Understanding British Accents (1)

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Today we're going to look at some British accents.

So for such a small country, the UK really does have a lot of accents.

For example, I grew up in the south of Wales, in the capital of

Wales, the city is called Cardiff.

If you drive about half an hour in each direction, so north, south,

you'd have to cross some water, east or west the accent is different.

It can be tough to decipher some of the accents of the UK, even for me as a Brit.

This clip from the super funny movie Hot Fuzz explains what I mean, perfectly,

... Right.

What did he say?

... what did he say?

He said a hedge is a hedge.

He only chopped it down because it spoiled his view.

What's Reaper moaning about?

Right.

Look, I appreciate your position, Mr.

Webley, but you can't go around chopping down other people's

hedges without permission.

... I suppose.

Yes, I suppose so.

I'm going to go over some accents.

Not all.

We would be here all day, some British accents in today's video.

I'll give you examples and I'll also give you examples of the accents in TV

shows or movies that you can check out.

Before I do that, I'll show you how to make English lessons on

with those TV shows or movies or any others that you find.

First, you need to make sure you have the LingQ importer.

It's available on Chrome, Safari and on Firefox.

Find your show.

Here I'm looking at The Crown on Netflix.

You hit play, but first, make sure that your English closed captions are selected.

Then you click on the importer, click import, and...

boom, there's your lesson with The Crown.

Now I have my dictionary set to English, so when I click on a word like "coughing",

I just get the definition, but you can change the language that the English

is translated to into your language.

You have tons of languages you can translate into, and then you can do

all kinds of vocabulary activities with your words and phrases.

Easy peasy.

Okay, let's get into these accents.

The first one I'll start with, might as well start with my

own, so the Welsh accent.

Now, Wales is a country within the UK and there isn't just

one accent, there are many.

There is a Welsh accent that most people think of when you.Say

Welsh accent, and it's this one.

I'm Welsh Standard, so I am literally epitome of the Welsh, like

stereotyped accent, but I love it.

I'm very proud.

So not too difficult to understand.

I guess I'm biased, but it's kind of sing songy.

Now remember, Wales actually has its own language, welsh.

Welsh is nothing like English.

There are lots of consonants.

It's kind of tricky to pronounce.

Lots of strange ... and ... sounds, and we have some pretty long

place names too, like this one.

Just 12 degrees over coastal parts of Eastern England with cloudy skies.

But in the sunshine in Northwest Wales at RAF Mona, just up the road from

... he did a really good job with that.

Let's stick with the English though.

A piece of content that you should check out if you would like to

listen to the Welsh accent is a super quirky, fun movie called Submarine.

It's actually the two main characters are actually not Welsh, they're English.

They do a really good job with the Welsh accent, though.

If you like indie music and the band The Arctic Monkeys, you might recognize

the lead actor in this uh movie.

His name is Alex Turner.

Jordana Bevin's moderately unpopular, which makes a romance

between the two of us.More likely.

Meet me under the bridge after school and take you from there.

Now, kneel down.

Close your eyes.

Wow.

You look mentally retarded.

What you gonna do with the photos?

What you complaining about?

This is conclusive proof that you might not be gay.

I asked if she was my girlfriend now she said I'll think about it.

But what she meant was, we are now as one.

As you can tell, it's a kind of moody coming of age story

set in a Welsh seaside town.

It's great fun.

I really enjoyed it.

Great soundtrack.

Maybe you'd enjoy it too.

Next, probably the most famous British accent, I would say, The Cockney accent.

The Cockney accent is the dialect of the working class East Londoners,

and it's still regarded a marker of true east London heritage.

So with Cockney there are lots of elongated vowels and often they'll

drop the th sound and replace it with an f, so free instead of three.

My name is Turkish.

Funny name for an Englishman I know.

My parents to be were on the same plane when it crashed.

That's how they met.

They named me after the name of the plane.

Not many people are named after a plane crash.

That's Tommy.

He tells people he was named after a gun, but I know he was really named after

a famous 19th century ballet dancer.

Now, of course, Cockney is famous for its rhyming slang.

So if you haven't heard of cockney rhyming slang, it's when a phrase is

used in place of another item or word.

So the dog and bone is phone up the apples and pairs, meaning stairs.

One of my favorites is Adam and Eve in place of the word believe.

So you could say "you wouldn't Adam and Eve it!"

The movie Snatch, or really any movie by director Guy Richie is a great

place to go if you want to expose yourself to the cCockney accent.

Just be prepared for lots of profanity.

You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece.

Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six

pieces and pile it all together.

Would someone mind telling me, who are you?

And when you've got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them cause it's

no good leaving it in a deep freeze for your month to discover now is it?

Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs.

The next accent is probably my favorite British accent because it

is so, I think, unlike any other accent and difficult to understand,

oh my goodness: the Geordie accent.

So this accent is spoken by, uh, people in and around the city of Newcastle.

Beyonce sold 73 the same amount as we did in two days, two days.

Like her week was...

I dunno why I'm saying this, like blowing our own trumpet and that, but

that's something to be proud of, right?

If you want to hear more of this unique accent, there is a trashy TV

reality show called The Geordie Shore.

The show follows the lives of eight to 12 housemates and it's really a

good idea to use LingQ for this one.

So grab the transcript, make an English lesson in LingQ, and

then you can work through it and understand what they're saying.

I nearly gave the game away to Marnie that I was pregnant there.

I have got to keep hush hush until this big announcement.

Those nipples though, they were so big.

You know, I feel like this is a gym jumpsuit.

They what?

I'm sure.

Cause it's got one of them weird crotch things.

Let the air out.

We're going even further north for the next accent and

that is the Scottish accent.

Another one of my favorites.

Now of course, just like with, there are many accents within Scotland.

But when most people outside of Scotland hear Scottish accent, they think of

this one, ...which means shut up.

Which is probably what I should do right now as I'm killing

my career One moment at a time.

The Scottish accents were heavily influenced by Scottish Gaelic, a

language that is still spoken in some parts of Scotland, and also by Norse.

If you're looking for content that features Scottish accents, there's a

new movie on Netflix called Calibre.

It's set in Scotland.

Two friends go on a hunting trip and something goes a little awry.

It has a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and I think I might check it out tonight.

Successful Day stalking?

We're putting together a search party.

What were you doing last night?

What real evidence have we got?

Nothing.

We were wrong.

IAnd we'regonna pay for it.

Back across the Scottish English border and into Northern England, and you

will find Yorkshire and the people there speak with a Yorkshire accent.

People who live in and around the cities of York, Leeds and

Sheffield have a Yorkshire accent.

It's quite distinctive and I think quite lovely.

My plan was to see your face get revenge on Hinnley

and then kill myself.

But I have changed my mind.

I'll never leave you ever again.

My life has been bitter since the last Iheard your voice.

A lot of the TV shows and movies, uh, that feature the Yorkshire

accent are based in kind of working class areas in the north of England.

Movies like Brassed Off, which features a a brass band.

Another great one is the Full Monty.

That's about a bunch of unemployed steel workers who decide

to make a male strip group.

Wanna know about dancing that's all.

Dancers have coordination, skill, timing, fitness and grace.

Take a long, hard look in the mirror.

Now I'm busy.

Don't be late for job club lads.

Bastard.

The full monty is a great English phrase, it means completely naked.

So you could say "I was on a beach in the south of France and

everyone there was full monty.

There are so many more British accents I could talk about.

But I'm just gonna go with one more and it's probably

the one that most people know.

It's called RP.

So RP stands for received pronunciation, and it's the kind of clear,

enunciated English that you might hear on news broadcasts for the BBC.

The Queen is said to have spoken RP, but actually Liz spoke more of a unique form

of English, very, kind of, upper class, posh English that is actually quite rare.

This is, this is more received pronunciation.

Let's listen to David Attenborough the Legend.

Ants are among the most numerous, widespread and frequently exploited

members of the undergrowth.

These in Australia collect seeds and store them underground.

Plants encourage them to do so by adding a tasty capsule to their seeds.

That may seem odd, but these ants don't eat all the seeds they store.

In fact, seeds are more likely to germinate below ground than above.

But not everything on this forest floor is what it seems.

RP is an excellent accent to focus on and try to imitate, of course, but don't

be scared to watch and listen to content with that features the other accents.

It'll open up just a much bigger world of content to you.

If you want to focus in on RP, you can't go wrong with period dramas

like the popular and somewhat controversial The crown on Netflix.

I suppose the greatest highlight has been well, and well meeting all of

you, uh, the people of Australia.

You've made us feel so welcome.

So at home.

Well perhaps because you've been so refreshing, you're not

what we expect from royalty.

Well, that's because I don't think of myself as royalty.