We are trilingual speech and language therapists with a previous background of teaching English. Over the years we have often been asked by non-native speakers of English how to improve their accent and sound 'more British'. We have since been working with people keen to improve their pronunciation in English and these short videos are inspired by recurrent issues that our clients face in sessions.
This is a myth-there are no actual long and short vowels in English. Take these two words from Cambridge and Merriam-Webster: leaf and live. If you actually measure the length of the vowel sounds, you'd find the vowel in live is longer than the one in leaf. You can also do that with a British dictionary and you'll get the same result So technically, what's supposed to be shorter ends up being longer!
Actually this is because there is a voiceless consonant after the ‘ee’ in leaf, which shortens the vowel! You’ll hear therefore that the ‘ee’ in LEAVE sounds longer than in ‘LEAF’. So you need to factor in whether the consonant after the vowel is voiced or voiceless!
Firstly, fantastic presentation. Secondly, I thought this video was about flow states. Finally, at first I thought there might only be one of you and the microphone was cleverly used as the split for editing two takes of "you" in different outfits.
I like the video . Do you know if Spanish is a time stressed or syllable stressed language? I’ve studied Spanish in various courses, and many, like Michel Thomas, really emphasize the stress being elongated. However, I saw a clip in Spanish that said that the syllable length doesn’t get longer but just gets louder which surprised me. You might know
Hi and thanks for the question- Spanish is syllable -timed. I have heard Michel Thomas’s Spanish and to me it has always sounded a little more stress-timed than what Spanish normally is (sounding kore Italian, which is ALSO in theory syllable-timed but has more of a sing-song quality with syllables that do sound longer at times!!) Confusing eh!!
@@accentology yes the Michelle Thomas pronunciation is incredibly elongated on the stress syllable. I tried saying the stressed syllable in Spanish words at the same length as the other syllables, but just louder and it just comes across as me shouting lol
The non-rhotic accent is so difficult to understand. Did he say "She went to party" or "She went to potty"? And the list of confusing words goes on and on.
Haha well it’s all in the length of the preceding vowel! That’s the secret! If it sounds long (paaaaaah-ty) then the likelihood is that it’s the word with the ‘r’ (party), whereas if it’s short it’ll be ‘potty’ - also, in British English the vowel is different in both words, whereas in US English it’s the same (but the ‘r’ is audible to make the distinction)
Scarily close, how ridiculous. Maybe they are close but why is it scary, are you autistic (if you are, then like I am, I could understand discomfort with someone entering your personal space, but if not you have no excuse; besides they look like twins and twins are always very "close".
So I have an Essex accent and I've just learnt that I don't use any rhotic Rs at all, even with vowels involved - feels more natural to me to just put a very slight pause in between the two sounds (for example "her aunt"), though that does feel a little stilted when I focus on it! Never even noticed I do that 😅
Thanks so much on that! After living in Ireland (as a non-native speaker) I was so used to using the rhotic R. However, during my postgraduate in the UK I was feeling rather uncomfortable for using it 😂.
So nice that yuo have reminded me my professor Amarjit Garg who taught me this English in1977on wards ....i am retired lecturer of Economics but have degree in English Post Gradution aand Linguistics its major subject and worked With British council for one year without taking any salary etc... I am fond of English language because of International language i love punjabi because of my mother tongue love hindi sanskrit Urdu and pharsi persian also. ... I know French language ....ans so on
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Thanks! High video quality for a channel that is so new😃 When the words were pronounced with a rhotic r it automatically made me think of Ireland 🇮🇪😂 I’m thinking of moving to Ireland and would like to try and be able to naturally use an Irish accent, as well as learning Irish. This video has helped me to notice individual words can be pronounced differently based on the words around them sometimes. Subscribed 👍🏼
Hi Ladies. Nice video. I came to comment on the cool 'jingle' at the end but I would like to leave some other comments now that I'm here. It's interesting that you have made this family business. I congratulate you on that. Lastly, we all forgive your mistake. We are all human and we all make them, even native speakers like myself. Keep on keeping on. Peace
Yes, English pronunciation is extremely difficult. There are really no pure phonetic languages, but you are correct that German and Spanish are pretty close. I can read aloud a random text in Spanish and most native Spanish speakers will understand me, even though I would have no clue what I am reading.
I took my phonetics mid-term exam a few days ago. One question asked to identify the vowel sounds in tomb, gnaw, ago, and onion. It was a hard question but I only got tomb wrong. The right answer was /u:/, but who would've known it?
I must apologise for an inaccuracy in this video: I mentioned that ‘outrage’ is a word formed of ‘out’ and ‘rage’, but in FACT it originates from the old French ‘ou(l)trage, itself from the Latin ‘ultra’ (beyond)!
You're so adorable! I'm Russian and fell head over hills in love with British English. As I can see, you can speak both Russian and English. Besides, your accents change whenever you switch to another language! Well done you!
