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3 Ways to Sound More British

Hello everyone, and welcome back to English with Lucy. Today I’ve got a really special lesson for you. I’m going to talk to you about three ways that you can make yourself sound more British in terms of pronunciation. So really, it’s three British-English pronunciation tips.

Now this video is aimed at both native speakers, maybe you’re an actor and want to have a more British accent for a role or something like that. Or also for people learning English as a second language, this video is for you as well.

I am going to be focusing on the differences between American pronunciation and British pronunciation. And I’m focusing on a neutral British accent, which is what I speak with. I don’t quite speak with a received pronunciation, which is something that not many speak with nowadays.

Now, the first thing I’m going to talk to you about is the er sound, the letter R. The general rule to sound more British is don’t pronounce the R sound, unless it’s followed by a vowel. I have a video on when you should pronounce the R on the end of words, which you can check out right here.

But, in American English, you would pronounce the R at the end of a word. Something like better, for us, uh, uh. It’s a schwa sound. But for Americans, and please, don’t laugh at my American accent, I’m going to try my best. Americans would say better, better. We say bett-uh, bett-uh. The world folder, fold-uh. We end the word with a uh, uh, fold-uh, schwa sound. Americans would end the word with an er sound, folder. Don’t laugh at my American accent, I tried my best. The next tip is pronouncing the letter U, instead of ooh, we often say you.

So words like stupid, duty, Americans generally say, stoopid, dooty, stoopid, dooty, stoopid, dooty. And that’s an error that I hear a lot of non-native speakers make as well. So my Spanish students, which I love with all of my heart, I’m not making fun of your accents here, I’m just pointing out an error, so that you can help yourselves with it. They say, stuupid, stuupid, and it should be stupid, stupid.

Or something like Youtube, Youtube, they might say, Yuutuube, Yuutuube. Now, you might have noticed that when I was comparing American and British pronunciation, I also changed the way that I pronounced T’s. Now in British English, we do one of two things. So when Americans would say water, we would say one of two things, we can say wah-ta, wah-at, or even wah-ah, wah-ah.

Now the first one is the generally correct way of saying it. The second one is very informal and features many dialects and regional accents like Cockney. So we can either completely overaccentuate and pronounce the T, or drop it completely and replace it with a glottal stop. Now I am planning to do an entire video about the glottal stop, since it’s incredibly important.

Now, a glottal stop is an audible consonant created by blocking the flow of air. In simple terms, it’s this, uh, uh, wah-uh, wah-uh. Bett-uh, bett-uh, okay? Americans sometimes replace the Te sound with a De sound. Dudy, duty or duh-e with the glottal stop. (laughs) Now I personally don’t speak much with the glottal stop. I do sometimes, instead of saying but, I might say buh buh, so I’m stopping, I’m stopping the air coming out.

So instead of saying but I want to, I might say, buh I want to. Buh I, buh I, there’s no T there. Alright guys, that’s it for the lesson today. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you are now one step closer to being able to speak with a British accent when you want to.