The BIGGEST secret to having a BRITISH ACCENT! | Modern RP | British English

hi there lovely people welcome back to English with Catherine now I've realized that I've never actually introduced myself properly to you how rude of me so to my new subscribers and my existing loyal subscribers hi my name's Catherine I was born in the south of England so West Sussex and I speak with modern RP which you can find a lot in that area in the south of England and I've been teaching English for about eight years now wow that's a long time aside from English teaching I love music and I'm a musician I play the piano and I sing maybe one day you'll hear one of my songs because of that I love teaching pronunciation because it's musical to me and I love helping people and just posting videos to the internet just seemed like a great idea so let's get started with the video of today so the schwa sound is perhaps the biggest secret of the British accent and in fact it is the most common sound in English it's literally just uh very natural and very soft I'm going to go into more detail about how to actually make the sound later in the video for me it is the most special and important sound of English because it allows the language to be musical so in this video I'm going to be giving you a brief history of the schwa then I'm going to show you how to use it and when to use it and finally we're going to finish with some real life examples so before we jump into the video I just want to check in with you all about whether you did the lingoda Sprint challenge that I told you about last month if you did please tell me about it in the comments below I would love to know how it went now if you haven't seen my video where I give you all the information about the lingoda Sprint challenge let me update you about it so I think I'm writing saying a lot of you watching this video really want to improve your speaking skills well the link go to Sprint challenge allows you to do exactly that you can learn English French German or Spanish in private or group classes the Sprint challenge is a two-month learning challenge where you take lessons intensively the regular Sprint challenge is 15 classes taken in one month and the Super Sprint challenge is 30 classes taken in one month and if you complete the challenge and follow all the rules you can get your money back you can get 50 of your money back if you complete the regular Sprint and you can get a hundred percent of your money back if you complete the Super Sprint I think one of the best things about lingoda is their teachers they are native level so you really are learning from professionals who will pick up on your mistakes they'll give you personalized feedback after every class and in the classes you'll be focusing on really tricky grammar structures perhaps ones that you have not been able to understand from YouTube videos and you just need a teacher to sort them out for you properly and you'll also be having real life conversations which in my opinion is The Only Thing Worth practicing if you want to really learn English the classes are you guessed it online so of course because they're online they're very flexible you can learn from anywhere in the world they're also possible 24 7. so how about that for even more flexibility and convenience so just to persuade you even more to do this lingoda have very kindly given me a discount code so the code is English with cat which I quite like because a lot of my friends and family call me cats I've had this nickname since I was about 16. so I really like that code and this code will get to you 20 euros or 25 US dollars off your registration all the details are in the description box below so just head there follow all the details and don't forget to tell me in the comments how you're doing or whether you signed up with the lingoda Sprint challenge you will be literally sprinting which means running towards your goals and your dreams with English good luck and stay in touch so the history the term schwa was actually introduced by German linguists in the 19th century and I didn't know this until recently but just looking at the spelling s c h it just looks very German so I was not surprised when I found that out and the sound as I explained before is very soft natural easy almost lazy and it's just uh now I never really talk about the physiology of the mouth when I teach pronunciation I think it's a little bit distracting you should be using your ears to listen rather than worrying about your mouth your mouth should be very relaxed so we don't want any tension in the jaw and just ah uh and just some extra information your tongue should be in the middle of your mouth now let's stop talking about how we make the schwa sound and let's start talking about why and when and so I'm gonna make it really easy for you I'm going to do my best to try and make this whole schwa debacle really simple so basically are you ready are you listening the schwa is a device or a tool that allows the attention and the focus to be on another sound in the word the schwa is like okay I'll be quiet you can be loud I will sit down and you can have the Limelight so what do I mean by this the schwa falls on the part of the word that is not stressed so the quieter part of the word and the vowels are important here the schwa sound is actually a quiet vowel if you take the word listen for example we've got the stress on the first syllable Lis okay so lists in because the second part of the word is not stressed it's quieter so that's the part of the word that contains the schwa sound so listen listen and my point about the language being musical is very obvious here because if you were to play those two notes on the piano it would be listen High then low isn't that just lovely it means that the word is now musical because of the schwa I'm going to show you some daily words that have the schwa sound and you can start to listen out for the stressed so the louder syllable and then you can listen for the schwa in the quieter part of the word here we go lemon here we've got the stress on the first part so the second part is going to be a schwa so lemon lemon deliver we've got a schwa sound in the first syllable because it's the second syllable that is loud not the first so deliver deliver and as you can hear we've also got a schwa on the third syllable because there's a vowel in there as well so we need schwa stress schwa schwa stress schwa deliver and it's musical because the notes are going let's make a song and what gives English the musicality again and the rhythm is the contrast between words with the schwa in them and then one syllable words like cat or dog because they have a kind of harshness to them and they they make a contrast and keep a sort of diversity in their language check out these words that have a at the beginning about again afraid adore so remember the schwa is an unstressed vowel sound for example banana one of my favorite words um we've got banana we've got two schwas because we can hear na when we listen to that word all I can really hear is Na and that's because of the magic of the schwa it allows that na sound to shine out because we've just got na na banana I know in American they say banana so that's slightly different but if you want a British accent you have to say banana now just remember also that I'm teaching the modern RP British accent there are other rules and other ways to use the schwa in the regional Accents in the UK but I'm going to make a video about them soon because I'm very interested in different accents and so I'm going to do a series maybe a three or four part series of all the different accents in the UK so here are some more words for each vowel sound and I'm going to say them with the schwa and then without the schwa just to show you how different it sounds so here are some schwa sounds with a sofa normal here are those words without the schwa sofa normal you can hear that ah sound instead of the uh and it sounds very different here are some schwa sounds for e cancel Frozen without the schwa sound cancel Frozen you can hear e can't you instead of the uh here are some schwa sounds for the I vowel difficult intimate without the schwa sound difficult intimate here are some schwa sounds for the O vowel reason actor without the schwa reason actor you can really hear a difference in those can't you and for the u vowel Museum Focus without the schwa Museum and focus that's really obvious that one as well so the schwa sound also comes in the little words that I call the glue words that glue together sentences so they are certain prepositions and articles and by making these little words into schwa sounds it just allows the language to flow because it softens those vowels making it easier to get to the next word so you end up with this long stream of Music two becomes ta a becomes a and an and sometimes becomes and of Becomes of I know crazy right so here's a sentence I went to my local cafe to have a coffee and to write in my journal can you hear the TA and uh and and it's just also one of my favorite things to say a cup of tea a cup of tea not a cup of tea a cup of tea a cup of tea and sometimes people even say a cup of tea a Cuppa a cup of tea now of course it's not always easy to know where the stress falls on a word I've got a few tips and tricks here to give you now but just remember they are not absolute rules they are just a guidance so there will always be exceptions and I'm apologizing in advance I O N endings tend to be a schwa Nation vision region ER endings tend to also be a schwa teacher summer over deliver you are e endings also tend to end with a schwa leisure pleasure agriculture oh you are endings tend to end with a schwa color humor o r endings very often end with a schwa author actor now why is it important to learn the schwa you're probably wondering the answer is it will make you sound more natural I'm sure in your own native language there are tips and tricks and ways to sound more like a native I guess and this is just a way of doing that of course if you don't use the schwa you will still be understood I'm sure nine times out of ten people will understand you if you use the actual vowel sound rather than the schwa the schwa just gives you an accent that is more akin to a native accent okay so when you've learned everything else in English you might want to consider the icing on the cake which is just schwa sounds that you can add into your pronunciation to make yourself sound more authentic more natural only if you want to these are three things that are personal to me that maybe some people don't know about the point of telling you these things is of course I want to share these with you and get to know you more but they're also so you can hear the schwa's in action the little schwa sounds in their natural habitat I learned to swim using a wave machine at my local swimming pool because I was so afraid of my swimming teacher Mildred so I'm just going to highlight all the Schwarz maybe you picked them out all perfectly but just check if you if you have let me give you some more information we had this really scary teacher she was like I don't even know how she got a job as a swimming teacher with kids because she would just demand you to just swim I I couldn't swim and we were all trying to learn to swim by the way that was why we were there and she would just point at you and be like Catherine swim and I was just like it was really traumatic so I was at my local swimming pool and they had this really cool wave machine um I don't know if you've ever experienced this and I just like got on the wave and before I knew it I was kind of doing it and I was just like yes I never have to go back to Mildred ever again Mildred is just gone from my life okay I hope you enjoyed that here's another thing about me everyone knows me as a dog person but lately I have been really obsessed with a cat breed that I have seen on YouTube and it's called a ragdoll cat if you have a cat like this can you please comment down below it seems to me that if you like dogs you'll probably like this breed of cat because it looks like it's kind of like a dog cat it looks really affectionate really loyal in the way that they behave to humans and I just now have this secret desire to own one and no one knows this while they do now but everybody know me as a dog person so the sentence with the schwas is everyone knows me as a dog person but lately I've discovered the cat breed Ragdoll and now I have a secret desire for one I'm just gonna highlight the Schwarz now so you can check so many right so so many to learn good luck okay here's the third thing about me so when I was five years old I was at a farm with my family and I saw a turkey and it was very exciting to me so for some reason I ran at full speed towards this turkey and I had my dolly in my left arm and I was just running running running and I fell on my face and my tooth went through my lip and blood everywhere and I have a scar here all because of a turkey now you know all my secrets so that's the end of the video I hope it has shed some light on the schwa for you it's not an easy thing to teach hit subscribe if you found this video useful I would be so grateful thank you so much as ever for all your lovely comments I really enjoy reading them you can follow me on Instagram as well I really enjoy posting on there about my everyday life and what I get up to and yeah good luck using the schwa if you've decided to and I will see you next Friday for another video bye

Channel: English with Katharine

Views: 288,476

Keywords: Language Learning, learn, online, classes, learn to speak, online learning, English language learning, English classes

Id: o6SiaO_Y3ek

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023