Different American Accents

hi i'm lisa a lot of learners of english ask me which american accent do you teach aren't there different accents in the united states and when you're watching american films and tv shows or when you're listening to the news which american accent are they speaking those are some of the topics that we will discuss in this video in addition you will hear a sample of different accents from different parts of the united states and you will listen to my conversation with the perfect person who is very qualified to talk about this topic her voice is heard everywhere in the united states she uses her voice professionally she's most famous for being the voice of siri on the iphone and she talks about what it means to have no accent when you're speaking american english you will hear her talking about the different accents in the united states and how she got her first job in voiceover because she had no accent we have a lot of things to talk about in this video and as usual after you listen to my conversation with susan i will come back and i will teach you the different expressions we were using let's get started when one native speaker tells another native speaker of english you don't have an accent what does that mean that means the person is speaking with a non-regional accent it's also called a neutral accent and also known as the standard american accent it means that the listener doesn't know which part of the united states the person is from that's why it's called a neutral accent it's also called broadcaster speech or a broadcaster accent this is the accent that you will hear when you watch the news generally when you hear newscasters speak you can't recognize which part of the united states they're from it's the most common american accent here's a good explanation that i found online it is the continuum of accents called general american which is spoken by a majority of americans and popularly perceived as lacking any distinctly regional ethnic or socio-economic characteristics many actors who come to los angeles from other parts of the united states work hard to reduce their regional accents because they need to have the standard general neutral sounding american accent a well-known television journalist linda ellerby said this about her job in television you're not supposed to sound like you're from anywhere another definition of a general standard american accent is it doesn't fall under any of the following categories it's not an eastern new england accent especially boston and it's not a new york accent and it's not a southern accent generally if a person doesn't have one of those accents they sound more neutral it's difficult to recognize where they're from however if you ask a linguist a specialist in accents they will be able to distinguish those little differences maybe if someone is from a different city or a different state they pronounce the vowels differently or there's a slightly different melody to their speech now let's listen to my conversation with susan bennett let's listen to her talk about her job and demonstrate some different american accents and then i will come back and i will teach you some expressions that she and i were using that i think will be valuable for you to know and i was very involved in music i joined um a sort of jazz band and i was also singing jingles at different uh recording studios and one day the voice talent didn't show up to sing for one of the jingles that we had sung for this particular product and so the owner of the studio said susan you don't have an accent come over here and read this copy and i did and i went oh ding ding ding i can do this so i got a voice coach and then a talent agent and i've been doing that ever since you said you had no accent a lot of my students say lisa which accent do you teach i tell them that i teach the standard american accent right yeah do you have any thoughts that you'd like to share about what that is how would you describe a standard american accent or no accent well i think a neutral accent is one well just that absolutely neutral people can't detect which part of the us you're from i don't think they can uh i had an interesting experience as a young child i was born in vermont lived in massachusetts and rhode island and i had a very thick new england accent fortunately for me for my future voiceover self my parents moved to upstate new york and their accent is much uh less pronounced it's very uh flat sounding and it's and it starts to sound midwesterny much more so than the new england accent the new england accent is very very thick and very very specific very subtle it's a very you know it's not just pac-man it's there's a pac-man i can't have it yet you know there's a lot of y sound in front there's very subtle differences in all these different accents and so i think when you say that you're teaching the standard american accent what you mean is that there are no clear exaggerated sounds like i know in pittsburgh they say uter instead of over either i think it's just some of the some of the vowel sounds they have the farther west you go the the flatter sounding you know the accent is there are some pretty strong accents in the northeast yes the new england accent is very strong as well uh you went in the south of course that's very you know my my husband is southern and he doesn't even put an s in word like doesn't yours doesn't so to me a standard american or neutral accent is is an accent without all of those exaggerated sounds you have to be careful not to pick up some habits from the people that are around you for example your husband or i think you like do you live in atlanta or yes i live in atlanta oh yeah if there's a certain way of talking are you careful not to take on that accent or are you just so comfortable with your own accent that doesn't affect you i i was aware of moving to the south and not wanting to get that accent i don't think about it on a daily basis anymore because i i have done so much work and i might and i have a good ear i have a musical ear and so i can pretty much tell if i'm slipping into something or if i hear something played back i'll go oh i better be careful about about the endings of those words and back when i first started to record we were recording on tape which meant that for instance i worked for a message company and as many times we'd have to read a whole paragraph through without any kind of mistake because it was so much more difficult to edit tape than it is to edit digitally now um that the talent was expected to just be able to read it cold through correctly and uh that is no longer the case you know because of technology we were able to fix things and improve things and change them entirely almost let's listen to the way susan used the word jingle and i was also singing jingles at different recording studios susan said she was singing jingles in different recording studios jingles are short songs used in advertising it's a small piece of music to make you remember the product do you remember some jingles from when you were a child here is a mcdonald's jingle that i remember you deserve a break today at mcdonald's to all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions and a sesame seed the word copy has several different meanings let's listen to the way susan used it this one is related to advertising and marketing and so the owner of the studio said susan you don't have an accent come over here and read this copy copy is the content the text the material that is used in advertising voice over artists like susan read copy when talking about an accent susan used the word pronounced fortunately for me for my future voiceover self my parents moved to upstate new york and their accent is much less pronounced it's very flat sounding she said in upstate new york their accent is much less pronounced and that means much less noticeable so pronounced means noticeable upstate new york means the area outside of new york city in the state of new york that's upstate new york and in that region they have a less pronounced accent and let's listen to a demonstration of the new york accent let's listen to craig who's an actor who moved to los angeles from the new york area and he needed to neutralize his accent i don't want people to kind of stereotype me or typecast me as new york characters for everything so i've really focused on being as neutral as possible that way i can fit a bunch of different roles rather than just the east coast ones my acting coach pointed it out and she said that you know i really need to make it as subtle as possible so she helped me and it's something that i still work on all the time it's really working on the aw sound you know when you say dog you know that's not as bad as it used to be a lot of new yorkers will say dog or coffee or walk or i'm going to walk the dog to get some coffee how about water or or water you know yeah or it's that awe sound that's what makes new yorkers really stand out he says it's about the aw sound and very often the differences between regional accents are related to the vowel sound differences and that o sound is a classic example of a new york accent and susan talked about the pronunciation of park my car in harvard yard very subtle it's a very you know it's not just pac-man it's there's a pack and i can't have it yet you know there's a y sound in front i'm just very subtle differences in all these different accents when people want to imitate the boston accent they usually say this sentence and that's because the sentence contains the ah sound which in boston is much bigger it sounds more like ah and then the r tends to be silent so the a r park car harvard yard those four words have the ar combination and people from boston pronounce it quite differently here is a video of a man from boston saying the sentence park my car in harvard yard he wanted to find out if siri on the iphone would be able to understand what he said can i park my car in harvard yard i'm not aware of any appointments about havoc yet so as you can see siri sometimes doesn't understand a non-standard american accent so if siri doesn't understand you don't worry about it sometimes even native speakers are not understood by siri i'm from california and a lot of people would say the californians don't really have a regional accent they sound more neutral but sometimes you will hear some people from some regions of california especially along the coast near the beach they have a certain sound where the vowels are particularly big they're really open here's a funny example of that where people are imitating the california accent on the show saturday night live they are really exaggerating the california accent they're making the vowels really big and you will hear the famous rock and roll singer mick jagger who is from england doing that california accent the californians stuart i'm your dad what but there's one more thing you have a brother [Music] devin what are you doing here i'm your bro bro my sons that video was exaggerating the california accent it was making fun of some people from los angeles who opened their mouth a lot when they're speaking and by the way there's nothing wrong with the regional dialect people can still speak english correctly no matter which accent they have however the most common accent that you will hear in the united states is a non-regional accent the standard american accent and if you would like to learn all of the rules of a good clear standard american accent make sure you get my online course that teaches you all the rules that you need to know it consists of seven hours of video lessons you can learn all of the english vowel sounds and the difficult consonant sounds and of course very important part is the rhythm and melody of english and the intonation and the word stress thanks for watching and keep practicing your english to get the two courses the american accent course and the 400 advanced words you must know for fluent english go to accurateenglish.com

Channel: AccurateEnglish

Views: 74,116

Rating: 4.9752355 out of 5

Keywords: Standard American accent, broadcaster accent, american English, fluent english, advanced english, Lisa Mojsin, accurate English, regional dialect, ESL, how to speak American English, accent reduction, American accent teacher, American accent training, mastering the american accent, neutral accent, linguistics

Id: 2OTdI1htB6w

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021