- Welcome back to Unit Two of my Ultimate British
Pronunciation Course, where we talk about why British
pronunciation is so weird. If you haven't already,
please download my free ebook from papateachme.com. You just go there and I'll
send it to your email. It's free, don't worry. It's all good. This book will help
you track your progress throughout this course and help you follow these
videos much more easily. So, first and the easiest is the H sound. Sometimes, sometimes we drop the H sound at the beginning of some words. Dropping the H is very common
in Cockney and similar styles. So, let's do some examples. The word, hello. You could drop that H,
so it sounds like 'ello, and that would be fine. But again, don't drop the H for every word which begins with an H. No one does that. And it would sound like
you're trying too hard. Remember that we want natural sounding British pronunciation. That's the goal here.
So, when is it common? Well, it's most common when
the H falls between two words. For example, in go home, let's drop that H so
it sounds like go 'ome. It flows nicely, right? But why? Well, we're now connecting those
two words with a wah sound, go wome, go wome. Say it with me. Go wome. Connected speech is very
important. Whole sentence. I'm gonna go home. We're going to drop that
H, so say it with me. Let's practice. I'm gonna go 'ome. I'm going to his house. You don't want to sound like a robot. You want to sound like a human, so we could possibly
drop both of those H's. I'm going to 'is 'ouse. That's fine. You say it. Another option, keep the
first H, drop the second one. I'm going to his 'ouse. That one sounds more Cockney to me. I don't know why, it just does. But, you have the option, right? And of course, there's the
option of keeping both H's and of course, that's fine too. I'm going to his house. See, they all sound British,
they're just different styles. Try different ways of saying it. See what feels comfortable to you. That is how you get natural
sounding British pronunciation. New sentence, new question. Look at the H's. Would you drop one, both or none? Plan how you might want to say this. Try a few different ways. Now, depending on the time
or depending on my mood, I might say this a few different ways. Let me just try now. Okay, quickly. How much was your 'otel? If I say it slowly, how
much was your hotel? In two seconds, I pronounced
that in two different ways. So, remember this isn't a fixed style. Variety is the key word. And knowing that you can
be lazy with pronunciation, that's key to sounding natural. Okay, now the L sound. First, we need to talk about
the position of your tongue. Okay, say this word. Really. Say this word right now, but feel where your tongue
hits the top of your mouth, where exactly on your tongue,
hits where exactly here, when you pronounce the L sound. If you're German or Austrian, you probably pronounced it, apple, apple, and the way you would make your L sound is that the tip of your
tongue, the very top of it, would hit just here in the mouth. This is called the alveolar
ridge at the top of your mouth, just behind the top teeth. In some other languages like Korean, maybe you'll use this part of the tongue on this part of the mouth. That's called the palette.
Again, alveolar Ridge, pallet. You don't need to remember those names and some languages find it
very difficult to pronounce and distinguish between
the L and R sounds. And if you need help pronouncing or distinguishing between the L and R, definitely watch this
video before you continue. Also, when students ask me, is it obvious that English
isn't my first language? Well, the L sound is one of those sounds that makes it obvious. Now, that is not a bad thing at all, but I understand that some people prefer to have fully British
pronunciation and that's fine. So, how do we do that? It's all about where you put your tongue. And this is what teachers mean when they talk about dark and light L's. The light L is basically how I modeled the German pronunciation of apple, apple. Remember, I told you the tip of the tongue is gonna hit that alveolar ridge just behind your top teeth. This L, the light L, is for
L's at the beginning of words or when there is a vowel
sound just after the L. Okay, but what does that mean? All right, let's look at the word, lolly. Both this L and this L are light L's. Why? Because it begins with an L sound and this L has a vowel sound after. So, they will both come from
the same tongue position, hitting the same spot in the mouth. La, la, lolly, lolly.
Say it with me, lolly. But with dark L's, the tongue
position changes slightly. Very, very small difference,
but very noticeable. With the dark L, the tongue will hit more against
the back of the top teeth, or even just under the
top teeth, just here. This will depend, of course,
on your mouth, teeth, and tongue size and shape. Of course, everyone is different, so I can't tell you exactly where you should put your tongue. For example, if I used the
dark L with the word lolly, remember they should both be light L's, but if I said them in the dark L way, it would sound like this, lelly. Sounds weird, right? Sounds wrong. And it's all because the
tongue is in the wrong place. All right, so when do we use the dark L? We use the dark L when a
word finishes in an L sound or if there's a consonant
sound just after the L. For example, words like hole. Again, notice that my
tongue is just, in my case, it's just under the top teeth. It's just there, hole. If I said this with a light L, it would sound like hole, hole, hole. And it sounds different, right? You can hear the difference. So, that's when you use a dark L. Another word could be helmet. Helmet. There's a consonant sound after the L, so helmet, helmet. If you ever wanted to say
the word lull out loud, you would begin with a light
L, finish with a dark L. Your tongue would start
hitting the alveolar ridge and at the end of the word,
come here for the dark L. Sounds like this lull, lull. So, my tongue started here,
back at the alveolar ridge, and then came here to finish the word. Okay, how about this word? They're both lights L's
because this L begins the word, but this L has a vowel sound after. Lonely. Practice with me, lonely. (hands clap) Well done. Now, remember when I asked
you to pronounce this word. Germans, I'm specifically
talking to you now. Now you know that that
L should be a dark L, so it's not apple, it's apple, apple. You can hear the difference, right? Just change the light L to a dark L. Boom. But then, of course, British is weird and we do this other thing. Sometimes, we change the
dark L for a wuh sound. Brazilians, you'll find this very easy because it's just the L
sound, like the word for I, L, and Polish, as well. I think you have this sound. I think it's like L with
the line through it, whatever that is. It's that sound. So, to
practice, the word, hell. Yes, you could drop the H. That's fine. That's an option but we're
talking about the L here and because it's a dark L, we
can change it for a wuh sound. It could sound like hew
or with the dropped H, ew. So, if you're the devil (laughs evilly) welcome to ew, mate. But here's the thing, if after the L, there's a vowel sound, now it's no longer a dark L. Now it's a light L. So hew, that's fine, but hewo, no. No because now there's
a vowel sound after, so hello, not hewo. That would sound siwwy. I'm kidding. It would sound silly. So again, going back to this word, you could pronounce it apple, apple. Say it with me, apple. (hands clap) Well done.
Brilliant, you're amazing. Okay, now, using everything
you've learned in today's lesson and everything you learned in
Unit One about the glottal T, let's practice everything
with these three sentences. Look at the sounds. Look at the different ways
that you could pronounce these, using glottal T's, dropped
H's, L's for wu sounds. So many options. Whatever feels comfortable for you to say will sound natural. That's the goal. Let me
just give you an example. So we've got 'ello mate. What's 'is name? Is it Hector? So, notice I didn't drop every H. I didn't use glottal T's everywhere. Wait, did I? Okay, no, I used glottal teas everywhere, but I didn't drop the H in Hector. You might pronounce it
completely differently and that will be fine. It will still sound British but it will sound natural for you. That's the important thing. All right, second one. How much do you hate me? Is it a lot? You see, that time I
used more H's than before and that's fine. Okay, next one. I 'ave to work at the hotel late today. Okay, that's interesting, yeah. I usually drop the H when it's I have to. I 'ave to go. I 'ave to do a thing. Not only I have to, but he
has to, she has to, those too. He 'as to, she 'as to. For me, it's very common, but again, this isn't about
copying my style specifically. This is about finding your own style. So, practice. Try a few different ways. See what works for you and also make sure you've
downloaded my free ebook from papateachme.com. You can get it today and this will help you really understand this course much better, track your progress, and I can't think of a third thing. So, I'll see you in Unit
Three next Saturday. See you later. (upbeat music)
