Learn Alex Turner's British Accent (ARCTIC MONKEYS) | YORKSHIRE

today we're looking at the british english accent of alex turner i'm alex from the arctic monkeys and we're here at lollapalooza alex turner is the lead singer of legendary british band the arctic monkeys who come from sheffield sheffield is a city in yorkshire or south yorkshire to be specific other famous people that come from the city include sean bean who played ned stark in game of thrones jarvis cocker the lead singer of pulp and my personal favorite monty python member michael palin now i have found three fantastic clips of alex turner speaking the first one is from 2005 the second one 2011 and the last one 2018 and what we're gonna do is compare and contrast these videos and see if his accent has changed and evolved over the years before we get going though guys i'd like to say a big thank you to skillshare for sponsoring this video skillshare is an online learning platform with a fantastic offer that i'm going to tell you about later in this video but first let's get rolling when you were like 14 and 9 you'd knock about like drinking cider and parks we'd kind of hang about with cooks and like we was over three from school so we all kind of like knew each other this clip was taken from 2005 and we can really hear alex turner's strong sheffield accent now i think there are four interesting things to notice here first of all the dropping of the t's secondly the dropping of the h's thirdly the use of kind of filler words and finally there's some slang in there as well okay so starting with the tease that's very typical of a sheffield accent is to drop a tea use a glottal t instead so on 14 he says 14. when you're like 14 and 9. he also does it on about and that so a bit about and that when you're like 14 and 9. now that's a very standard pronunciation feature that we find in a lot of british english accents and a lot of the videos that i've done already he also dropped the h sound now again very typical across britain to drop your h so he says ang about right hang about not hang about and we'll find both of those features again later in the video now when it comes to the filler words you'll notice that he uses quite a few he uses like very frequently and also he uses and that twice now and that can sometimes have meaning it can mean everything related to that topic so for example he says we were drinking cider and that so maybe the and that could be other forms of alcohol but in the first example of van that when he says when you're like 14 and that it doesn't really have much meaning it's just a bit of a filler there and we tend to think that these filler words are employed mostly by speakers who aren't confident in their words so what i'm interested to see is if alex turner continues to use these filler words as we go through the ages or has he kind of stamped them out of his english the fourth point i wanted to look at was the use of slang he said knock about drinking cider and that knock about means like hang about like hang around so if you're knocking about drinking cider you're hanging around with your friends drinking side so if you said i used to knock about with some of the kids from the year above you're talking about hanging out with like spending time with so knock about means hang around or hang about when you're like 14 and then you'd knock about drinking cider and parks we'd kind of hang about with cooks and like we was other three from school so we all kind of like knew each other then you kind of start to develop your sound or whatever because we're not you know we all got a different background this clip is fantastic what i want to look at is the word ant and he says we aren't all god right that ant is a contraction of have not so in a sheffield accent and in other parts of yorkshire negative words are contracted down so have not would be ant i did not we didn't do not would be done so there is a shortening an extreme shortening of these words into a much shorter sound so the full sentence would be we haven't all got different backgrounds but he says we haven't all got different backgrounds and if you don't know that then it's quite hard to pick up when you're listening then you kind of start to develop your sound or whatever because we're not you know we all got a different background i just want to take a quick moment guys to tell you about skillshare they are an online learning platform that i love and they have a fantastic offer for you the first 1 000 people to use the link below will get a free trial of their premium membership and what does that give you access to hundreds of hours of amazing learning content it's perfect for anyone that wants to foster and develop their creative side they have courses on animation photography music anything creative they cover it but they also look at other aspects of life so if you're an entrepreneur if you are trying to start a business then they have special causes that can help you with that or if you want to improve your lifestyle in any way they have productivity courses so things like habit forming and goal setting which are perfect for the new year now i've mentioned on each feature of english before that i've done a couple of the courses i did their knife skills course to improve my cooking that was fantastic i also learned how to make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich which has benefited not just me but everyone around me now why would skillshare be good for you well loads of different reasons first of all you're learning english in an authentic setting right so these are videos not just for english learners but for anyone that speaks english so you're going to get fantastic words expressions phrases very authentic english secondly you'll be learning english through something that you love through your passion if you love cooking they've got classes for you and you'll be learning how to cook but also learning english at the same time and i love the way that works and finally you'll be learning english anytime anywhere there's complete flexibility about when you do your courses and personally i love online learning i think it's the future all you need to do guys to get this free trial of their membership is to sign up below the first thousand people that do it get the free trial so what are you waiting for click the link below sign up tell me all about it in the comments below okay let's move on to 2011. hello i'm alex from the arctic monkeys and we're here at lollapalooza okay straight away you can see he's a little bit more confident in the way that he speaks now he's dropping those h's again so hello straight away also he drops the h on here so we're here now because he's dropped that h that word here starts as a vowel sound ear ear so he's using the r to link those two words so it's weird ear weird ear so if the h was present in here he wouldn't be linking those words with the r but because he's dropping the h his brain knows that he needs to link those two words and the easiest way to do that is with an r sound so weird ear also very important and a classic feature of a yorkshire accent even a northern accent is the uh sound and he says arctic monkey so that uh sound on monkeys now as you may well already know in receipt pronunciation and southern english accents there's an ah sound there so it'd be monkey but in the north of england it's a monkey hello i'm alex from the arctic monkeys and we're here at lollapalooza yeah we actually played the house of blues last night actually um which was uh rad okay a little clip here and did you notice that he's using the h on house of blues he says house not house of blues yeah we actually played the house of blues last night so i guess there could be a few reasons why he's done that possibly it's because it's the name of an establishment so he's just following the logical rule like hollywood he would say hollywood not hollywood maybe it's because he's in america and so his accent is reflecting his surroundings i'm not sure but then he goes on to say last instead of last now last that ah sound another key feature of a northern english accent is ah as opposed to in the south of england when it's r to be last so last and last yeah we actually played the house of blues last night actually um which was uh rad yeah i'm pretty uh pretty proud of it you know like ah okay so now we really do hear the influence of america on alex turner's accent as i say this interview is in america and he's using a flat t sound on pretty so he said pretty pretty is the sound it's the sound that we associate with american english yeah i'm pretty uh pretty proud of it you know like as we've looked at previously we would have expected alex turner to use a glottal t pretty pretty or pretty but instead he's using a feature that we associate with american english obviously because he's in america he's probably speaking to lots of americans maybe the interviewer is american so he's kind of absorbing that pronunciation feature yeah i'm pretty uh pretty proud of it you know like i mean totally you sort of can't deny it and like most people the way they consume your music now is like by clicking a button but i think we're all pretty you know we've sort of mech records and we think about it like an lp aha so we've gone only two minutes later in the same interview and he's dropping the tea again he's using that glottal t so on totally unbuttoned and on pretty as well again he's using a glottal t so i've said this many times before but our accents do change depending on where we are okay so the environment that we're in can affect how we speak he's in america that's why i mean totally you sort of can't deny it and like most people the way they consume your music now is like by clicking a button but i think we're all pretty very interesting feature here the word think he says it in two different ways in the first example he says think with a fur sound which is something we call th fronting and very common in chef in a sheffield accent but just a few seconds later he says think with a third sound which is a sound that we associate with received pronunciation so interesting that he's chopping and changing sounds within the same sentence i think we're all pretty you know we've sort of mech records and we think about it like an lp but within all of these examples of his accent taking different influences we have a sound that's very very sheffield and that's mech mech on the word make okay so instead of make as i would say and many british english speakers would say he says mech you know we've sort of mech records and we think about it like an lp so that feature is very typical in south yorkshire she'd find it on words like make and take i mean totally you sort of can't deny it and like most people the way they consume your music now is like by clicking a button but i think we're all pretty you know we've sort of mech records and we think about it like an lp okay let's move on to 2018 that we were listening to in a in a van the other day whether or not it was a chevrolet i'm not sure but there was a van going somewhere the first observation that i have is that you can hear how much more confident he is in his spoken english he's very laid back speaks well doesn't use as many filler words as before does he so like and and that's they're not so present of course there'll be some but it's not quite as obvious is it secondly i found in this interview there are fewer influences of american english on his accent to me his accent sounded much more yorkshire much more sheffield than it did in the last interview they come and did a couple of shows and it just like put a big smile on his faces every night there again is that sound on interestingly he uses a past participle verb instead of a past verb come just there he said they come and did a couple of shows with us you would expect in standard grammar to for that to be they came and did a couple of shows past simple but he's using the past participle form and that can be a feature of a sheffield dialect and other dialects around britain they come and did a couple of shows and it just like put a big smile on his faces every night one feature i really love here is they put a big smile on us faces now he uses the word us not our faces and that's a classic feature of a sheffield accent is to replace r with us or us as he says it's similar to how speakers often replace my with me and in fact alex turner does do that twice let's have a listen so because your parents are music teachers or worms dad was yeah my mother would probably be more likely to play him in the beatles they come and did a couple of shows and it just like put a big smile on his faces every night and the last feature i'd like to look at is that elongation of the diphthong o he says shows shows it's a slightly longer sound than maybe i would make i would say show but he'd say sure they're coming did a couple of shows there's a couple of shows i know that's like lipstick in it because yeah like the which we did a cover of again a couple of weeks ago okay so verg and a girl this is a feature that is very distinct to the yorkshire accent guys i hope you enjoyed that video about alex turner's accent if you have any suggestions for who i should look at next put it into the comments below but until next time this is tom the chief dreamer saying goodbye

Channel: Eat Sleep Dream English

Views: 192,174

Rating: 4.9713902 out of 5

Keywords: alex turner, alex turner accent, alex turner sheffield accent, eat sleep dream english, yorkshire accent, sheffield accent, how to do a yorkshire accent, how to do sheffield accent, artic monkeys accent, learn english with alex turner, learn english arctic monkeys, british english pronunciation, accent training yorkshire accent, accent training, arctic monkeys, how to do a british accent

Id: AT1_XxvxlS8

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 12 2020