you intend to learn english you would pretty much always choose to learn RP.

@mohammadfarooqi6255

Жыл бұрын

A hundred percent agree

@7MPhonemicEnglish

Жыл бұрын

Exactly! That's why I believe that there should be an International Standard English. I can say that American Standard is unaccented and that RP is very mildly accented. Many would disagree. A mildly bent vowel isn't much of a concern but if it's bent to the point of matching a different vowel, you get one word sounding the same as another. If I was to drop into Scotland, I'd probably understand less than half of what they say but they would have no trouble understanding me. Either American Standard or RP is a good baseline to start from. Anyone leaning English as a 2nd language should learn either one of those two and I think it would be advisable to spend a few years fussing over how to unite them into one International Standard. I've been promoting a phonemic alphabet consisting of 34 characters. A fully phonemic English alphabet where you spell what you say would result in people spelling words according to their local dialect, which means that accents would not just be heard by the ears, but they would, albeit to a lesser extent, also be seen in the language of the eye - namely the written word. This would make having an International Standard for spelling and pronunciation much more important.

@impishrebel5969

Жыл бұрын

@@7MPhonemicEnglish I've been living in the UK ten yeas and I still can't understand half of what people say around here. Almost everyone understands me save one or two people who mistook "back" for "bag."

@7MPhonemicEnglish

Жыл бұрын

@@impishrebel5969 hmmm. Do you think that it's mainly accent or is it lack of proper enunciation? I know that where I live, I have to deal with thick Spanish accent which is bad enough but then on top of that there's often the toothless, low-income, low I.Q. bumpkin who just plain never learned to speak English, so I catch about 20% of their words or just enough to discern that English is the language they're targeting.

@ledoynier3694

Жыл бұрын

eeh, in the US, often people would make me repeat when i didn't speak with an american pronounciation. Asking for a glass of water in restaurants was often a mystery, until i asked again for a glass of "wodder".. Seems lots of americans aren't used to hearing anything else than american english ^^ The grammar of RP is certainly universal, but the phonems, certainly not. Still, it's the most widely understood one.

I was completely blown out when I first visited England for the first time as an adult able to talk English (learnt in Australia, and made myself a lot of international friends over the years) : I couldn’t understand ANYONE nor ANYTHING, my brain just DIDN’T REGISTER the language people talked as being English, and got itself convinced that I was actually hearing German (like when you write something in Google Translate and it fails to autodetect the source language). I needed a few full days to adapt, it was a crazy experience.

@jkid4855

Жыл бұрын

I'm an American English speaker and I have to enable CC when watching British TV shows lol.. None of those shows now use RP and I just have a hard time understanding cockney which a lot of their shows feature now.

@darkstarr984

Жыл бұрын

@@jkid4855 I think growing up with the Redwall books and hearing a large range of accents in shows means I can usually still understand a lot of accents… but if you dropped me in the English countryside I would be struggling.

@helenlipin2260

Жыл бұрын

I learned American English and when I came to London first time I did not understand anyone. With time it got better

@no15minutecities

Жыл бұрын

Britain.........

@waltperry5781

Жыл бұрын

While teaching college-level English and "moonlighting" as a lowly dishwasher and cook's assistant in a San Francisco Bay Area restaurant run by a German, a Swiss, and a Dane, I was struck (hearing them converse with their various friends in their own native languages) by just how much the sounds and cadences of their own languages sounded like English.

“You could barely understand the man, he was that posh. It was not so much speech as modulated yawning.” ― Terry Pratchett, Thud!

@erinaa9486

3 жыл бұрын

I love Terry Pratchett RIP taken too early

@spacecase7566

3 жыл бұрын

Hah! That’s a good one. RIP Terry Prachett.

@kit10

3 жыл бұрын

The man who taught me how to speak in a Scottish accent with his Wee Free Men books 😆

@ajdo1991

3 жыл бұрын

Sounds like Jacob Reese-Mogg hahaha!

@Jason-ib4fk

3 жыл бұрын

LOL!!! Great description! 😋👍😁

"Her English is too good," he said "That clearly indicates that she is foreign" My Fair Lady. But of course you knew that.

@pdorism

3 жыл бұрын

She must be Hungarian

@jrkjalique

3 жыл бұрын

The queen has german blood.

@tedgovostis7351

3 жыл бұрын

heheh was chatting with a friend about some videogame dialogue bits that were a bit painful for their slightly off grammar and word usage, and that particular line popped in my head when I realised the developer was Hungarian when I thought they were British.

@walther7147

3 жыл бұрын

@@jrkjalique posh is a german slang ; )))

@Zoe-bx9bp

3 жыл бұрын

@@jrkjalique so?

Interestingly, my mum has an rp accent for the opposite reason - she grew up with a strong Nottingham accent, but when she was teaching English as a foreign language in Germany the kids couldn't understand her, so she changed her accent to rp

Being a foreigner who learned English in England, and being myself a language teacher, I always look to the mouth of a native speaker to understand how he or she “builds” the phonemes. It’s rather interesting to watch your videos and learn more! How kind of you to make these videos. Thank you ever so much.

@sexorcismo

8 ай бұрын

that's very common

Wow this is interesting. I moved to the southern US from Taiwan as a very young child; I was already speaking Mandarin fluently, but didn't have a regional accent. I continued to speak it at home and was soon sent to Chinese school on weekends to learn reading and writing. I didn't regularly go back to visit family in Asia until about 10 years later, and though I'm still fluent, was surprised and slightly disappointed that almost every local I spoke to would ask me if I was from/visiting from America - this happened even more frequently/earlier in conversations in China. One Taiwanese shop owner finally told me she guessed I was visiting from/raised in America because my Mandarin was "too perfect"; she said she couldn't guess where I was from and my pronunciation was "textbook". Pretty cool to find out there are parallels across languages... 🤔

@vickylin511

2 жыл бұрын

A Taiwanese here. I would love to hear you speak Mandarin! 🤣🤣🤣

@mikegalvin9801

2 жыл бұрын

When I moved to San Francisco in 70s I remembered being surprised to find out my Chinese American co worker was studying Mandarin. She explained she had known only Cantonese from her relatives.

@paulmcgreen

2 жыл бұрын

I have a friend from London. She’s grown up there but originally from Russia. She’s young but sounds like a ghost. Some of her words could be found in old books but no one in Russia speaks that way anymore

@profoundmemory

2 жыл бұрын

You know why? Because you pronounced every single word too clearly......! Few native speakers did like that. They could judge you in the very first time.

@LesterMoore

Жыл бұрын

Not that you might know, however I wonder if South Koreans speak with a twang in their speech like American Southerners do in relation to North Korean speakers.

This video has enlightened me on why my african born professor (grew up going to a british school somewhere) has a more british sounding voice than my properly british prof

@RemiOlutimayin

3 жыл бұрын

I'm a Nigerian voice actor and my default accent (spoken with family, friends, my children, etc) is RP

@karimmanaouil9354

3 жыл бұрын

@@RemiOlutimayin are you a prince ?

@RemiOlutimayin

3 жыл бұрын

@@karimmanaouil9354 My friends think I treat them like one

@silvamayflower

3 жыл бұрын

More British-sounding to you, Alexander, but not to me as an English person. It is true that so-called 'perfect' English is spoken by very few in the UK - as familiarity with the language from birth allows us not only to have accents and dialects, but to use the language as we have all learnt and can understand as a tool of communication. As a learner of foreign languages, I can never hope to have the command of any other language than I have of my own. My own is therefore maleable to me in a way that no other language is.

@silvamayflower

3 жыл бұрын

@ThisIsMyRealName I'm not quite sure what you're challenging. If you are truly bilingual, I don't see why you shouldn't have an equal command over both languages, though I would say that might depend on where you spent most of your time, or the exposure and type of exposure you have had to each langauge. I can hear accents from all over the UK and place them (mostly, anyway). I cannot do that with North American English (though I am learning because I am interested and study what I hear). I hear an 'American accent', or an Australian accent', which are quite different, but I've only recently learnt to distinguish, for instance, Autralian and New Zealand. I have spent long years with the French language and can hear differences between French and Canadian French, for instance, and even between Northern and Southern France, but nowhere near the finer nuances that I hear in my own language. I'm also not sure what 'more fluent pronunciation' is. To me, fluency and pronunciation are separate. Fluency is the ability to communicate easily and without hesitation. Whilst reasonable pronunciation is necessary to be understood, one can have excellent pronunciation but lack fluency, or have a good level of fluency with many errors in pronunciation. Clearly if you have exposure to more than one language from an early age, you are likely to have a good level in both. Also, 'perfect' language, I believe, only exists in the minds of teachers, and in their prize students. Native speakers use language in their own way, and the word 'perfect' just doesn't come into it!"

16:00 After all the preliminaries, this is where the actual comparison starts. 20:00 Actual talking comparisons.

@_arnav_kashyap_

Жыл бұрын

Thanks bruv

@goatlps

Жыл бұрын

He is not a good actor, so neither accents are accurate.

@abhi_shek1196

Жыл бұрын

@@goatlps oh shut up

@AlxndrHQ

Жыл бұрын

Thank you

@monkinbluejeans2

Жыл бұрын

Thanks

I used to live in East Sussex and I had developed a beautiful British accent, you couldn't tell I was not from there. Now after 8 years back in Switzerland, having nobody to practice my spoken English with and because I'm influenced by movies and TV series I can hear my French accent creep up a bit and I've been asked if I were Australian 😂 I really miss speaking English everyday.

One of my first jobs in London (2000), as a foreign student, was in a beauty salon and one of the beauticians said I had a huge advantage because my accent was foreign and people would forgive mispronunciations, while hers was cockney and that was classified lower than mine and would never be forgiven of any mistakes.

@everynewdayisablessing8509

3 жыл бұрын

That's funny.

@emmafox2449

2 жыл бұрын

True that

@CEIVE4EVER

2 жыл бұрын

No jodas!! o_O

@Brimenting

2 жыл бұрын

Very true!

@veraahllof

2 жыл бұрын

*Grins* 😖🤯

"if you sound too british, nobody would believe you are british'' yes quite true indeed. When I got to study in the UK in the 90s, I was so excited to put on my accent I learnt from good reliable old British tv shows, only to be told I was sounding more British than they were, and this was in Wales....where they have this sing-song rhythm to the language... (which I didn't know at that time) 😃

@FaithsStardust

Жыл бұрын

lol

@davidthompson4383

Жыл бұрын

Maybe it's because you were in Wales lol if you were in London it would have been a different story.

@aquasiox4033

Жыл бұрын

Welsh, Scottish and Irish accents are very different from RP or cockney, which is what people usually seem to associate with a ‘british’ accent! You likely sounded very ‘English’, rather than ‘British’, to them :)

@elkaotik6790

10 ай бұрын

@@davidthompson4383 I don't know mate, if I heard him trying to do a "british" accent at uni in London I would have called him a cunt

@guidog3068

8 ай бұрын

There’s no such thing as a “British” accent, there’s Scottish, Welsh, English and Northern Irish and within those massive regional and class variations so saying “I have a British accent” is totally meaningless, just as a Scot doesn’t consider himself English, the collective “British” is only meaningful for international sport, politics and war 😀

Accents are an unbelievably fascinating thing. I’m from Ireland and despite having only 5 million people, we have thousands of distinct accents. Posh north Dublin, Lower class Dublin, Posh south Dublin, Kerry, Midlands, Cork, the list goes on and on and on changing wildly across the country. It really is very interesting.

@tm1rt2vv8i

Жыл бұрын

Love this comment, very well explained ❤️

@A-gs5yg

Жыл бұрын

what accent does conor mcregeor has?

@XcaptainXobliviousX

Жыл бұрын

i think the only place that takes it further than the british isles is china, where things have diverged to the point that the country is home to hundreds of, not accents, but regional LANGUAGES that all have various levels of inter-intelligibility between each other despite having identical grammar and nearly perfectly symmetrical written vocabulary. they can all write back and forth between each other despite not being able to hold a conversation, as long as they both know either simplified or traditional hanzi. AND EACH OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF LANGUAGES HAS ITS OWN ACCENTS. its absurd. i love it.

@tommacquillan7372

Жыл бұрын

@@XcaptainXobliviousXye its totally mint, although i think british isles still has china beat for amount of accents and dialects to land mass and population haha

@stefano.b65stef77

Жыл бұрын

Hi, is northern ireland accent similiar to Scottish accent?

As an American born and raised in America, I am fascinated and grateful for your channel. I am learning so many things about the language I love and respect so much, learning about the school system in Britain, and so much more. I taught English/Language Arts in elementary school (grades K - 6) here in Florida for 33 years and found the ability of students to pronounce letter sounds correctly had a big impact on reading acquisition.

“Public schools are private schools” makes about as much sense as anything else from England why not

@-nyxhenderson7381

3 жыл бұрын

There's actually a very good reason for it. People used to either be educated at home or at a public school that you would pay for. Those public schools are now regarded as private schools due to the fees meaning the school isn't available to everyone

@herrbonk3635

3 жыл бұрын

@@-nyxhenderson7381 It would be time to change the terminology then, perhaps...

@franciscogimenezdecordoba2225

3 жыл бұрын

It defines the English mentality very well. For the rest of the world public refers to who can attend... In England it refers to who pays for it.......

@silvamayflower

3 жыл бұрын

@@herrbonk3635 Why? We understand it. I also understand the US version - and variety is, as they say, the spice of life....

@brettknoss486

3 жыл бұрын

Public schools are called state schools. There is also the presumption that private means elite, while American schools have increasingly turned to privately operate schools, that are accessible to the most needy.

I used to work as a tour guide in the Canaries before lockdown (I am from Sweden). After one tour, an elderly lady wanted to correct a word she said I had mispronounced. Her friend protested and said that I had been right. They got this discussion going, and ended with the conclusion that no-one are so unsure about correct English pronunciation as the English themselves.

@pallekjrlaursen8388

Жыл бұрын

And that word was?

@jamiegreyy

Жыл бұрын

Well yeah, you can reach that conclusion about any country and their native language. It's the way it is.

@johnconlon9652

Жыл бұрын

Having lived in Sweden in the early 80s, I went to Kursverkshamnet (from memory) in Vaxjo (without umlauts), to learn Swedish. Swedes from Stockholm could not understand people from Blekinge (where I worked), or even Goteborg, and would converse in, Standard English. Even in those days, a teenage Swedish school pupil (not "student") spoke better English than most british people. Ho-hum ... Slante.

@isladurrant2015

Жыл бұрын

Scone?

@Dranok1

Жыл бұрын

@@isladurrant2015 🤣 The sure sign of a fake "English" person: does _not_ have a strong view of the "correct" way to pronounce that word!

At drama school they’ll teach it as RP and Heightened RP for the “posh english” version. On acting platforms, using Heightened RP is much more common as a term for a posh accent than “posh English” is. I only learnt about this take on it today, so I thought I’d shed some light on how these are named and used when in actor training.

It’s interesting compared to the US where the younger generation has largely been losing its regional accents and speaking a more general accent. This is most notable in areas that are famous for their strong accents like Brooklyn, New York. If you take a young Brooklyn native today and compared them to old Brooklyn native like Bernie Sanders and you can easily tell the difference.

@avalondreaming1433

Жыл бұрын

Yes, I think it's scary how fast American regional accents are dissappearing.

@eighteenfiftynine

Жыл бұрын

Don't be fooled. The youth in the UK all talk like wannabe London 'roadmen' these days. I don't speak the dialect of the place I grew up, which has all but disappeared in this day and age - I remember the way that old people spoke when I was a kid, and almost nobody speaks that way now. All regional accents are disappearing gradually. All accents evolve over time, and the more connected we are, the more they merge together.

@ashleya3236

Жыл бұрын

I'm certain that higher mobility in upper middle class also plays a part--my parents have different US regional accents and I'm told that mine is neutral half of the time and borrows vowels weirdly the other half.

@ssl3546

Жыл бұрын

@@avalondreaming1433 Is "scary" a typo for "wonderful"? That we can all understand each other and don't grow up subject to prejudice?

@caseyboughton6641

Жыл бұрын

@@ssl3546 One person's prejudice is another's lyricism, character, heritage, etc. 'Scary' is overstated, but I personally would hate it if everyone spoke 'Vanilla.' Or worse still A.I., Siri, Alexa. Not 'wonderful'!

I like how your cousin keeps his social distance.

@LetThemTalkTV

3 жыл бұрын

ha ha. I insisted

@highvibefemaleceo681

3 жыл бұрын

😂😂😂

@jgurtz

3 жыл бұрын

@@LetThemTalkTV And he en-Siss-Ted

@nabilahmed7856

3 жыл бұрын

Ur name is too hard man😎

@amanda.___.m

3 жыл бұрын

😂😂😂😂😂

Honestly, the whole accent dynamics in English is so excrutiatingly complex and delicate. I mean, I still can not believe that in England, middle class and upper class have different accents even if they are from the same region! When I hear English speakers talking about accents, I feel the same thing that I felt when I read about Ngoko-Krama distinction in Javanese. You know how accent-oriented English is, learning English more and more made me have a developed ear for my own native language that is Korean! I am now able to notice the subtle differences in people's accent in Korean. And I think that is at least partly due to the fact that I have been learning a language that fixates on accents variation extensively.

@nevyavianti9128

Жыл бұрын

Hi, I'm Indonesian and also Javanese. Are you Korean learning Javanese? Wow, that's very...not usual 😀. And about Ngoko-Kromo in Javanese, it's actually a different way to speak, literally with different words with the same meaning, to an older or more respected person than you are. So I think it's not an accent. An accent in Bahasa Indonesia would be to listen to the difference pronounciation between many ethnics Indonesia has, such as by Javanese, compared to Batak or Sundanese, or even Papua from East Indonesia. Anyway, thank you for learning my language 🙏🏻😊.

@user-tz9jh6pv2j

Жыл бұрын

It's strange that you think that considering how many regional dialects and accents exist in spoken Korean. And it is definitely not subtle.

@fronts3165

Жыл бұрын

Some people are much more tuned in to accent variations. I have noticed this directly. I am an American immigrant to Canada: some pick up on my accent while others do not. I live in Alberta and while visiting British Columbia, I have had locals comment that I don’t sound Albertan. In fact they thought I was from BC. I think my accent an American west coast accent. My pronunciation is sometimes corrected by people where I live. When I analyze the word in question, it is usually a word with more than one pronunciation suggestion, or an exception to a spelling rule in regards to pronunciation.

@kme

Жыл бұрын

@@fronts3165 I'm from Alberta, but have spent half my life in Europe. Every time I go home, they ask me if I'm from Scotland or Ireland, bc they say my accent isn't Albertan with a side of Saskatoonian lol (I went to university there). I've only ever had 1 person who could tell exactly where I was from and only bc he'd spent time there and knew the accent. He even got that I'd lived in Saskatoon! (that was the freaky part lol)

@ClaudiaGonzalezKinkyFloyd

Жыл бұрын

I've always wondered that too. In south America where I live (Chile) , you can tell who belongs to a class seeing its appearance! Sad but true

My maternal aunts & grandparents left England for Australia in 1968… they only spoke perfect RP & one of my aunts still does. For years I thought that was just proper English… only recently did it dawn on me that very few people in the UK today still speak that way, and my relatives probably do so because they left the UK in the ‘60’s so they missed the linguistic shift back to regional dialects that’s happened since then.

@thomsboys77

Жыл бұрын

Most accents used in England today have been around well before 1960s

They once did a survey in Poland about the Polish language. And they found that the language that is most standard and conforming to the norms is the one spoken in Szczecin and Wrocław. Two biggest cities gained by Poland after IIWW, where most of the citizens are descended from people recently resettled from other areas. This shows, that similar to the RP, the “standard” way of speaking is often one that nobody speaks locally, but will be used as a “neutral” way to communicate by people from different backgrounds.

@puellanivis

Жыл бұрын

It is very common for people who want to get involved with Radio or Television in the USA to move to New Mexico, namely Albuquerque, where a large majority of the population speak with a pretty near flawless Standard American English accent. It’s really weird for me as a person growing up there, I remember one of the first times I saw the news in another region, and I was perplexed why they were not speaking in the local accent, like we did in New Mexico. Then, I picked up German, and as a foreign fluent speaker, I of course sound German but not _from_ anywhere in Germany.

@HellerickCF

10 ай бұрын

The same goes for the Czech Republic. The most standard language is the language of the former Sudetenland, where the German population was expulsed from.

@josephbrandenburg4373

7 ай бұрын

I like Poland! 🤍❤ Uczę się języka polskiego! Kiedyś będę odwiedzić Polskę. 🇵🇱🇵🇱

I'd like to add one more feature that characterises Posh English. Posh speech is very enunciated. Surely, you've got plenty of time for proper pronunciation when you belong to the upper class while those oiks serve to and work for you. Thus, you may allow yourself to avoid assimilation in /j + d, t, s, z/ clusters. For instance, the word 'tube' can be pronounced the way it is supposed to be pronounced according to its transcription - /tju:b/ instead of rather more common /tʃuːb/. Funny thing, when I started to learn English I had an old Soviet dictionary with that old-fashion transcription. Just like Gideon mentioned, the sound corresponding to the final letter -y (as in 'happy') was /ɪ/ and not /i/ (in Gideon's example there's /ə/, which is rather similar). The same goes for the suffixes -less, -ness, -ed, although they are still (especially -ed) pronounced with /ɪ/ (and not /ə/ or even /e/) in BE. Only after graduating from high school did I find out that there are a lot of other accents (not simply BE and AE). What did I do to shift from that unnatural posh version of my manner of articulation? Made a research and switched to contemporary RP / Estuary English. Which was just a lax type of Posh English to me. Nonetheless, I still preserve some 'old-fashioned' features in my English like that /-ʊə/ in tour, sure etc. Just because I like the sound of it and that pronunciation seems to me more 'adequate' in 'letter-sound' relation. Probably because I'm Russian and that's crucial for me.

@LetThemTalkTV

3 жыл бұрын

Very interesting. I cut the phonetics bit short but I'm glad you fleshed it out a bit here.

@emeralddream5965

3 жыл бұрын

@@LetThemTalkTV , my pleasure! The thing is, I'm overly focused on phonetics in general. In regard to English, I know that many people (you amongst them) say - 'Don't you bother about sounding foreign. Don't worry about your accent. As long as you're understood, everything's alright!' Except it isn't 😥 Let me elaborate. It's quite natural for people to judge others by their looks. In our case, we are judged by the accent. And the last thing I personally would like to hear is - 'Mate, you're from (country of origin), right?' Because it shows me that I haven't studied well enough. And again, in my country we don't have regional accents in a way you have them in the English speaking world. (Strictly speaking we do, but those are simply slight variations of the 'standard' speech.) Thus, if one speaks unusually and non-standardly, chances are they are not well-educated. Apart from that it makes my ears bleed 😅 Wouldn't wish that for those who hear me speak.

@crowe2508

3 жыл бұрын

@@emeralddream5965 , one speaks unusually and non-standardly, chances are they are not well-educated - well , it`s kinda soviet or post-soviet complex though. And what kind of Russian are you if you can not define regional accent of Russian? Don`t you know that поребрик in St. Petersburg is not поребрик, but тротуар in Miscow for exanple? We here in Ukraine do know because in that way we`ve find out that the separatists from occupied Donetsk were not from Ukraine at all, but from mentioned above Petersburg region

@inkerilain

3 жыл бұрын

@@crowe2508 it's бордюр in Moscow.

@valentynnevidemskyi8866

3 жыл бұрын

Bloody (literally) soviets went posh xD

when I first moved to the UK, I was very confused by the term 'public school'. Where I'm from it means state owned school where normal/poor people go, schools like Eton in my country would be called private school.

@Crazy_Diamond_75

3 жыл бұрын

You're Canadian?

@BenefitCounterbench

3 жыл бұрын

same here, I can't get my head around the UK's public school term because it's used for the opposite where I live

@oliverhardman3513

3 жыл бұрын

@@BenefitCounterbench because public schools were originally for clever kids from the working class sponsored by the crown

@Londonfogey

3 жыл бұрын

@@BenefitCounterbench They were called public schools because they were the first schools open to the public, ie, anyone who could afford to attend could go. 'Private' schools were those in royal palaces, monasteries etc where there were strict restrictions on who could attend, ie those in holy orders or members of royal households.

@lizh1988

3 жыл бұрын

TY to Oliver and Londonfogey, I always wondered about that.

Very interesting video which made me reflect on my own pronunciation and accent which is very RP. I was born in Glasgow, both my parents had very modified Glaswegian accents having lived in England for years. When I was about three years old we relocated to south London and when I was 11 we moved to Cambridge. We were a working class family, my dad was a welder and my mum was a dinner lady for school meals. At school, I was often bullied for talking posh, the other kids mistook my RP for posh. Given my background I just wonder how I became an RP speaker. I am not complaining, I have been an English language teacher for more than 30 years and the one consistent piece of feedback I get from students is that I am easy to understand!

I once met a guy at an amusement park who was visiting the US from Wales. It was the most awkward language barrier I've ever experienced. I could tell he was speaking English by picking out words here and there but mostly sounded like jibberish. To this day, I'm still haunted by the idea that I probably answered simple questions like "what's your name?" Or "where are you from?" incorrectly.

@dazzlingdeb8427

Жыл бұрын

I was in Edinburgh when I was 18. I am American. I was trying to ask for directions, and people very kindly explained things to me, but I couldn’t understand one word that they said. Then I met this guy who was born and raised in Edinburgh, and we went to get a drink. I think he had a hard time understanding me, and I had a hard time understanding him. I was really surprised.

@justinforgette11

Жыл бұрын

@@dazzlingdeb8427 I've explained this to friends before but they don't understand why it's so hard. You have to experience it first hand I guess lol

@galerussell1710

Жыл бұрын

As a Canadian trying to understand different accents from the different contries it is not only words themselves which may be harder to understand but the many unique idioms and nicknames. These are so numerous and quite baffling.

@EK-wi2me

Жыл бұрын

I love a Welsh accent though

@bobbbxxx

Жыл бұрын

The Welsh accent varies from the North to the South. Maybe he was from the North.

There's a whole running bit in The Pirates of Penzance that plays on confusion between "often" and "orphan."

@Natalia-tq6wv

3 жыл бұрын

Can you give me a link for that moment, I'm writing diploma about English accents in movies)

@BethDiane

3 жыл бұрын

@@Natalia-tq6wv I'm not sure if that counts as a movie, since it's actually an American production of an operetta that first premiered in 1879. The only proper Brit in the cast is Angela Lansbury as Ruth. If you want the movie version, that's actually on KZread. But there are also many other performances in KZread , many by English companies.

@Natalia-tq6wv

3 жыл бұрын

@@BethDiane can you, please, write me full name of your it? Maybe you know another movie with English accents or dialects, like Ireland or Scottish?

@BethDiane

3 жыл бұрын

@@Natalia-tq6wv I'm American, so I don't know a lot, but I'd look for any movie featuring Jack Buchanan or George Formby, who had the additional benefit of having slid a lot past the censors.

@Natalia-tq6wv

3 жыл бұрын

@@BethDiane thank you a lot, I'll check

I'm constantly being told that I have a posh accent, I grew up and was educated at British schools in the middle East, I also happen to hark from the East Midlands, I'm very proud of my RP accent and thank you for the opportunity to offer this video as a rebuttal to the accusation of ' being posh'.

@electricdreams9446

2 жыл бұрын

that sounds awesome!!!!!

@mikeyteee95

2 жыл бұрын

Are there British state schools in the middle east?

@Joe-pb3bm

2 жыл бұрын

English was learned in Primary School, along with "speech / pronunciation" classes. I heard my Teachers speaking it (initially) far more than from classmates, family, or neighbors. In addition to Teachers, television 📺 also provided supplemental vocabulary.

@dv2915

2 жыл бұрын

You happen to hark from? What sort of English is that?

@MyratheDunmer

Жыл бұрын

It’s posh lol they’re lying about not being posh. Next thing they’ll be saying tally ho old chap.

My sister lived in Ireland for a decade and then in England. After a time, the Irish almost always took her for English and the English thought that she was Irish. In fact she was an American, who, in her early twenties, spoke with a very noticeable Texas "twang".

In Norway we were first taught "proper" English in elementary school, but then somewhere around grade 7 we started to switch to a more "general American" English. Though a trick some kids did use was to speak with an overly posh English accent and it usually gave them better grades lol. I still find myself randomly using colour and armour for some reason

@fyivid

Жыл бұрын

While American English is more common orally in Norwegian classes and society due to media influence, British English is what's officially being taught in Norwegian schools. I also use "ou" rather than "o" in those cases, because that's what we were being taught, and it's better to be consistent rather than to switch between the two.

@jkid4855

Жыл бұрын

I know a guy who is born and raised Dutch who speaks with a strong East-Texas accent and he's never been to the US lol

@goombapizza6335

Жыл бұрын

Please don't call British English "proper" as opposed to American English. Both dialects are equally valid forks of the English that was spoken when the British colonized America. The two branches evolved over time as every language does. In fact, linguists say American English has stayed closer to the English spoken back then, while British English has changed more.

@Kubelmann

Жыл бұрын

@@goombapizza6335 No, it's not.

@dawnjohnson3263

Жыл бұрын

Well, that's how you spell colour and armour . . 👍 👍

Ha ha. My Cockney mother made us speak RP in the 50s. We lived on a post war council estate in a Lancashire town. She didnt want us laughed at when we went to university so we were laughed at as small children. Mind you she was right. Listen to people like Melvynn Bragg and other northern oxbridge students.

@Tom-qo4mz

3 жыл бұрын

had no idea he was northern - mad!

@Khangel

3 жыл бұрын

Your mum was a woman of vision.

@noelliebtsie

3 жыл бұрын

That is very sad!

@wrentherainfalls2925

3 жыл бұрын

I’m only 22 now but my mum specifically sent me to a expensive nursery, so I would learn “better” english, and she also spoke rp as best she could around me as a child. It’s because we are lower class and live in somerset and she’s from Elsewhere in england and she thought the local accent was too ugly for a girl to have! I still talk in a very slightly accented rp and she laughs at me for the way I pronounce sandwich/sandwiches!😩 (I feel like I should also mention that my mum is an older mum as well...)

@sapandeepsharma

3 жыл бұрын

@@wrentherainfalls2925 your english should not be the parameter of your knowledge

I wanted this video for like 2 years Thank you so much for this video. You are a great teacher and I love your lesson by the way.

@LetThemTalkTV

3 жыл бұрын

I made it for you.

@moaningpheromones

3 жыл бұрын

@@LetThemTalkTV I made this reply for you. Let's run off to Yerp and leave it all behind.

@kissangel471

2 жыл бұрын

@@moaningpheromones 🤣

I do speak RP as well. I'm from Germany, so that falls perfectly into your category of being educated outside the UK. When I talk to people in the UK they oftentimes are not able to tell where I am from, and are very astonished to hear that I'm a German.

Very true. I grew up in Zimbabwe and in primary school, elocution was scored as part of our reading exercises.

I mean, the Queen is about a century old so can't complain 😂

@RealTunesStudio

3 жыл бұрын

Anagha Shyam haha, yes exactly! That makes perfect sense 👌

@Markle2k

3 жыл бұрын

The Queen has actually changed her accent over the course of her reign. Go listen to some of her speeches in the 1950s and compare it to how she spoke in the last part of the 20th century (before her voice became 'old lady")

@Angellady11

3 жыл бұрын

No she’s a thousand

@mcmelre

3 жыл бұрын

She will outlive us all.

@037016

3 жыл бұрын

🤣👸

It would’ve been great to let us hear RP vs Posh at the beginning of the video.

So interesting! I learnt an awesome mixture of R.P. and Posh-accent in school in Austria during the seventies. I didn’t know and didn’t think about. In the States they realized that but thought it to be normal as I’m from Europe. Nowadays an American pronunciation is far more common at school, also in Austria. I really enjoy watching your videos on different accents and their history. Thanks a lot to you and the algorithm which has suggested your videos to me.

Interesting to hear about the shift from RP to regional accents, as I just got turned away from a job interview and told my accent was "unprofessional". I have an Edinburgh accent - considered one of the poshest Scottish accents. Regardless, I was shocked that they would even consider a person's accent in employment. I wouldn't have had any issues being turned away (I'm sure there were other reasons) but the fact they had the fucking nerve to comment on my accent?!?! Jesus, I feel like I dodged a bullet there

@ToaOfFusion

Жыл бұрын

Damn, even the most posh Scottish accent is still seen as "uncivilized" to the British. Now if that isn't discrimination, I don't know what is.

@clairemcconway6266

5 ай бұрын

Scotland is part of Britain. I think you are trying to refer to England. @@ToaOfFusion

@ToaOfFusion

5 ай бұрын

@@clairemcconway6266 Nah, we just refer to England as part of the Brits, therefore it's British. Also it sounds confusing when you use English in its place because folks are going to be confused if you are referring to the language or the specific dialect of the *English* language

@postscript67

2 ай бұрын

Ah, but what sort of Edinburgh accent do you have? The Morningside "Miss Jean Brodie" one where a creche is a collision between two motor vehicles? (does anyone under 50 still speak like that, by the way?). Or the rather less-posh variants? I had a cousin who lived her entire life just off Easter Road and another from Trinity who sounded quite different from each other. (I should say that although I was a student for 5 years in Edinburgh in the 1980s, I never quite got familiar enough with the various Edinburgh accents to pinpoint them accurately).

@soupster857

2 ай бұрын

@@ToaOfFusion hey, I consider myself British as my mother is Welsh. We obviously have very different views on what Britain is, but I think you're really writing off a whole group of people with such a blanket statement as Britain = England. I struggled with my national identity growing up so having that catchall "I'm British" was really helpful. Sorry if this comes off as rude, I just want to present a different side of the argument to you :)

I just watched "My Fair Lady" with my daughter and this is such an interesting background information--it really explains the exposition of the story--why Professor Higgins studied the English regional dialects, and why Eliza sought out Higgins to take elocution lessons. Thank you!

@mikegalvin9801

2 жыл бұрын

She wanted to work in an 'at shop where it was warm and dry indoors rather than a flower stall in English weather as I recall. That might be more Pygmalion than MFL but the idea is the same - she wanted to better herself.

@GeeTrieste

Жыл бұрын

I thought Higgins sought out Doolittle, to settle a bet with his colleague.

@andrewdunbar5335

Жыл бұрын

@@GeeTrieste That was Pygmalion. MFL took a lot of liberties.

@peccantis

Жыл бұрын

MFL does explicitly tell Eliza's motivation is to learn to speak properly so she can get a job at a flower shop. With her thick accent, she'd be stuck as a flower girl in the streets. A fun linguistic detail suited for this video's theme is the conclusion of the bet where Higgins' rival determines that Eliza's English is too perfect for her to be English, so he guesses she's Hungarian.

@bobbbxxx

Жыл бұрын

@@mikegalvin9801 Mr 'iggins! 😅

Most Americans don't pronounce "often" as "affen," and some pronounce the "t," it's really a personal choice with us. This is especially true in urban coastal areas.

@novelacollection

3 жыл бұрын

No it’s regional, northeast southeast Deep South west, low, middle and upperclass lot of differences in annunciation, pronunciation and accents. Most Brits think all Americans speak the same way and have the same accents.

@BahKnee

2 жыл бұрын

Bless his heart for trying to sound American. And yeah, I switch between saying the T and not.

@FigaroHey

2 жыл бұрын

Not true. I'm from the west and never heard the T pronounced until I was an adult and mixed with people who had moved west from somewhere else.

@jordansjul

2 жыл бұрын

@@FigaroHey pronouncing the T is very southern

@adrianj6795

2 жыл бұрын

@@FigaroHey I'm from the west and I can guarantee we would make fun of you for not pronouncing the t in often

Really confused by the use of "east midlands" to mean regions around Oxford & Cambridge. I have always used it to refer to Leicester, Nottingham, Derby etc.

@kilmermad3306

Жыл бұрын

That's because Oxford, Cambridge and that aren't in the current region of the East Midlands - they're in the South. They were in the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, which ecompased the current day West and East Midlands as well as a bit of the South, but yeah. East Mids is most definitely Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Lincoln, Rutland, with Northampton at the bottom (speaking as someone from just south of Nottingham)

Oh my gosh!!!! Thanks for everything you've been doing for us my amazing teacher!!!! Keep up the good work!!!!

*Margaret Thatcher took lessons to move from her Lincolnshire accent to sounding like the Duchess of Devonshire. And the former England captain, David Beckham, who used to speak cockney is trying to speak with an RP accent these days!*

@linsayross278

3 жыл бұрын

Loool what a snob

@auracle6184

3 жыл бұрын

@@linsayross278 David Beckham had voice coaching because he has quite a high natural voice and it was affecting his confidence.

@maximillianafrancine1451

3 жыл бұрын

My cousin (another cousin) checked him in for his flight at Heathrow. Till today she won't stop saying how common he sounds

@AA-uf3bl

3 жыл бұрын

@@auracle6184 His voice coaching is one thing, and his poshification is another thing. It's no secret that David Beckham has lately been poshing up his accent.

@linsayross278

3 жыл бұрын

Auracle I do know what his voice was like ffs. One doesn’t need RP English to sound like ones balls have dropped

Omg, for the life of me I can't figure out if I pronounce the 't' in often or not. I've been saying it both ways for the last 5 minutes, and they both sound weird to me now.

@kaltlicht

3 жыл бұрын

it's contagious

@louis-sebastiengac-artigas5199

3 жыл бұрын

same here

@sephythelark

3 жыл бұрын

Same, I realized I say both depending on if I’m emphasizing anything

@mollyainsworth5984

3 жыл бұрын

Same!!

@WINCHANDLE

3 жыл бұрын

Sorry, if find ofTen to sound irritating. Indexes irritating. Indices sounds much better. Most financial writers seem to have forgotten that. Henry Higgins was right. REx Harrison good example of elegant English pronunciation

I actually think you have a considerably stronger regional accent then you assess yourself to have, it stands out fairly strongly to me and is very distinctive, particularly when you compare it to someone like Freddie Mercury. If it was a scale from 'pure Scouse' serving as our 100 point for the strongest regional accent (perhaps some Scottish accents are stronger but they get quite dialect-y when they get very strong) and Freddie as say 10 for near pure RP I would place you probably about 40 or 50

@paulshuttleworth6261

Жыл бұрын

Lots of fs not ths, sounds really southern to me. But then I am from the civilised north.

@selenaclarke

Жыл бұрын

@@paulshuttleworth6261 I agree, I Felt the speaker had little hint of RP. I thought he sounded like alot of London Taxi drivers

@dazzlingdeb8427

Жыл бұрын

I think he has a strong London accent. Reminds me a little of Jonny Lee Miller when he’s speaking naturally.

@adamdadamusic

Жыл бұрын

It’s a north London accent, got a distinctive north London nasal twang

@sallybrant3042

Жыл бұрын

I knew he was from London straightaway because of how he said London 😂 I would suggest this is a Grammar School London accent like Roger Daltry and Alan Johnson.

For me as a german this is quite interesting because we don't have accents according to social class per se. Accents are mainly a regional thing, but having no accent whatsoever is common in general. I'm from bavaria where people if speaking a dialect usually have a pretty strong one, but about 90% of us either don't use it or aren't even able to use it because we're not used to it. Of course the places we are from reflect in some pronunciations of words, but it's pretty hard to differentiate because it's fairly subtle. However there are many people who speak german with arabic or turkish influences and those are really easy to tell apart from 'normal german', since not only words tend to be used differently, but also their pronunciation of combinations like 'ch' is different. But we don't have such grave differences in language as british english for example does

@waltperry5781

Жыл бұрын

I had a dear friend, now long deceased, who was the daughter of a school-master in Thuringer Wald. To my astonishment, she had great contempt for all things Bavarian, an attitude I found unnecessary for someone of her intelligence and bearing, and thus downright amusing.

@dontmindme6995

Жыл бұрын

@@waltperry5781 yeah that's probably down to georgraphic reasons because my father is from Coburg, a town in northern bavaria that couldn't be closer to Thüringen (the region/state just north of bavaria), and there everyone despises Thüringen and its people. That's just a rivalry thing that children are taught to remain the culture. I'm sorry for your loss though. She seemed to be quite an entertaining person

@lk3583

Жыл бұрын

As an English speaker attempting to learn German, I would expect my pronunciation of the language is abhorrent, however I like to believe that I'm improving. 😅

@bobbbxxx

Жыл бұрын

There is also much less differentiation of "posh"/"common" in France, too. Regional and educational-level differences yes, but not so much class difference.

@rachelcookie321

Жыл бұрын

I find it interesting that German doesn’t have an upper class accent. In the UK the upper class always wanted to be seen as above the middle class commoners and one of the ways they did this was by using a different accent that they decided sounded more higher class and fancy. Someone from the upper class to know they’re from the upper class so they would do anything they could do differentiate themselves from the common people. They wouldn’t want to be misidentified as someone from the dirty working class.

I’ve also noticed this. I’m from South Wales (and sometimes you can hear it!) but because I had severe speech impediments when I was a kid I was ‘trained’ to speak in RP. Years later at Oxford I very quickly recognised the difference between the majority of people (who spoke with either clear regional or international accents), the minority of people who spoke in something approximating RP (maybe they were just from the right social strata in England or went to a British International school), and the tiny minority who were just straight-up posh

From the American Heritage Dictionary: Usage Note: The pronunciation of often with a (t) is a classic example of what is known as a spelling pronunciation. During the 1500s and 1600s, English experienced a widespread loss of certain consonant sounds within consonant clusters, as the (d) in handsome and handkerchief, the (p) in consumption and raspberry, and the (t) in chestnut and often. In this way the consonant clusters were simplified and made easier to articulate. But with the rise of public education and literacy in the 1800s, people became more aware of spelling, and sounds that had become silent were sometimes restored. This is the case with the (t) in often, which is acceptably pronounced with or without the (t). In similar words, such as soften and listen, the t has generally remained silent. I'm just some guy from Ohio, but I have always pronounced 'often' as OFF-ten. I have never once been 'corrected.'

@apriljasso9731

3 жыл бұрын

I've always pronounced the 't' in often as well lol

@guyosborn615

3 жыл бұрын

@@apriljasso9731 I think the pronunciation is similar to orphan, when said correctly

@briantrumpower4174

3 жыл бұрын

@De NAZI? there's a lot of Americans in the world.

@kayclapp8639

2 жыл бұрын

In the late '50's, our "Language" textbooks taught us to not pronounce the "t" in "often" because it was silent. They said that was incorrect and to not pronounce it. In later years, I was surprised to learn that it actually could be correctly used.

@harpingon

2 жыл бұрын

@@kayclapp8639 I've been pronouncing the words in this video so frequently that I now think they all sound daft (darft). But , one thing I always do, is say often with a t.

Perfect! I'm loving this channel ❤

My grandfather spoke Queen's English. Not RP, actual Queen's. I loved listening to him tell stories because he sounded so overly posh and I always felt like I was taken back to the 1920's. Meanwhile I speak pure RP as I grew up in the South East. I pronounce my T's, I say months not mumfs, etc. :)

I like your ‘ better educated’ cousin, Tarquin’s upper class, posh accent! 😂😁😀👍 You’re a good entertainer as well. Thanks.🌸👏🌹

Very interesting and very informative. Many thanks. I'm now know that I am very old fashioned and understand that I am part of the less than 3%!! Good grief! By the way, POSH comes from the old 1930's on those lovely cruise liners when the higher classes were always given cabins on the cooler side of the ship so as not to obtain the afternoon heat, so it was always Port Out, Starboard Home. It is said that POSH was stamped on the tickets.

@rogerturner5504

3 жыл бұрын

Er. that's fewer than 3% if you don't mind.

@franksierow5792

2 жыл бұрын

@@rogerturner5504 Fewer is for countable things; less than is for things that are measured. If "fewer than" was used with 3% would imply that one could count all the amounts of percent that were "fewer than 3%". For example 0%, 1%, 2%. In fact there are uncountably infinite (using these terms as used in maths) amounts of percent between 0% and 3%. Some examples are: 0.5%, 1.6%, 2.2567898765% and uncountable infinite more. So percent is a measurement, and "less than 3%" is the correct usage.

@rogerturner5504

2 жыл бұрын

@@franksierow5792 Apologies - you are correct. Like the man with the built-up shoe, I stand corrected.

@msDanielp369

2 жыл бұрын

"POSH"!, freaking, stAmped, on their tickets LMAO

@albertgrant1017

Жыл бұрын

Very interesting !

Really fascinating and informative without being too technical!

So, the Crawley's from Downton Abbey had a posh accent, and that's why it was so difficult for me to understand them at first. I didn't know if it was a regional thing or what (hard to explain, because their house staff didn't speak like that). This is very interesting, thank you!

@kathleenhurst3590

3 жыл бұрын

Just out of curiosity, where are you from?

@vesaher3091

3 жыл бұрын

@@kathleenhurst3590 I'm from Uruguay, South America.

@valeriedavidson2785

3 жыл бұрын

The house staff spoke with a lower working class accent in Downton Abbey.

@goldeelocks83

Жыл бұрын

That's funny because as an American I understood the Crawleys perfectly.

@bobbbxxx

Жыл бұрын

The Crawleys were of course actors who had varying approximations of an old school posh accent. To my ear Edith sounded the most "posh", and Lord Grantham sounded much less so. Mary also sounded quite posh.

Oh I just love your humour and the way your videos are filmed. It seems like improvisation but I'm sure that there is a lot of work behind each episode! Thank you so much!

It was an eye-opener when I helped a Chinese colleague transcribe interviews recorded with otherwise well-spoken suburban native students and realise that even I sometimes had difficulty. I appreciate having been exposed to BBC radio in my childhood, but am happy to have added some of the characteristics of my West Country home. (Though I was teased and nicknamed "Bamber" (Gascoigne) when I first left school and did manual work.) Part of my eagerness to retire to France is to see what sort of French accent I naturally acquire ...

@bobbbxxx

Жыл бұрын

I'm no expert, but I find in places like Jersey some words have survived from the French, but the pronunciation doesn't sound like modern French. Your accent in France will depend on who you learn it from and what region you move to. It can be difficult to learn to speak French or Spanish without an "English" accent, but with work it can be done.

Thank you very much for a well-made and interesting video. I have always felt it exactly how you defined it: It is not about class or region. Just as loving opera doesn't mean upper class as some think, but love of art music and drama. Now I know why a friend said I spoke better English than they did (West Midlands) and why a stranger in London said I was "middle class". My English teacher in the Waldorf school spoke beautiful RP. I remember wondering why my class-mates didn't much, as I lived there as an "exchange student". I also get why the audience laughs so when Mr Bean says "Hwhat and other Queen's English speech. the fun in it for a foreigner is the exaggeration, whereas we think the accent to be perfectly normal.

Awesome class, I love when you mix English and a bit of history and how things happened as time passes... thanks very very much 🙏🏻😘

And here i am, with my "i learned english by reading books and i can't pronounce some sounds and also my mothertounge is interferring a lot"-accent. I'm surprised, that people understand me.

@653j521

2 жыл бұрын

SuperSkyhorse Ever read Tarzan books? Even being raised by apes, he learned English with a posh accent from reading books. (He was born an aristocrat so spoke it naturally??) :D Luckily for you, there is a ton online and in recorded books. I can understand most British and their former colonies' accents because of that. For me, the hardest accent is Northern Ireland, in the comedy news show on BBC Radio Ulster/internet The Hole in the Wall Gang. Talk slowly, use gestures, write it down if need be...we'll figure out what you mean.

@malaysiadentist4637

2 жыл бұрын

Loving it!

@108wee

2 жыл бұрын

English is really forgiving when it comes to pronunciation i feel.

Loved the bit of the end. Great stuff!

Thank you for making this video! Very informative.

Wow, that was soooo good. I am absolutely happy i have come across this fascinating channel. Thank you!

When I was going to go into acting (U.S.), we were taught R.P. as a base before trying to tackle regional U.K. accents!

@franksierow5792

2 жыл бұрын

I live in the UK. Sometimes I in American dramas there is a character that sounds very odd to me, and then I realise that they are supposed to have a British English accent. The various American accents just sound normal to me. I would probably not notice if the British character just had an American accent. Maybe what I am hearing with the supposed British accent is just someone struggling or feeling awkward.

Love this - great vlog as always! BBC Worldwide TV news had a presenter with a dense Scots accent, fascinating descant to others' RP.

The Queen's English means something much more archaic over here in the US. I'm trying to learn more about the peculiarities of British English from your videos. It is fascinating to also hear the similarities that persist in the English of my native central Appalachia where West Virginia, east Kentucky and SE Ohio come together.

I grew up in the middle of North Carolina (US) and a lot the pronunciations of British words remind me of the country folks back home. Probably because we descend from British Colonists. I've even had people mistake my Southern accent for a British accent. Especially when I was a beginner at annunciating around non-Southerners. It orften came across as British.😄

@risingphoenix8072

3 жыл бұрын

I agree completely with your characterization of the Piedmont NC accent. It was pointed out to me when I first moved to London to work. And SC low country sounds a bit like certain Scots accents

I'm studying Linguistics and English Literature, and the accent we are learning is English RP. This year is my third year of career, and we have always spoken about this matter, but didn't understand fully because as you said, and what my faculty explained to me, it can be confused with posh English. Indeed, until I saw your video I always thought RP accent was posh English, because the BBC and polititians. But I'm glad to see it is not that exactly. Although, I can see with more clarity why this accent has so many discusses in my university: “we sound so British that no one will believe we are British at all.”

This a very informative and insightful video on RP English. Thanks!

Excellent video. I remember when I was in York in the 80's as a teenager, just having learnt basic English at school in Poland, I went to a little shop to buy a pack of matches. I said "mætʃəs pliːs", or "mɛtʃəs pliːs". The seller widened his eyes and started to mock me for a couple of minutes, pretending not to understand even when I showed with my hands what I was after. He even asked if I wanted maps. :D After the grilling, when I was just about to give up, he suddenly said "Aha! Mɑːtʃiːz!", pronouncing the vowels for, like, 3 seconds. This was the first time I understood there was no kidding with British accents.

Why does the RP sound like us Americans pretending to speak with a "fancy British accent".

@rawkhawk414

3 жыл бұрын

Hmmm that's more what the Transatlantic accent sounds like really lol.

@silvamayflower

3 жыл бұрын

@desertrosereads WAS the standard accent of the BBC - less so nowadays. It is also true to say that in my lifetime (over 65 years) that accent has changed considerably, as, indeed, has the Queen's. I do have to say that when I hear a 'British' accent on American tv shows, it invariably sounds false, or 'too good to be true' to my ears, unless spoken by a British person, who may have learnt the accent at RADA (acting school), but is able to use it as their own. I am often suprised by the number of Australian actors that effect a 'British' accent in these roles as well, as though either American TV doesn't think brits can do such an accent, or maybe they just can't afford us! Who knows....

@PooMonkeyMan

3 жыл бұрын

Honestly, Posh sounds more like the faux English accents by Americans than the RP to me... 😳

@silvamayflower

3 жыл бұрын

@@Yiran not literally never, Ethan. A rarity in our community, but not 'never'. I have a friend who speaks RP. Born in Hull (north of England), raised in the Midlands - he never did explain to me how he gained his affected accent, but he sticks out a mile as soon as he opens his mouth.

@silvamayflower

3 жыл бұрын

@@rawkhawk414 Surely not...

So you're saying that Freddie Mercury speaks the "posh rp" like the Queen? Talk about dedication to your career, am I right?

@atrumluminarium

3 жыл бұрын

@Novak Ingood that's why I put it in quotes cos I didn't know what to call it

@chirpie11

3 жыл бұрын

Novak Ingood I think that’s the point. It’s “old fashioned” because not many people speak that way. He grew up in Zanzibar/India in the 50s/60s and schools would have taught that way.

@yawarhussain7219

3 жыл бұрын

@Novak Ingood Freddie's English has a slight Indian gemination.

@error.418

3 жыл бұрын

@ThisIsMyRealName I think you're confusing the Queen with Winston Churchill

@Dr_Kenneth_Noisewater

3 жыл бұрын

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 It was a joke, dear pedants.

I love your program. Especially when your much more educated Cousin Tarquin comes to visit. You got me rolling on the floor with laughter. Thank you so much. I watch your shOw as orfen as possible.

I am so happy that I found you, Sir. Thank you very much!

Very interesting, the same happens with Italian language: if you listen to TV or Radio the speakers use quite often a kind of pronunciation you'd hear in Rome or central Italy as well but if you talk to people there are huge differences between different regions

@653j521

2 жыл бұрын

Alessandro Visigalli Or Switzerland where people know their local dialect, a regional language, and the national language. Particularly where mountains have isolated people from a lot of outsiders, new dialects have emerged even short distances apart. Germany taught High German as a unifier across dialects. France is also very particular about their unifier. As the US media was not state run, there was never a central idea that dictated how people should talk or act. Local newspapers and then broadcasts tended to sound and look local, UNLESS someone had aspirations to rise to national stardom and then they tried to emulate their idols. Eventually diversity was more prized than uniformity. It was predicted Americans would sound the same by now but we are more diverse than ever, with rules being broken with impunity.

@gustavomiguel4119

2 жыл бұрын

Same thing with spanish un Argentina......

@donnar4261

2 жыл бұрын

Same in Spain, lots of accents but on TV you'll mostly hear central accent

@masoncrowley2777

Жыл бұрын

Do not try to read this comment out-loud, your lungs will not thank you.

@herrinvonribbeck

Жыл бұрын

Lol.. this is the case with almost all languages. At least the European ones..

So that's the accent Monty Python were attempting in the Upperclass Twits sketch.

@509Gman

3 жыл бұрын

webbess1 errrrogenous zooooone!

@gretaschwartz4176

3 жыл бұрын

I love you

@Artorus

3 жыл бұрын

They likely were/are fluent in Posh, since they're Oxbridge+Ivy educated.

@hanawana

3 жыл бұрын

we call those Russel Group

@SoopahG

3 жыл бұрын

@@Artorus John Cleese for sure. His natural accent is quite upper class bordering on posh.n

This is great fun! I’m an American in the southwestern USA and I have always loved the language and culture of the UK. I hope to visit one day and try out some of your techniques.

I’m so thanked to you to have done this video, l needed it for my summative test of English accents that we’ll be in 2 days 😬😬

Thank you for telling us how the "a" in English is all about. I was taught abroad and the teacher always taught us to pronounce the "a" as somewhere between [a:] and [e]. When I say the word "apple" to people in Liverpool, they pretended they did not understand what I was trying to buy. I had no idea either it was in fact I pronounced the word "apple" incorrectly all my life, or they just purely did not understand me. Anyway I adapted my pronunciation to [a:]pple instead, in fact I now pronounce all letter A as in [a:] after. Now I know it is just another way to pronounce it in Britain, and I did not pronounce it wrong initially.

@UnQuacker

3 жыл бұрын

Are you talking about [æ] sound?

*GREAT! YOUR VIDEOS SHOULD BE 12 HOURS LONG. EVERY MINUTE IS GOLD IN YOUR VIDEOS. THANK YOU A LOT!!*

Oh my gosh!!! My amazing teacher i came across your lesson then i found it helpful i would rather you spoke more about This great lesson

Thank you very much for these wonderful lessons in incredible Cockney accent, wonderful Posh accent and so on. It's really appreciated by a Central European who has learned English in school - of course in the beautiful RP accent. 🌷🌷🌷

When I was teaching ELS in Korea I had a lot of students who had lived for years in the UK and it was cook to hear that RP coming out of their mouths. "Teacher, I need the dictionary. That enormous one." "It's not a flashlight -- it's a *torch*!" Another kid had the RP accent but made standard Korean grammar and syntax errors which made her particularly charming.

@DjurslandsEfterskole

2 жыл бұрын

Would you mind providing some examples of RP with standard Korean grammar and syntax errors? Sounds intriguing! Alongside the genuine question, that was my best attempt at RP)

@thesisypheanjournal1271

2 жыл бұрын

@@DjurslandsEfterskole I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. I just remember the feeling I'd get hearing Wendy make the same grammar and syntax mistakes as her classmates but doing it with that flawless accent.

Great lesson,as always dear Gideon!Thanks so much for your commendable efforts!😍🍓🍓🍓

@LetThemTalkTV

3 жыл бұрын

My pleasure

What a delight to find your channel “old bean.” Being from America’s northern midwest (Ohio) I feel I have the least recognizable ( or most benign) regional accent of all. So I do spend too much time trying to adopt the accents I hear from British TV series. Don’t judge me. I just want to sound important.😊 Thanks for your highly informative videos. Learning about the posh accent explains much.

@itoo3654

Жыл бұрын

Important from within not from one's accent. Work on your self-esteem.

@bobbbxxx

Жыл бұрын

It is common for just about everyone to think of their native accent as being the most "benign". If you were to go to New York or Boston, for example, they'd likely peg you as Midwestern pretty quickly. Our own accent always sounds the most "normal" to our own ear.

I first learned elocution from professor Henry Higgins. Thank you for the additional instruction.

When I was growing up probably more than 66% of my locality spoke a form of RP. From elocution perfect to a watered down version. Quite regularly I'd get an impromptu lesson from my late mother: "S-o-u-n-d your words!" and "The Rain in Spain etc etc".

A slight correction: Harry, Prince William, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and the other younger royals use RP, whereas the Queen, Prince Phillip, Prince Charles and Princess Anne use "posh English". Why half of the Queen's children use RP is a mystery.

@duckwhistle

3 жыл бұрын

It's to do with when they went to school, Charles is over a decade older than Andrew.

@strictlyyoutube6881

3 жыл бұрын

It isn't a mystery at all. It makes you look like a right all douche bag.

@GiftSparks

3 жыл бұрын

Anne spent more time at home being home schooled with her parents than her brothers. Their accent may be more like their schools.

@strictlyyoutube6881

3 жыл бұрын

@alicia baldwin Accent of cohorts.

@TheBurningRoses

3 жыл бұрын

I always thought it was a conscious decision to make them seem more accessible/less stuffy.

These videos are great Gideon . I love the humour too.

Such a true conversation.))) Really enjoyed it.

I would totally listen to a 12 hours long video about English accents. 😍

This is a real good content! As a linguist I just loved it, also information is reliable :)!

I almost immediately felt the need to increase the speed of the video and that pretty much sums up RP.

nice video, very informative, thank you!!

Shouldn't we expect the Queen's pronunciation to be somewhat old-fashioned, since she was born in the 1920s?

@mmmmmmmmmmmmm

2 жыл бұрын

Actually, there is evidence that the Queen's pronunciation has changed over time

@ffotograffydd

2 жыл бұрын

The Queens accent has definitely changed. And younger members of the Royal Family tend to speak with a more RP accent. Prince William sounds less posh than Boris Johnson, for example.

@em3000

2 жыл бұрын

@@ffotograffydd Boris Johnson doesn't sound posh, he's in the nuevo riche boorish group

@ffotograffydd

2 жыл бұрын

If you say so.

@nigelglynmorris

2 жыл бұрын

@@em3000 Boris Johnson’s accent is perhaps a little put-on (read: not toned-down like most of his Elton contemporaries) but is certainly genuine. He comes from a family that is certainly not nouveau-riche. position as a

He who uses the word "posh" may be many things, but posh he is not.

@tedarcher9120

3 жыл бұрын

Just use "high brow" instead of "posh" and you am become posh

@ultrademigod

3 жыл бұрын

​@@tedarcher9120 The problem with that is that most "posh" people are anything but high brow. You can be common as muck and still be high brow.

@c.norbertneumann4986

3 жыл бұрын

Victoria Beckham's nickname is Posh Spice.

@warningthispictureisnotsci9286

3 жыл бұрын

I read that that 'posh' people- who are too posh to use the word- use the word 'smart' instead.

@ryankattner9966

3 жыл бұрын

Was posh spice actually posh?

From Brazil, i enjoy your classes so much. I’m obliged (obrigada).

I greatly enjoyed that English lesson. Rare to hear a precise analysis of how to hear, choose, and speak English, in our educated own way, when living outsider E ngland. Humour, and realism. Thé art of sourds when speaking. Thank you very much.

Can you explain why recent generations in the US have embraced the standard non-regional accent while the UK has seemingly moved in the opposite direction? Does it have anything to do with urbanization patterns?

@joelp5093

Жыл бұрын

Some accents in the US are actually getting stronger, like the inland north accent around the great lakes.

@masoncrowley2777

Жыл бұрын

@@joelp5093 The Great Vowel Shift is the worst thing I have ever heard! People pronouncing "Max" as "MAY-x" sounds absolutely horrible!

@joelp5093

Жыл бұрын

@@masoncrowley2777 It’s an abrasive accent for sure, but nowhere nearly as bad as the Long Island accent, another regional American dialect still going strong.

@777rogerf

Жыл бұрын

I though that I spoke standard non-regional American English until I arrived at a university in Indiana and learned that my accent is Californian, and, of course, California is huge, so there are regional subdivisions of Californian English.