Hello again and welcome back to Britain under the Microscope. This is a special episode. Hello, Anlan.
Hello everyone.
So what we're going to talk about today is what Alan and I have been planning for some time. We're going to talk about British accent.
Yes.
So today we're going to focus on British accent and answer some of the questions that so many of you are wondering about.
Yes. So first of all, a question for you Lulu，what is your impression of a British accent?
My impression, if I have to say, I would say general impression. I'm sure I speak also for a lot of Chinese learners. If you think of British accent, you think of something classy, sophisticated, gentlemanly. And I don't think it's only Chinese. If you watch American TV shows and talk to some of Americans, they also think like that. They think British accent is very charming.
Yeah, it definitely has that stereotype. You know, when people think of the British accent, you think of the royal family.
Downton Abbey.
Or some of our most famous actors and actresses.
Uh, yeah, like Benedict Cumberbatch 卷福，Tom Hiddleston 抖森，Emma Watson. So when you think of these and also of course the royal family, and then you think of them and you think of a classy picture, a sophisticated picture. I think that's also why a lot of Chinese learners hope that they can learn British accents.
But before we carry on, let's have a listen to some of these recordings.
Okay~
Where do you think they are from?
I don't know. They all sound very strange to me. Um, some of them I probably recognize, but overall they all sound a bit off. So what are they?
All of these are British accents.
Oh, you're kidding!
No, no. Every single one of them you just heard is a British accent. So what you're thinking of, in terms of the British accent is probably like this.
Yes, that's the British accent that we love so much. So that is RP, isn't it? Received Pronunciation所谓的标准音。
So Received Pronunciation or what we say King's English or Queen's English.
Ah, so it's the language or the pronunciation or accent used by the royal family.
Uh, somewhat it's the accent that is traditionally associated with people of power, money, influence. But it's important to remember that probably only about two percent of the population actually speak like this.
As little as two percent!
It's an artificial language, it's an artificial pronunciation. It's not very natural known and also talking about not very natural, listen to this.
Okay, yeah, I can tell that is very put on. That's very... I would say that's very very pretentious.
That's called heightened Received Pronunciation.
Like Downton Abbey, Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess. This is how she spoke.
But remember that Downton Abbey was set in the early twentieth century.
Do you get anyone who speaks with heightened RP nowadays in Britain?
Very, very rarely, the only times you really hear it is in period dramas.

If people speak like that in real life, how do British people feel?
Uh probably the same as if Chinese people hear people speak like in a palace drama.
Um, so now I have a question. So we talked about Received Pronunciation and heightened Received Pronunciation. This is what we consider to be the classy, sophisticated British accent. But usually when you talk about pronunciation, you hear pronunciation, accents and dialect. What are the differences?
Well, first of all, many learners get very confused about the idea of pronunciation and accent. So pronunciation is how words should be said for clear understanding.
Oh, it's focusing on people understanding you. What about accent?
Accent is basically the way that you pronounce the language and that comes from a country area or social class.
For example, we say a Chinese accent. That is people from China, or Indian accent.
Yeah. So the pronunciation is normally absolutely fine, but they have an accent.
What about dialect?
The dialect is the language associated with a region or a social group. So that's not just pronunciation. That's also vocabulary and sometimes a little bit of grammar.
Anlan, you speak Chinese. So for example, people from Shanghai when they speak their original dialect, it's going to be difficult for you to understand because a lot of the, not just pronunciation, but also words and grammar they use are different.
Yeah, that's because I live most of the time in Beijing, so I can't understand 上海话。Yeah, every language learner should start with pronunciation. So being able to be understood, not everyone needs to spend a lot of time on accent training, maybe fewer teacher or an actor performer, or you're an expert in languages.
These I think I've mentioned it before as well. Pronunciation is very important. You start with that, you need to be able to make other people understand you. However accent, 口音，并没有大家想象的那么重要。Also accent training is a specific kind of effort, it's a specific training. Usually actors, if they need to act in a certain role, they need to get special accent training. And that takes a very long time. But that's only for specific people. I would say, apart from what Alan said, teachers, actors, performers, uh, experts in phenology, and also for people who want to move to another part of the world. So for example, if you wanna go to United States to stay there, to live there, a little bit of accent training will help you fit in. But people who are using English for international communication. If you are just working for a big multinational company or you just need to travel a lot everywhere in the world, you don't necessarily need to train for any accent.
If you're using English in China for example, if you're using it for your study or you are using it for your work, you simply don't need it. But you do need pronunciation.
Pronunciation is important. Accent is something that you don't necessarily need to spend a lot of time on. Ok, so now I'm really curious. Let's go back to those original accents we just heard.
Okay, well, let's listen first of all to Cockney.
Cockney is east of London, right?
Yes, it's east London also southern London. So quite close to where I come from.
And this is what perhaps considered a more 老百姓非常市井的一种口音。I notice they do swallow t and h.
Yeah. That's very, very common, especially the th sound. If you put those together, it comes out as an f sound /ɛf/...
Oh, like Thomson. Yeah, and it sounds a bit tough, sounds very much like a street accent.
Yeah, Cockney has the association of people who work in markets or generally just very tough, very hard working. And sometimes it does have a slight criminal.
All of these, they are very much Cockney accent. If you're interested, check those out. Ok, let's move on to the next.
So this one is form Liverpool.
This is a happy accent. It sounds really like sing-songy. It's very, it goes up and down, up and down.
Yeah, that's... in Liverpool, accent is quite well known for being quite sing-songy.
Like a fun accent. I quite like it.
Ok, so the next one, this is from the West Country. So the west part of England.
Hm, something I've noticed about this is the pronunciation of r because when we listen to Received Pronunciation, how would you pronounce bird?
Bird /bɜːd/
You see, so you don't do the bird /bɝ~ːd/, but apparently this west country accent has the r sound.
Yeah, yeah, it has that r sound. Um, I can't actually do that r.
Ah, some of the learners would try to distinguish between American accent and British accent just by this r sound. And now, you know, some British accents also have that R.
Yeah. Ok, so with this one, let's go a little bit further north. This is a Scottish accent.
Oh, that's gonna be difficult.
Huh, it is Scottish, but it's not very strong Scottish accent.
No. Uh, there are different parts of Scotland where the accent does go very strong. Even Scotland has its own almost separate language. People who are not sure its language or dialect called Scots.
Ok, would you be able to understand Scots?
Yeah, I'll be able to understand. It's not too difficult.
That's fascinating, all of these accents. I'm sure there are more accents around the UK.
Yeah, absolutely. In the UK, there are lots of different regions and lots of different names for regions as well. So I think we can look at that in another episode
Definitely looking forward to that. So because the British accent episode is quite long, we're going to split it in two parts. So in today's parts, we talked about the common understanding impression of British accent, what is Received Pronunciation, heightened Received Pronunciation. And we also looked at the difference between pronunciation, accent, dialect and also sampled a few regional accents. And in the next episode, we're going to talk about, should Chinese learners really spend a lot of time learning British accent?
Yeah, so until then, see you next time.
See you next time. Bye.

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