How Easy Is It To Change Your Accent? #ASKETJ 004

it's July it's another month it's time for another ask etj let's get straight into those questions so I'd expect most of you know this by now but every month I do something called ask ETJ where I post a picture on Instagram everybody comments on it asking me questions to answer in a video and of course we've done that this week and now I have lots of great questions to answer I don't want to waste any time so we're going to get straight into it right away let's start with question number one this is a really simple question but it's actually really really important how do we pronounce and this now I know why I've been asked this because when natives talk fast sometimes words become relaxed we have this thing in English called function words I talk about them all the time in my pronunciation course and I'll talk about them all the time on this channel words like and can have a weak relaxed form so instead of saying hi my name is Elliot and this is my friend John and this is my friend John I would probably say hi my name is Elliot and this is my friend John and this and this so my name is Elliot and this is my friend John what's happening is and is becoming an and so what's happening is we're missing the at the beginning of and and it's becoming a schwa sound uh-oh sound we're also missing the D at the end of and so it's becoming and this and this the D is dropping to make it easier to pronounce the th at the beginning of this but also we're dropping the app at the beginning because usually when words have a weak form a way that we say them faster nine times out of ten that way will be with the vowel being changed to a schwa sound the reason why is because the schwa sound is the easiest sound to make tongue just relaxed in the middle of the mouth and this is my friend John so one more time hi I'm Elliot and this is my friend John I guess that would be relevant if I actually had any friends another great question I had was Elliott how do I pronounce this word so the reason why I was asked this is because the stress placement can be different and generally we have a British way of pronouncing it stressing it on a particular syllable and an american way of pronouncing it with a stress on a different syllable so let me just tell you the british form because i don't want to damage your ears with my dreadful american accent so it would be advertisement advertisement the stress is on veut we have heard virtus Munt the stress primary stress is on veut advertisement so take that tone up slightly on veut tone rises it becomes a bit more pronounced and just a bit stronger on that particular syllable and there you go that's how we stress a syllable advertisement this word is also great for learning some of the trickiest sounds in English we have the schwa sound which happens twice ad virtus Munt punt so it's happening twice the schwa sound and remember the schwa is really important to practice we also have the earth sound in this word which is one of the most difficult sounds for non-native to pronounce and the virtus and then the bowel sounds hiss this sound is another one of the most difficult sounds for non-natives to pronounce so it's that in fact a great word to just break down and practice all of the sounds in it give it a try do it slowly and then get faster but in response to your question advertisement the stress is on veut Americans do it differently they pronounce it differently but we're a British English Channel so we're focusing on British English southern British English if we have to be precise my British English if you have to be even more precise for the really sensitive people that watch this video and get offended difference between very and very so the main difference is of course the two vowel sounds we have the and the air okay there there there there so firstly very it just has the X ound very also has the X out but it has another vowel attached to it which is a schwa sound so in very it's very we have air so imagine you're doing an a sound and then you cut it out with a schwa air watch my mouth yeah very very so very short vowel fast very compared to very another thing to know is this sound in very that and Earth joining together this is called a diphthong we have a few of these in English and they are two vowels combined together and they create one vowel air is this one and it's really important that we understand the length of a diphthong is kind of in between short vowel and a long vowel so make sure you're kind of making this sound a little bit longer than very listen to me and the length very very very quick very a bit longer right there you go very very and a more personal question Elliot are you learning any languages at the moment my problem in life is I always start learning a language and then I get bored and give up probably because I work so much that I'm always working and I don't really have much time to learn languages I'm trying to learn Spanish I'm not very diligent with it but I'm hoping that I can be in the future I'm just going to keep trying to work hard the reason why I'm learning Spanish is because I go to Spain a lot it's a very country country that's very close to the UK so it's easy to travel there and yeah I spend lots of time there so [Music] hopefully one day I'll be able to have a Spanish conversation with someone but I can speak a bit of French that's probably my best language and I hope in the future that I could be fluent in everything that would be useful especially for my job so this question was the most hearted the most loved on my Instagram somebody who asked this was obviously very popular with from asking this question and it was can a non-native who's learnt the American accent kind of in school change their accent through a British accent and the truth is yes you can but it depends on you it depends how hard you work it depends how much you want it it depends on just about everything we can change an accent I could start learning the American accent and doing muscle memory training and eventually I would start teaching my muscles to change it takes a long time but with the right training for example if you join my course it can happen faster you're not you're never gonna be 100% but we can get you into the 90 to 95 percent area eventually after some time of repetition practice muscle memory training it's a process of elimination so at the moment you're pronouncing sounds this way the American / non-native way we need to learn what sounds are very obviously American what things you're doing which are very obviously American for example pronouncing her at the end of words very American thing pronouncing the sound as are like a lot rather than a lot learning to remove those things and replace them with something new and with repetition and time it will eventually kind of change remember that an accent is making sounds naturally without thinking about making the sounds you just make them and to start doing that it requires lots of repetition and Pratt and I love this question Elliot how can I sound more friendly with my intonation it's it's quite a simple answer actually and is one of the first things I teach my students who join my course because lots of my students talk with what we call a falling tone a lot of the time or just a monotone where the tone doesn't really go up or down this in English in native English isn't particularly friendly I mean it is it there's nothing bad about it but it can have quite a boring kind of flat effect now if we start raising the tone a bit more you heard me then if we start raising the tone I'm not just saying if we start raising the tone I'm saying if we start raising the tone a bit more and what's going to happen is we're going to create more of an approachable friendly sound to our voice so my answer to you really is just start raising your tone a bit more be more playful with your intonation and as a particular tone called the up-down tone none of my students really do this when they first join my course and the sound essentially or the tone is essentially mm-hmm so it's up-down and this is used a lot to show emotion so whether it's positive or negative emotion for example if somebody said to me hi Elliot you're right I could say yeah I'm great so yeah what's happening there is I'm raising the tone up in the word and then I'm bringing it back down I'm essentially singing a little bit on that word yeah yeah what that does is it creates a friendly happy atmosphere in my opinion happiness is friendliness so if you want to sound more friendly try and sound more happy to sound more happy raise your tone a bit more or do the up/down kind of bouncy tones the more we do this the more approachable happy and friendly we will sound and that's it those are my answers to your questions this month remember I'll be doing another ASCII DJ next month in August so make sure you hit the subscribe button and follow me on Instagram if you want to send me more questions don't forget I have a podcast if you need some listening practice and of course if you want me to be your teacher and you want me to help you directly then you can join my pronunciation course at ETJ English comm links in the description box below and we can start changing your accent right now faster than it would be if you were learning alone especially so thanks very much for watching guys it's been a pleasure as always and I will see you next time bye hi [Music]

Channel: ETJ English

Views: 138,259

Rating: 4.9736991 out of 5

Keywords: change accent, british accent, british pronunciation, etj english, british english, pronunciation, learn pronunciation, asketj

Id: Dk5b6_L9YXI

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 27 2019