How to Learn a British Accent *Fast* (Modern RP)

today i'll take you through some essential top tips to help you sound more british when you speak so if you want to learn a british accent then this is the video for you some people think that the british rp accent is quite hard to pull off but actually if you follow a couple of simple rules then it becomes a lot easier if you're new here my name's izzy i'm a final year medical student at cambridge university this video has been very highly requested in my comments and dms in this video i'm going to be talking about some key points where you can really make your accent sound a lot more british i'll go over five main points today which will be word choice consonants vowels intonation and finally how to practice to perfect your british accent whether this is for acting or if you just want to learn how to speak with more of an rp accent then hopefully this video can help you out i'll particularly focus on the vowels and the consonants as these are the areas where you can really make the most immediate impact and immediate difference to the way that your accent sounds today we'll only be going through tips to speak with a modern or modified rp accent which is just my accent this is how i speak rp stands for received pronunciation and is sort of traditionally known as the standard accent for people in the south of england this standard southern british english is sort of a bit like the accent that bbc broadcasters speak with so sometimes it's also known as bbc english or queen's english it is predominantly spoken in the south of england but obviously it's not confined to this geographical area and there are so many different varieties of british english even within the south so if you're interested in learning an accent that sounds a bit like mine then keep watching this video so the first thing that you want to pay attention to when you're trying to sound more british is actually word choice and vocabulary i'm not going to go into this in too much detail but it's really important to make sure the words you're choosing are the british version rather than let's say the american version so just some examples here would be for example trash in american english is known as rubbish in the uk some other examples include pants versus trousers which is what we would say in britain there are also certain words or expressions that just sound quintessentially british such as the adjective knackered to describe when you're really tired i'm absolutely knackered or phrases like that's a good shout when speaking to an american friend of mine i sometimes use this phrase and he's a bit baffled like oh what does that mean what does good shout mean it just means that's a good idea essentially so by choosing your words and phrases carefully you can sound more british in this way the second thing to really pay attention to is your consonants so consonants are an area where british english particularly rp really distinguishes itself from other forms of english accents there are two key points that i want to address here firstly is these t sounds make sure that you enunciate all of your t's this t sound should be clearly enunciated at the beginning in the middle and also between words so examples of this would be the word to or teacher you want to really like make sure that that t sound is there but it's not a very hard tea that you spit out it's like a sort of light tea so it's not like teacher it's just teacher and you can clearly hear that t sound a huge difference between american and british sounding english is the t in the middle of words such as words like water so the word water in rp the t in the middle is clearly a t apologies in advance for my american accent i can't really do an american accent but i'll try to just give you an example in american english they might say it more like a d like water other examples of this include the word better versus better or city versus city so make sure that those are really coming out clearly next is tease between words so for example the phrase let it be the t isn't a d sound again it's this making sure that it's clearly a t sound and not a d sound so i feel like sometimes in american english people say let it be almost like a d but this is let it be or another example it is what it is so i'm just going to put a phrase on screen now and i'd like you to read it out in a british accent including all the teas so that would be pronounced it is what it is one thing you may be wondering about is something known as the glossal stop so in some variations of british english the glottal stop is used in place of a t so for example the word water with a glottal t would sound like water so it's where the t isn't just fully removed it's like for example what and you're about to put the t in but then you kind of there's a tension in your throat that just cuts off the sound i would say that this isn't really part of rp english so if that's the accent you're aiming for then glottal stops are not something that you need to worry about but i thought i'd just address them as they are a very widespread part of other forms of british english a very commonly cited example of this is i want a bottle of water which with glottal stop teas instead of normal teas would sound like a bottle of water a bottle of water i can't do it the second point in consonants is the r sound so often the r sound is actually dropped in british english while the ts are always pronounced the r's are sometimes dropped this is known as a non-rhotic essentially in rp you only pronounce the r sound when there is a vowel sound after the r in examples such as the word british you do pronounce the r sound because there's an i sound right after it a vowel sound but in other examples such as the word teacher has an r on the end of it but there's no vowel sound after the r so we don't actually enunciate the r sound itself so for example in american english sometimes you'll hear something more like teacher what obviously my american accent's terrible so please forgive me for that so some examples of where this r is dropped off and replaced with the diphthong vowel essentially a kind of longer version of the vowel are words like doctor teacher water better learn work party cart bird so dropping off the r sounds where there's no vowel sound after the r is really important to developing that rp sounding accent next coming to vowel sounds vowel sounds are so important to nailing a british accent or any accent for that matter so i'll be going over a couple of sounds that are quintessentially british that you can incorporate into your own speaking there are a set number of key vowels including diphthongs that are important to learn and there's a table of them i'll include one over here that you can just use for reference there are so many more thorough accent learning reasons online if you're interested in that so the first vowel sound that is super important to british english is the schwa sound this is the most common vowel in british rp english so it's super important to nail this as it's absolutely everywhere and examples that include it include similar words that we've used before actually things like teacher that uh at the end water doctor even the word the itself has that sound and to make this vowel sound you essentially want to have a fairly relaxed mouth with your tongue just resting in your mouth and you just want to go ah the next vowel is the short o sound this sound is very british and is included in words such as hot stop slot got all of these sorts of words with this o sound in for example american english the word stop might be more pronounced as stop rather than stop so this is a very round shape with the mouth with the lips slightly pushing out and the tongue just slightly relaxed and flattened in the mouth the next vowel is the long a sound this is like an r sound which is present in words such as grass bath father rather fast last to make the sound open your mouth quite wide like almost like you're going to the dentist flatten your tongue and slide it back a little bit and make this r sound ah that kind of sound and just practice last past bath grass and this is in contrast to an almost hard a where in some areas of britain in british english instead of having this long a sound which is present in rp english there's an almost like an a sound instead so instead of bath it'll be bath the next vowel is a big round o sound so this is present in words such as hello no slow low go halo zero and this is actually a diphthong where there's actually almost two sounds within the vowel and the vowel changes over time that's what a diphthong is essentially it is sometimes known as a gliding vowel so the sound goes from oh it's like your mouth closes down as you go through the vowel o to make the sound your tongue starts off nice and relaxed with your mouth slightly open in a round shape and then as you progress through the vowel you kind of imagine it kind of closing down oh [Music] that kind of thing and i think this one's quite important to nail because it's in the word hello and i feel like sometimes people try to mimic the british english accent the rp accent with the word hello and the really key thing that distinguishes whether they've nailed it or not is this o sound at the end so some people almost overemphasize and they go hello but that's almost closing it down too fast it needs to be a very gradual o quite relaxed o and it's also not a single sound it's not ah some people say hello or hello hello it's not that it's hello finally the fourth thing to pay attention to is the rhythm and intonation this is so important but it's really hard to teach in a few quick tips it's something that you need to really absorb over time and this includes all the stresses and emphasis on the word and essentially the musicality of the language and this really contributes to making you sound more british and also making you sound more understandable as well so how can you practice all of this i would recommend listening to plenty of podcasts or radio shows and also watching tv shows movies or youtube videos with people speaking in this accent and what you can do is a technique called mirroring which is essentially where you play or listen to them say a phrase and then you pause whatever it is and then you say it back you repeat this process a few times to try to imitate their accent as closely as possible and one thing that can help and lots of students that i've had have found helpful is if you focus specifically on a few vowels or a few consonants at a time so for example if you start with a sentence and you specifically focus on making sure you nail all the t's or making sure that you nail all the o sounds and then you can kind of build up from there so it doesn't feel too overwhelming or paralyzing because it's a lot to try to change an accent and it does take a lot of work this technique called mirroring is actually something i used extensively when i was trying to learn mandarin i'll link a video over here somewhere about my experience of learning mandarin and how i did that but otherwise i hope this video has been helpful or interesting in some way and i really hope it helps you to get closer to your goal of maybe sounding more british if you enjoyed this video you might like this one over here where i talk a bit more about accents and language learning thank you so much for watching take care of yourself and i will see you in the next video bye

Channel: Dr. Izzy Sealey

Views: 4,681,995

Keywords: cambridge medical student, cambridge university, university of cambridge, british accent, how to speak with a british accent, received pronunciation accent, british english, british pronunciation, how to do a british accent fast, modern rp accent, get a british accent, how to sound british, received pronunciation

Id: gdpvo4w0mZc

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2022