[0:00]Nailing an authentic English accent can be really tricky, but by taking on board a couple of key, quintessentially British sounds, you can quickly transform your accent to sound much more British when you speak. Hello. So if you want to learn an English accent then keep watching this video. In this very highly requested video, I will go through seven words that will teach you a British accent, specifically a modern RP British accent, also known as modern received pronunciation. This is simply the accent that I speak with and can also be called standard Southern British English or SSBE for short. If you're new here, I'm Izzy, a Cambridge graduate and a doctor working in London. So we'll go over seven words and seven quintessentially British pronunciation points so you can hopefully get a little bit closer to your goal of speaking with more of a modern RP accent. I'll pair up the words with pronunciation points, so that will hopefully help them stick a little bit better. And whether you want to sound British for an acting role, or to change your own accent, or just for a little bit of fun, I hope this video can help you out. I just want to preface this all by saying that there are literally dozens and dozens of different British accents and different varieties of British accents, of which this is only one of the many different accents that you can find across the UK. In this video, I'll only be going over how to do an accent similar to my accent, specifically SSBE or a modern RP accent. So if that's your cup of tea, then without further ado, let's dive into the video. I'm going to break up this video based on the pronunciation points, and within that, I'll slot in a few words as examples that can help you to really nail the accent. The pronunciation points that I'm going to go through include the long O sound, the long wide a sound, two different types of R, the schwa sound, the short round O sound, the curled round O sound, and talking with all your T's. The first sound that we're going through is the long O sound. This is in words like hello. The O at the end of hello is actually a diphthong, which essentially means that there are two sounds to the vowel that slide together. It's also known as a moving vowel. So essentially you want your mouth shape to gradually close down as you're going through the vowel. For example, if you say hello, my name is Izzy. As you can see, my mouth closes down as I go through the O sound from O. Hello. O. Just try repeating this after me and just saying the word hello. To give two examples of hello said in a way that doesn't sound particularly RP, when people say either hello, where their mouth closes down too quickly and closes down that diphthong too rapidly, or when they don't include a diphthong at all and just say hello, and it doesn't actually close down at all. I chose this word to start with because it's usually one of the first words that you learn when learning any language. But this long O sound is actually present in many other words in the English language. For example, the word open. In this word, the O sound is at the very start of the word. So it's good to practice being able to put this O sound both at the end of the word, like in hello, and also at the beginning, as in open. An example sentence using both of the words is, hello, let me open the door for you. Other examples of this long O sound include words like hero, zero, oh, no. All of these include this sound. The second pronunciation point that we're going to go through is the long R sound. So this is present in the word tomato. To contrast this with the American pronunciation, which I'm really sorry, I'm going to definitely get wrong because my American accent is terrible. Americans would say something more like tomato rather than tomato. So this R sound where your mouth is like quite wide and open, like an R is also present in words like grass, bath, father, laugh, last, path, etc. So just take a moment to try to repeat this word tomato, tomato. And did you notice that at the end of the word tomato, there's actually the long O sound that we looked at in the first part of this video. That's also present in hello, no, open, tomato. Ooh, that O is the same diphthong. So by nailing the word tomato, you're incorporating both the long R sound and also this long O sound. Tomato. The third and fourth pronunciation points that we're going to go through are the two types of R sounds and also the schwa sound. If you repeat the word rather after me, rather. The weather was rather warm today. The tomato was rather tasty. You can see that in the word rather there are two R's, one at the start and one at the end. The R at the start we actually, we pronounce and we create the R sound like rather, ra, rather. But at the very end of the word, we don't actually pronounce the R sound and this is one of the key features of an RP accent where the R at the end, if it's not followed by a vowel, is actually dropped off and not pronounced. This is also known as a non-rhotic R. So essentially in RP English, we only pronounce the R sound if there's a vowel sound after the R. In the case of the word rather, the first R has an A sound after it, or rather an R sound after it, which means that we do create this R sound and it goes ra at the start of the word. But at the very end of the word, there's actually no vowel sound after the end of the word, so therefore we don't pronounce the R sound and we just say rather. Other examples where the R sound is pronounced because there is a vowel after the R include words like very, British, drop, replace. But other examples of this non-rhotic R where the R sound is dropped off and replaced with just a vowel include the end of the word rather, and also other words like teacher, doctor, better, learn, work, party. The other sound that I want to mention while we're talking about the word rather, is the schwa sound. The schwa sound is one of the most common vowel sounds in British English. And is in words such as the, rather, teacher, doctor. All of these words with the a sound at the end, where there's this very neutral sounding vowel, that is known as the schwa sound. This a sound can essentially be produced if you just relax your jaw down and relax your tongue and just go a, a, the, rather, doctor. And that's essentially the schwa sound. So coming back to this word rather, it is a few pronunciation points that we can look at. There's firstly, this non-rhotic R at the end, which is quintessentially British, along with a schwa sound at the end. And did you notice that at the start of the word rather, we actually have the long wide R sound, which is present in the word tomato, father, rather. This R sound where the mouth is very wide and open. So if you repeat after me, it's rather sunny today. Another word that encapsulates a few pronunciation points is the word mirror. In the middle of the word mirror, there's actually a pronounced rhotic R, where there's a vowel sound following the R, so therefore we do say the R sound. But at the very end of the word mirror, there's this R which is silent and dropped off because it's not followed by any vowel sound. Additionally, again, at the end of the word mirror, we have the schwa sound, this vowel that's very relaxed and neutral. So if you repeat after me, mirror, mirror on the wall. It's a quote from Snow White. The fifth sound that we're going to go over today is the short round O sound. This is present in the word honestly. So if you repeat after me, honestly, I really like pizza.
[7:25]This word honest has this o sound at the very start of it along with a silent H at the start. Honest. And when you're creating this sound, honest, the lip shape is very round and quite small. And so it's not very long or wide like some of the previous vowels we're talking about, it's very short and very round. This is the same as in words like hot, got, lot, stop, not, hop, opposition, and honest. The last two pronunciation points, number six and seven, are the curled round O sound and also talking with all your T's. For this, I'm going to use the example of water. Note the sound of all the T's in modern RP English, all of the T's are enunciated and this is really, really important. And they all sound like an actual T sound. So for example, in the word water, the T in the middle isn't a D sound like in American English, where they might say something more like, sorry, I get for my American accent. More like water. Also note that in modern RP English, we don't use glottal stops. That's in other forms of British English, which are other very valid forms of British accents, but that's not modern RP. An example of a glottal stop would be water, where the T is almost removed entirely and instead it's replaced by this tightening in the throat known as this glottal stop. However, since this video is about modern RP, we want to make sure that we annunciate all of our T's and so in words like water, better, doctor, all of these need to have the T enunciated. The classic example of this, which everybody loves, is talking about how the Brits say a bottle of water. In RP English, we would say this as a bottle of water, because all of the T's are pronounced. However, in other forms of British English, where they use glottal stops, they might say something like, a bottle of water. But again, if we're aiming for an SSBE or modern RP accent, we would say it as a bottle of water. The final word example I want to give you is the word daughter. Daughter includes this or sound at the start, which is also present in the word water. So water, daughter. They have this curled round O sound at the start of them. The way that I'm making this sound is essentially my lips are quite closed and round, but the back of my mouth is still quite relaxed. And there's a slight curling and lifting of my tongue as well. Other words that include this sound include words like thought, bought, or, law, talk, awesome. So if you repeat this phrase after me, his daughter bought a bottle of water. So if you repeat that a couple of times and practice this curled round O sound or, or, a few times along with enunciating all of your T's, then hopefully that will help you to sound a little bit more RP when you speak. So those were the top seven pronunciation points for nailing a modern RP British accent, along with seven words that can help you practice them to perfection. If you enjoyed this video and want to really hone your modern RP British accent, then I think you might like this video over here, where I really break down a lot of different tips about how to nail a British accent. So feel free to check it out over here. Otherwise, thank you so much for watching. I hope this was interesting or helpful in some kind of way. As always, take care of yourself, and I will see you in the next video. Bye.
