Hi and welcome back to engVid today we have a special treat for you this is
like an amazing video because we are joined by Emma hello
everyone Emma as you probably know is one of the
most popular teachers on engVid and we're very lucky to have her
here and we're going to be discussing the
differences some of the differences between the
American and the British sound and I should just
make a quick correction we're going to be talking about the North American
sound so we're this includes Canadian English
and American English so there are many differences between
the British accent and the American or Canadian accent
let's start by talking about one of the biggest differences
which is the pronunciation of r in American and Canadian English we have
a very strong r sound so what we're going to do
is we're going to actually hear the difference between how i
pronounce a list of r sounds and how benjamin
pronounces the list of r sounds okay so let's get
father father sister sister bar
work work so you might have noticed that my r sounds are a lot stronger and they
sound more like er whereas like you're kind of rolling
the r exactly whereas your sounds a lot softer
and a bit quieter less strong sure um that said there are accents in the UK
where the r sound would be strong for example the um
anywhere in the west of the UK so the west country um
more sort of pirate culture I suppose has that r
sound oh okay um so we're now going to have a go at doing
one another's accent just for a couple of these words
so which word should I try and do in a
North American accent Emma hmm let's try car
car that was actually really good okay so I'm terrible with
British accents but I'm going to now try to pronounce
this in a British way so at the moment with that vowel sound
where you're almost sort of changing it into a diphthong where you're making two
separate vowel sounds whereas actually in a sort of modern day British accent
it would just be the single vowel sound of
ah ah yeah car car car car yeah with kind of imagine it
okay so we have talked about the American and Canadian
r if you're interested in learning how to produce
this sound I actually have a video on the pronunciation of
r now what we're going to talk about is another big difference between the
British accent and the North American accent and that
has to do with what I call the middle t
sometimes in North American English we pronounce
t's like d's this happens when the t is in the middle of a word
so for example I would pronounce this as city so I would not say si ti
I'd pronounce this t like a d city how would you pronounce this city
so notice he is using more of a t sound while I'm using more of a d
sound again I would pronounce this like a d
party party okay water water see that's a very
big difference I think in our accents with this specific word water
and water what water sorry um for numbers we do this a lot
in North American English so I'd say 30 40 50 60 and how would you say them
30 40 50 60. so again notice he's pronouncing a lot more of the t sound
so here is a sentence that has a lot of t's I'm going to say this in the North
American way and then you will say this in your
accent in the British way so again listen to the ts and how i
pronounce them like d's betty bought a bit of better butter
uh betty bought a bit of better butter okay so notice there is a very big
difference between our accents um for this sentence um I just want to
point out that Emma that i don't feel representative of a British
accent that the British accent is really really diverse and it's very
difficult to sort of pin it down so I would be um
people would classify my voice as being an rp accent
um which is basically a region neutral accent generally down in
the south of england um that is to do with sort of social
classes as well um but yeah I'm sure if there were kind of
English natives watching this they'd be like that's not my accent
so yeah just wanted to point that out and I should also clarify that
although I'm talking about North American English and pronunciation
i also might pronounce things more in a Canadian way
but again there's many different accents in Canada and in the united states
and there's a lot of shared similarities so in this video we're talking about
some of the more common features that are different between um North
American and British accent but again there are many accents within
each group yeah and actually uh Gill has made a video on
the different accents in the UK so if you do want to find out more about
it that would be a good video to look at so we've covered the strong r and we've
covered the middle t if you're interested in learning more
about the pronunciation of the middle t sound in North American English i
actually have a video on that so you can learn how to produce it
but now we are going to look at stress in words
there is sometimes a difference in where we place stress
in words in British English versus North American English
again stress refers to when we say a part of the word
louder and longer so we are going to say these different words and I want you
to listen carefully to where we are putting the stretch okay
so let's start with the first word vitamin how would you say this
i would use to do this vowel a bit differently I would say
vitamin vitamin yeah so I say vitamin and I'm vitamin vitamin
the next word is advertisement um advertisement
advertisement yeah I mean often we'll shorten it just to
advert um so how do you say advert we say ads so we shorten it even
more yeah but with the word advert yeah
advert so I think that's similar but advert you be the judge
okay you can see on this one that we got very confused about how to spell it
because it's spelt differently in North america to um
the UK so when Emma wrote this I was like no no
there's an I we had an argument about spelling
and um we had to write both so the answer is that in
um North america it's about just with a no I here but in the rest of the world
the rest of the English speaking world uh we have this eye here
and if you're wondering what this means it's a type
of element or metal uh we often talk about aluminum foil
so it's just I guess an element on the periodic table
is that or aluminium foil whoa so let's hear that difference in
pronunciation again how would you say this aluminium I would
say aluminum aluminum and he's saying
aluminium aluminium so again this is very different
the next word I think there is a difference in the vowel sound here
so I would say zebra whereas i would say zebra zebra
zebra okay so again a difference i hear British people use this word a
lot and it always sounds very different to my ears when I hear it I would say
garage there are two ways of pronouncing it in
uh British English garage or garage okay
okay so again different ways to pronounce this
and a bit different uh the next word princess princess whereas well
just to make a comment on on the sound of the American
um like often it goes in terms of like pitch the pitch goes
down so Emma just said princess like it kind of
went down um so if you're trying to replicate the
American accent think of going down the stairs
i like that um I like that visual too of going down the stairs
so how would you say this word princess okay
and it's it's a bit of a can be a bit of a derogatory
term like if you call someone a bit of a princess then you're saying
come on you're being a bit a bit pathetic
and we we have the same meaning actually where
it can be an insult to here what about this last one
i would say vaccine uh we would have less stress on the end
here so just be vaccine it's kind of almost like you're
swallowing that sound at the end vaccine okay okay so some of these words are
very different some of them are a little bit more similar like I think vaccine
there's less of a difference but still a small one
yeah compared to like aluminum yeah aluminium
all right so now benjamin is going to tell us some of the differences he has
noticed um okay I'm just going to scrub this off
so we've started to see some of the very basic
differences between a standard American accent and a loosely British accent
and as Emma has pointed out she's got a couple of videos
on the topic and I also have a lesson on rp if people want to understand more
about what that is what I'm looking at here is some of the
differences between the accents in the UK
um are you which accents are you aware of Emma I've said
I've heard of the cockney accent okay um
where's that from London yeah oh good okay um and I've also heard
of I think a south English accent that's more posh is my
understanding and I've also heard that the North
accent is less posh but this is what I've heard
yeah yeah well yeah it's um it's a generalization but
in the way it sounds I mean in the south of the UK there are accents as well so
you've got the West Country where we you know drink
cider and play a bit of cricket on the wicket in
the village and all that and um you know the more sort of
cockney accent so this demonstrates a cockney accent here quite well because
in uh RP uh the sort of formal version of English
it's you have all the h's and it's like harry
harry is huge but if you're in a London cab
and you're speaking to a local he'd be like arie aaron he's huge that one in me
so inny he goes to e and inny um can you try and give me a
cockney accent ariary ariery harry arie
airy airy meaning yet hair air airy airy airy airy
arry yeah boy he's huge isn't he um okay so these are some features
of the um RP accent we have our h's a very clipped precise tone so
whereas in uh sort of more like urban English where um
it's almost it's kind of considered uncool if you pronounce all the
consonants and people are trying to like sort of fit in
and they don't want their voice to to stand out they'll be like I haven't
got much freight I haven't got very much time for you today
for you today I haven't or even like more slang
i ain't got much time for you today i ain't got much time here today
so haven't could be replaced by with ain't
um but if we're trying to pronounce that absolutely correctly it would be like
all the vocal energy is here in the mouth I haven't got
very much time for you today okay give it a go I uh
can you say it one more time and then I'll say it I haven't got very much time
for you today i haven't got very much time for you
today pretty good today today yeah
okay cool that was good oh oh thank you um so the vowel sound
typically we will have a uh like kind of an r r which is quite
identifiably um RP so for example people disagree
about how the greatest music festival is pronounced Emma you would say
Glastonbury yes I think most people of my generation
in the UK would say it like that as well but some
of the older generation of RP speakers would say Glastonbury
glossed and berry brie brie oh so this isn't berry it's brie yeah
glossed in free yeah um which always sounds really
weird to me um so just practicing some of those
um that sound so if you repeat after me Emma so rather rather
yep craft craft how would you say this city in the
southwest do you want the North American or how I think you would
bath I love it when she does her interaction which
cracks me up um smart smart okay so
really to make this RP sound in in a nutshell you're using your vocal um
muscles around the lips you're thinking forward the sound
uh pronouncing everything very um correctly where there's a t you're
making those t sounds you're keeping those h's in and
you're making this r sound okay so it's an
r sound so now to demonstrate um the differences between the American
and the British sound we're going to read a
piece of text so you can really start to notice it and
Emma has chosen this text very carefully because it actually
incorporates most of the different consonants and vowel sounds
correct okay so we have here a part of the grandfather passage
what we are going to do if it's okay with you is I'm going to
say a sentence from this and then you can say a sentence and we're going to
compare our accents what I want you to really
focus on is how we pronounce our r's remember the strong r versus more of the
soft r listen to how we pronounce our vowels
maybe this the stress in some of the words we use as well as
our teas okay is there anything you want the
audience to pay attention to uh let's see it in action okay
you wish to know all about my grandfather
you wish to know all about my grandfather
okay so this it was for me this was less about the the actual
sounds it was more about the kind of the sing-song nature of uh
you know the different melody of of them could you read it one more time please
Emma sure you wish to know all about my
grandfather okay you wish to know all about my
grandfather she says you wish to know all about my
grandfather so I would say that if you're looking at
the sort of the rise and fall the melody here
but probably the British one was a little bit flatter whereas there was a
bit more um of the sing-song nature to your
uh rendition yeah I would agree with that
and I would also say one other thing um the way we said grandfather
is also different again that is the strong r I'm saying
er grandfather whereas yours was a bit more
subtle and a bit of a softer art yeah just sort of drops off in the British
English um great next sentence
well he is nearly 93 years old yet he still thinks as swiftly as ever
okay so again we've got that r sound at the end
quite a long sentence this one could you say it one more time for me
sure well he is nearly 93 years old yet he still thinks as swiftly as ever
so this word is going to be different in British to American
Emma says it as 93. and I for me it'd be 93. so again that's that t sound
I'm saying it like a d 90 whereas you're saying it like a
70 yeah okay I'll read it all the entire sentence well he is
nearly 93 years old yet he still thinks as swiftly as ever
i also noticed a difference on the way we said ever again that's that
r sound so I'm saying ever whereas you're saying
ever ever so less of that r okay let's keep finding out about
grandfather okay he dresses himself in an
old black frock coat sorry let me say that again
he dresses himself in an old black frock coat
usually several buttons missing now this vowel sound is quite different um
Emma says frock and I would say frock one more time frock frock
okay I'll read the whole sentence he dresses himself
in an old black frock coat usually several buttons missing now if
you remember what I was saying about trying to speak in
clipped tones then we have a good opportunity to do
to do it with words like buttons it's quite satisfying noise
buttons okay and that would be a bit different for me because I would say
buttons or I guess it is kind of similar buttons
buttons yeah okay so maybe similar with this word
what about coat coat okay I'm just wondering if there's
a bit of a difference in the vowel there um it's a sort of different shape in the
mouth I find that um well actually especially with
you guys in in Canada there's a difference between American English and
Canadian English where the u sound is much more prominent in
how do you say about a boot no no no no no
sorry so that is a Canadian stereotype we don't say a boot but we do have a
different way to say about so there's more of a
rounding there I say about which is different from my
American friends and my British friends how would you say
about about oh cow out about about yeah
whereas it's more kind of two different uh vowel sounds
a diphthong a a boat a bait about about you got that one
yes have a little practice um well Emma it's been a real
um joy to have you um here sharing your your thoughts about the um transatlantic
differences in in our um accents um and
you know Emma has a fantastic channel where there are
tons and tons of really useful videos there to help you guys with your English
so do head over there and subscribe to her channel
i hope you have got lots out of this video
entertainment if nothing else and do give the quiz a go now just to
try and remember some of the things we have said
if you're not a subscriber of mine you can do that be my guest
and get the notifications with that bell shape
and we'll see you very soon there's going to be a
video on Emma's channel where I am speaking with her about some of the