Mastering the British Accent

1. Mastering the British Accent: Introduction: Hi everyone and welcome to this Skillshare course all on mastering the British accent for those who don't know me, my name is Molly. I'm a professional voice and acts and coach based in London. And I've been doing this for about four years now. And I thought it was about time to make a whole course dedicated on mastering the British accent. So if you have been struggling with finding it an authentic sound, whether it'd be for a role and you're an actor, or whether you're just curious about the British accent and language in particular than you were in the right place in this class. And I think what makes this cause uniquely different to others is that we are going to be learning about the British acts and by first exploring our own accent. And this is because I have seen a big mistake that people make when it comes to accent learning. And I'm going to demonstrate this mistake by using these two kitchen appliances. Now, I want you to imagine that the accident you have right now is this spoon. And this is your accent. This is the look of it. This is the feel of it, this is the weight of it. But the accident you want is this spoon. And so you can see that we've now got a metal spoon is a little bit heavier in my hand and there are holes in it. Most of the time when people learn an accent, they think, well, they're both spoons, they're both kitchen appliances. What I'll do is I'll just go from where I am and I'm going to put the new accent on top of my own accent. But as you can see, that's never really going to work. We're never going to get the same effect of just this spoon on its own because it no longer has those holes in it. The weight is different at the handles don't match up their adjust these things that just make it slightly different. So what we need to do instead, and what you aren't gonna be able to do on this course is you're going to learn how to deconstruct your own accent or this spoon. We're going to learn how to mold it, how to deconstruct it, how to understand it. And therefore, over time you're going to be able to mold it into something that is more similar. The result that you want, effectively good accent skills comes from understanding your own accent. And so that is the starting point for this course. But by the end of it, you will also understand and master the British sounds in terms of the continents, oral posture, vowels, prosody, and how to apply that alter text. I'm also gonna be giving you lots of tips and tricks on how to practice it and how to actually integrate it as well into your training and into your day-to-day life. You're even going to get to a place where you'll be able to articulate it and even teach it yourselves in a way based off of the project that I'm going to be setting you. I believe that accent learning is so much more than just mimicking sounds. It's about deconstructing an understanding the real subtleties behind a language and accent and a setup. And so using your own muscularity is going to be at the heart of this course. So whether you are here for professional reasons, personal reasons, acting gigs, whatever the weather, I hope that you find exactly what you need out of this course. There will be references as we go throughout, and I hope you enjoy with that. Let's crack on 2. "You're the Coach!": Project explanation: Hello and welcome to this Skillshare class project explanation video, where I will explain what your project for this module will be. I'm titling this project. You're the coach because your task is going to be to come up with some sorts of breakdown or instruction manual for someone who has the British accent, but wants to learn your accent. Imagine that you are the teacher and you are going to be explaining it to someone who has already British sounds. How you make your own sounds within your own accent. And don't worry if you feel like you don't really have an accent or you feel like your axon is here, there everywhere. I'm here to tell you you do have an accent. And no matter how unique, no matter how many influences that acts and tears, I want to hear about it. And it's important that you explore it and be curious about it. You're going to have to come up with really clear, concise instructions so that anyone can just read it and try to follow it and try to pick up your own accent. This is going to help you really deconstruct what you are doing and where you're starting places before you then go to apply the British accent. I mean, basically, I'm teaching you how to do the course that I've written, but just in reverse. Because if you can teach someone who has a British accent your sounds, then you will absolutely be able to turn your sounds into one that is more of a British accent. I'm also going to give you a skeletal outline of how you can do this plus some examples in the references below. But the first thing you want to write about, or the first chapter or unit is going to be on the overall posture that you have compared to the British accent. The second unit I wanted to talk about is your consonant sounds. We're gonna be looking at your arms, your l, th is your case, your Gs. And you can use some of these sentences to help Roger Rabbit ran to the end of the rainbow to start the car, I need to call Larry the lazy lab cry, the Latin students. I think that's the case said Teresa The King and I are singing to the kicking kangaroos. Then your third unit is gonna be vowel sounds. You're gonna be using the catalyst and the vowel chart to help you identify which of your really specific, really important vowel sounds that you are going to need to write quite a lot on or to be really clear on when it comes to teaching someone else your own accent, remember to focus on enunciating each sound really clearly and really slowly. Be curious about your own sounds because there's probably so much more depth to it than you realize. And lastly, you're going to focus on musicality and intonation speed through some sentences or some free speech and record yourself and you can just write down an annotate what your speech patterns are. For example, do you go up the end of the line? You go down to the underlying. Do stress any words differently to the British accent. It can be really helpful to record yourself and then listen back because quite often we miss here ourselves speaking anyway. So always working in hindsight and working in small doses, work wonders for your productivity here. So in summary, your project for this module is gonna be to write clear and concise instructions for someone with a British accent who wants to learn your own accent. For this, you're going to have to deconstruct your starting place. You're going to have to explore how you speak and how that is compared to the British accent sounds. And you can do this as we go across our lessons, because each lesson is going to be breaking down those units. We're gonna be focusing on the British accent sounds. However, you can also be thinking about your own sounds as well. Happy practicing 3. Lesson 1: What is an accent and proprioception: So now that you are aware of what your project is going to entail, Let's start getting into the work. The first thing I want to talk about in this video is the importance of something called proprioception. And accent is a distinctive way of speaking that is shaped by someone's region, culture and Accent group. Accents can vary in terms of intonation, pronunciation, rhythm, and pace. Proprioception is your own sense of body movement and placement. It is closely tied to muscle memory, which is crucial for developing new language and accent skills. Now when you practice a new accent, you have to train your muscles. It's kind of like you've been running as a long distance runner your whole life. So if you go into sprinting, your muscles are going to have to move in a completely different way, even though it might be similar muscle groups working, a lot of these movements are going to feel really unfamiliar and really alien. And so the whole process really relies on a good sense of proprioception in order to correctly move those muscles that we may have never thought about before. And this can be really challenging on its own. So your body like a musical instrument, before you go to learn a tune or play someone else's music, you have to first learn how to do your own scales. One effective way of developing your proprioception is through exercises and drills, targeting specific places in the mouth, as well as the tongue, soft palate, jaw, and the other articulators. Repetition is key. So prioritizing doing these exercises regularly is what's going to help you see progress throughout the course. Another way of developing a proprioception is by listening to people who might have the accent that you're wanting and trying to mimic or trying to just Miao the whisper, the words that you can hear. This will help you start to internalize the movements that are required to make the sounds. And eventually they're going to become less alien and you're going to feel more comfortable embodying the accent yourself. In summary, proprioception is essential for your progress when learning a new accent. And so doing the exercises that we're about to cover in the next video, regularly, often and with a lot of presence, it can be so easy to do these exercises just on autopilot or not really thinking about it. But I really want you to make an active effort to really be present, really feel where your tongue is going, really feel where your jewelry is going. And I promise progresses just going to sky rocket. As soon as you develop this skill 4. Lesson 2: Articulation and Terminology: So now that we've covered what proprioception is, let's get on to the exercises that are going to help you, not just with your proprioception, but also your articulation in general, when we're talking about articulation, I'm going to be focusing on four different areas. The first one being the joule, second one is the tongue, the soft palate, and the lips. So let's start with some jaw exercises. Now, your jaw is actually struggling to the skull by three muscles. One called your temporalis, which sits here and choose strap muscles here. Now, when we're doing your exercises, I want you to be nice and gentle. We often hold a lot of tension in the jaw. There's lots of grinding, there's lots of anger that's held there. So it'd be really nice and gentle with it. We're just going to start by taking our two fingers like so. And we're just going to arrest the lips open and just start massaging around the temporalis muscle. And you may be able to feel some tension releasing here, some heaviness. And you can repeat this for as long as you like, as long as you're being nice and gentle. The second thing I want you to think about for the jaw is I want you to imagine there are weights or earrings hanging low from your lower mandible because it can be really easy to see the jaw as a hinge, as if we open from the front of the mouth. Whereas actually the space is happening right at the back. Imagine their space growing between the back of your molars. And I want you to allow these earrings or weights to just hang your jaw open. When that starts to feel heavy, you can take your hands and you can try to close your jaw and let it open again. Notice I'm not opening my mouth. I'm not having a delay. I'm really trying to key in to the sense of that muscle memory and that muscle release. Now, if this is a bit tricky for you right now, do not worry, just start with imagining the jaw is releasing first and then you can start applying the opening and closing. We can now focus in on the tongue. The tongue is a huge muscle in the body. In fact, you can even feel it by bringing your thumbs underneath your chin. Thinking about that Joe release and also make sure that you're not bringing your head forward too much on these exercises, we want to keep our head nice unreleased. Massaging the tongue. You can feel it going all the way back to our larynx, which is right here. The tan exercise I'm going to teach you is not very attractive, So I apologize, but it is fantastic for you. And that is where we're going to be touching the tip of the tongue behind the bottom of our teeth and we're gonna be flexing and releasing. You're also going to try and show me your top teeth as you do so like this. You can do that as many times as you need. Try not to do it too much because it can feel a little bit achy. I can feel it stretching all the way down here, but it is a fantastic tongue stretch and a really good way to develop that proprioception in the tub. Then we want to move on to the soft palate or your velum. The soft palate is just the palette that feels literally soft with your tongue. That is where you probably make your cup and gut sounds on. And so if you make a gun, you might feel the back of the tongue reaching up some soft palate and then releasing. We want to make sure our soft palate is really nice and flexible, especially when looking at the British accent. And so can you give me an NG sound? No, no, no. You'll notice I like to use my hand almost like I'm turning a dial Mau, Mau, Mau. Then you can try the other way. And you should be able to feel when the air is redirected through the nose because when the soft palate is down, it's directed through that knows for the NG sound versus when it is 0 and the air is coming through the mouth instead. Now, if you find that you're really just making it up, I'm gonna try to soften it, try to see what it's like if you play with the release being a lot softer as rather than just see how that feels. And then finally with the lips, all we're going to do is just take our indexing is a really gently do some messages around the lips, do some literals. If you struggle to do that, you can hold your index fingers in the corners of your lips and try to do it there. I'm not just about warms up. Your articulators being your jaw, your tongue, your lips, and your soft palate. Remember that those aren't just warm up skills, but they are also going to have your proprioception. So try to repeat those every day and really try to be present, really active with where they are. That's going to make it so much easier to mold your mouth and mode those same articulators to help with your accent learning. Now we've covered the practical stuff. Let's move on to their heady stuff. So let's talk about the terminology. So you have signed up for a British accent cause, but let's start with defining what the British accent is and what I mean by that. In this course, we're gonna be looking at the modern British RP accent. Rp stands for Received Pronunciation, otherwise known as the queens or BBC English. And it's an accent that is pretty old fashioned. Now a days, however, it has developed into a more modern sound, which would be called modern RP, or some may call it SSB, such as Jeff Lindsay as someone who's from a middle-class area in sorry, I would say that I have this accent. I may also mention something called the alveolar ridge. And by the alveolar ridge, I'm just talking about the gum Ridge that is behind your top teeth. It might be where you make a sound, but you should be able to feel using the tip of the tongue just behind the front teeth where that ridge is before the cave of your mouth begins. I may also mention phonetics in this video, or the IPA. Ipa stands for International Phonetic Alphabet, and it's just a system of symbols that we use to identify different sounds without going into the trap of spelling will be touching on multi-city in the next few videos. And rhotic refers to whether an accent says Every or they see or they don't. And the schwa sound is a mid central vowel sound, and it's represented by this symbol in the IPA is the most commonly used vowel sounds in the English accents. So we are gonna be learning it lot and going into the depths of it in a few videos to come. And lastly, I'll mention what intonation means in case you haven't heard of it. It is just the rise and fall of pitch of an accent. Every accident has slightly different intonations depending on if you're asking a question or just saying a statement. By understanding these key terminology as well as those articulation exercises, they'll have a greater grasp on understanding the complexity and the subtleties of accent learning. Keep these in mind as we delve into the topics and moving on to the next lesson, which is all about finding your starting place. Aka, what does your spoon look like? 5. Lesson 3: Find your starting place: So now we're gonna be moving on to discussing what your starting place as a speaker really is. As like I said in the introduction video, in order to try to change or to mold one accent into another, it's no good to just place one on top of the other. We have to deconstruct where you're starting places. So take a second to pause the video and you are going to record or videotape yourself speaking about something you are passionate about. Or maybe it's a favorite memory or a favorite holiday that you have been on. And just let yourself speak for good minute and a half to 2 min and then play the video and we're going to go through some questions, okay, So now that you have your video or recorded footage, I wanted to answer these few questions for yourself. How much do your jaw, lips and cheeks move? Do you see your lip spreading a lot? Do you see your jaw opening quite wide? Does it look like you're smiling? Does it look very serious? Can you see your cheekbones rising? Do your eyes squinted tool. We really inquisitive about all of that and just start to make some general notes. In fact, you can even place these notes in the oral posture unit of your project template. Now ask yourself, how do you pronounce your r's, your L's law? And you're tough. Maybe there are some other continents that really strikes you as interesting, such as your cup. Sounds as well. Really tried to be specific. So where do you feel your lips moving on those sounds? Where do you feel your tongue going on those sounds? Can you feel it go into the top of the mouth? Does it touch the teeth? Be curious and try as hard as you can to not judge yourself. Now I tried to pick five random words at different lengths and different stresses and ask yourself, what are the vowel sounds in those words? And again, how is your mouth moving to meet those sounds? For example, if you said the word dog, the vowel sound might be 0, 0. In this sound, you can see that my lips are rounded. All my jewelry is opening a little bit off. And I can feel my tongue staying quite close to the front of the mouth. And lastly, what quality or musicality do you have? I know it can be so difficult to really analyze your own sound, but just imagine you're listening to someone completely different to your own. And try to list at least three to five different adjectives that you would describe yourself. Maybe it sounds smooth, maybe it sounds strong, maybe it sells high-pitched, maybe it sounds slow, quick, Whatever you think, remember that these are just your initial thoughts on your own accent. And as we're going through, we're gonna be looking at this in even more detail. But it's really important to get used to and start to fall in love with your body and your sounds, whatever accent you have. Because in order to really manipulate something or to adjust something, or to really just play around within your own overall tract. You have to own it. You have to be confident with it and be bold with it. So there is absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about, but do try to desensitize yourself to your own voice. Remember, you also have the attached workbook to help you out with this section. So do use that as a template. And over the next few videos, you can keep adding and adding and adding to your notes. And eventually your project will be done before you realize it 6. Lesson 4: Oral Posture: Okay, now for today's lesson, we are going to be specifically talking about the overall posture in this class. You're gonna be talking about what are your posture, is, what your overall posture is like, and how we can compare that to the British overall posture as well. So what exactly is all real posture? When I say oral posture, where the posture or alignment of articulators are when we are resting. Now, every accent has a slightly different oral posture. So the soft palate might be sat somewhere different to the tongue, to the jaw, so on and so forth. It might be helpful to see overall posture kind of like gears to a car. Same way, a different gear change. It's going to help you drive in a different way. A different oral posture is going to help you drive the sounds to a new accent as well. In the British oral posture, when I'm resting, the tongue is sitting on the roof of the mouth and the tip of the tongue is very lightly touching the back of my front teeth. My lips are closed usually when I make complete rest, but I can still feel my teeth is slightly far apart in terms of the back of my molars showing that my jaw is quite released when it can speak, as you can probably tell if you replay that last part of the video, that actually my jaw tends to move up and down quite a lot. My lips don't tend to move to the side. My cheeks don't tend to move upwards. I can feel my tongue actually stays quite close to the front of my mouth. So that is really the British or posture. We have relaxed cheeks released youre quite flat lips that don't tend to move to the side. Usually they're staying around this same bubble and I can feel the tip of my tongue on the front of my teeth. Now let's compare the British are real posture to your road. Take a second to check your own oral posture, literally at resting, where can you feel everything and how might it differ to my own? If you did record yourself speaking or you have a video of yourself speaking, have a look again, back at your notes that you've started in your workbook to see what differences you might have to me, of course, there probably aren't gonna be differences. That's probably why you're starting this video. Even though they might be super subtle, you just might find that your cheeks are slightly more raised. Or maybe you feel like the back of your tongue is getting more involved in mind. But all of this is part of the practice. And the greater proprioception, the more awareness you're going to have for those subtlety. If you skim over the overall posture of the accent, then you're going to find it very hard to find an authentic sound because your resonance is always going to be slightly different as well as your tone. So really try it to make sure that you nail down this, getting the right gear, and then we can apply the rest of the steps 7. Lesson 5: Consonants: So now we have addressed the oral posture and hopefully you've picked up some differences on your own as well as the British accent. We're ready to talk about the consonants in this video, we're gonna be talking about what consonants are while your own consonant features are, as well as how to compare that to the British accents consonant features. So what is a consonant? I would define a consonant as a speech sound wet, some part of the articulators is disrupting the airflow. So whether that's the lips coming together to make a weather, That's the tongue and alveolar ridge coming together to make it. Or the soft palate and the back of the tongue to make. There is some sort of disruption when we are talking about consonants. There are two things that you really want to bear in mind. That is, where is the disruption happening in the mouth, and how is the disruption happening? To take those examples again, we had a where the lips are coming together, how the lips are completely coming together to then explode the air out. So I'm completely trapping air to them, completely released. However, let's take something like a sound for this. Where can we answered by my lips and my teeth are coming together. And how the air is being slowly disrupted. Really tried to bear in mind those two questions when you're comparing your continent features to the British accents, the subtleties of where that disruption is happening and also how quickly, how slow or how wide the gaps are is really all there is to differ in consonants. We're going to start by talking about rhotic or non rhotic accents. If you have a rhotic accent, you probably pronounce the r sound every time it comes up. If you have a non rhotic accent, you will not always pronounce the r sound to try and figure out whether we do have a rhotic or rhotic accent. Try saying these sentences aloud. Tell Raja to start the car. It's parked over here. Tell Raja to start the car is parked over here though. Did you say every single awesome. For example, maybe you'll sounded like tell roger to start. The car is parked over here or something more line for that. You'll notice that in my accent, I don't pronounce the r sound at the end of Raja stopped car parked here. And that is because I have a non rhotic accent and that is the first big feature of the British accent. So what this means is, I am never going to say an R if it is after a vowel sounds such as stock, park, lock, however, I will pronounce an art. It is at the beginning of a word, and if it is after consonants such as trap, wrapped, crash, and when I do pronounce, those are sounds. It's usually quite a soft, are in the British accent. My tip of the tongue is curling up to the alveolar ridge so that gum ridge behind the front teeth and I'm not making contact with it, but there's a slight curling and a slight rounding of my lips. Raja. Raja, you might also hear people including myself in this video making an r sound with my teeth and my lips. Roger. However, that's probably more of my London influence now that I'm living in London rather than an axon that would really be on the modern RP category. Next, let's move on to the British L sounds compared to your own. Let's try saying this sentence out loud. I need to call Larry the lazy lamb cried the Latin students. Now how will you make the l sounds in each of those words? For me, I'm making two different l sounds. When I say the word cool, I can feel my lips surrounding, my mouth feels like a funnel and the back of my tongue is going up to the soft palate. All cool. Cool. Whereas Well, let's say Latin or Larry and lamb, I can actually feel the tip of my tongue flicking behind the front teeth. Larry lazy land. The first l i sound cool, is what we call a valorized L. The back of the tongue is going up to the velar. And the second L is what we call a light l. And then the British accent. We're going to use both. The rules tend to vary. But one thing I do always teach people is that when the L is at the end of a word, that's when we use the valorized L versus when an l is at the beginning of a word, that's when you use the light l. But you might find that in your accent, you only use one type of L. You might even find that in your own accent that the valorized cell you have is even more valorized and you might have to relax the tongue a little bit more to make it a British version of a valorized l. Moving on to our T, H sound, British accent. This is pronounced with the tongue coming in between the two teeth. Whereas in some other accents, I often hear people saying that to, such as if I had the sentence, I think that's the case. I might hear people saying I think that's the case. I think that's the case. And they might bring the tip of the tongue behind the teeth a little bit too much. There really tried to make an extra effort to bring the tip of the tongue between the teeth. It doesn't have to be protruding too much, but there does need to be a glimmer of that tip there. Again, if you find this difficult, which is so normal to, if this is new to you, practice makes perfect and just go back to articulation exercises that we did right at the beginning of the course to help your tongue with that mobility. And the last sounds I want to explore, or a curb and gutter sound in a British accent. Both of these sounds are made with the back of the tongue coming up to our soft palate. Good. And similarly to how our lips come completely together for our sound. This is happening with the back of the tongue. The back of the tongue and the soft palate are completely coming together, shushing the air off and then releasing it all at once. I will say that the British accent in general has a little bit of aspiration, which means it tends to be a little bit speedier or a little bit crisper than other accents. You might hear some people in England pronouncing a go softer or harder than others. For example, in the word singer, I say singer with a soft release with that energy. Whereas some places in England will say singer or singer instead. For example, the King loves it when the singer speak, the King loves it when the singer speaks, I'm making sure my cup and energy is nice and soft rather than the King loves it when the singer speaks. This is where you're not. Now on exercise from our articulation drills once again, comes in really, really handy. Even if you feel like you might have the right placement with these articulators, you really need to play with the release, whether it's a software least whether it's a hard release, whether it's with more air, whether it's with less. All of these different subtleties can make or break the authenticity of your accent skills. So again, be curious, explore the sounds, explore your own vocal tract, and you'll eventually land on the sound that you want. And also, don't forget to note these concepts down in your workbook under the consonant section, tries to discover what you do with all of these consonant features or any others that you might find interesting. And don't forget to write them down as if you were trying to teach me as someone with a British accent, how to do your own accent? 8. Lesson 6: Vowels part 1: So now that we have a good grasp of what oral posture as well as our consonants. Let's move on to our vowel sounds. And this is gonna be part one lesson because vowels are pretty lengthy, especially when it comes to the English language and I'm British accent. So we're going to take our time and we're going to start at one concept at a time. In this video, we'll explore the basics of the vowel chart, introductions to the kit list, what vowels are and what the British Monarch songs sound like. A vowel is where there is no disruption of airflow through the articulators, are you? I can just speak and there is no articulated disrupting their airflow. And so what is the vowel chart? Well, the vowel chart is a sorted trapezium looking like thing that we use in the axon coaching world to help us charts different vowel sounds and help us to navigate different ways of adjusting our jaw, our tongue, and our lips in order to help us reach new vowel sounds. So you can see that the chart is divided up into several sections, including the front, center, and back, and high, mid, and low vowel sounds. Let's get through what we call the cardinal vowels. Altogether, the cardinal vowels up all of the positions that you can see on the outside of this chart. And they can otherwise be known or referred to as the most extreme vowel placements that we can make. Starting with these cardinal vowels can be a really useful way of figuring out how we can actually move our instrument and move articulators. And you might even find some familiar vowel sounds in this process as well. So if we start at number one, this is where my jaw is close, my lips are spread out, my tongue is fluid. This is a e, e, e. Then if I slide from 123.4, all I'm gonna do is I'm going to open my jaw incrementally, keeping my tongue where it is, keeping my lips spread. Ie yeah. I'm going nice and slowly and really giving myself enough time to step down to that position. Some words that aren't quite cardinal vowels for me but might fit onto this row include dress or kit and fleece. But do you have any words that you think could share and match with these vowel sounds. Then if we slide to the back parts, I'm going to go from number four and number five. And this is where my jaw is going to stay in the same position. My lips are going to round at my back and my tongue is going to come upwards and start to activate. It might sound something like this. Oh, I'll do that again. Oh, I'm making an active effort to keep my jaw open and just around the lips. Then if I go from five all the way up to eight, I'm going to keep my lips round the back of the tongue activated, but close my jaw. Or, or, or. Some vowel sounds for me that lives somewhere around this area might be something like lot, cloth, thoughts, words like that. But again, you might not have any vowel sounds that are exactly around this chart. Remember that evenness, this movement every millimeter centimeter inch could change depending on the day, depending on the context and depending on, of course, the accent. The last thing I want to mention in this vowel chart is the schwa, which you might remember that as our terminology as the place where everything is kind of in this neutral position. So my tongue is going to relax, my jaw is going to relax and my lips are going to relax. This is a sound. And as I previously mentioned, we use this vowel sound all the time within the British accent, such as when I say words like love or money, letter. So the schwa is something that we will be coming back to a lot in this process. Now let's talk about the kit list. Bucket list is effectively a list of words beginning with kit and every single word together makes up all of the possible bowel sounds we can make within the English language. So basically, if you master the kit list and the British accent, then you can theoretically say any word you like. Today, we're going to focus mainly on the British Monarch songs, which is where it's just one sound, vowel sound. I am going to link a video recording of me speaking through the kit list with the Caitlin sentences. So you can have the full version to listen to you whenever you like. Today, we're going to look at words like kit, dress, trap, strapped, and bar. So the first word is kit. I'm slightly spreading my lips, my jaw is staying fairly closed and my tongue is staying forward. It will be somewhere here on the vowel chart. Kit, pit, little tip. When it comes to word like dress, we're gonna be going somewhere like here. And that is where my door is opening slightly more. My lips are spread out, my tongue is again, forward. Direct, direct, maths, pest. Remember that a lot of the times people underestimate how far the jaw can open in the sound. And they instead go to Cardinal val2 rather than three. So really tried to bring your hand under your chin drafts and allow that drawer to open. Remember that as we're going through these sounds, you can be charting on your own vowel chart where your own vowels light as well and compare them. Then if we have cat, cat, cat, we're going a step lower. My jaw is dropping even though my tongue is staying forward, cat. Whereas when we go to words like barf and four, then we're going more into back vowel sounds where I can feel the back of my tongue is working. My lips are starting to round and for bath, my jaw stays open, for, for, my joy is staying close. And then we have some vowel sounds that are so close to the schwa, like foot, foot. In modern RP, this really genuinely is this close to the Schwab resident RP English. This might look to something like food, which would have been further back. But nowadays, we tend to have crept closer and closer to that schwa sound. So that's where we need to think about it. To have words like lot, which might be helpful to think about a lot, which is in the back part where my jaw is staying fairly close. My lips rounding in the back of my tongue is going backwards. Or you can actually see this as a shorter version of the vowel sound. Thought, North, force, lot, or, or, or, or. They're all in really similar places but I've just different how long I'm holding them for. The last one, I want to focus on it. Stirrups, strapped, strapped. So we're kind of going from that schwa zone of I'm going to open my mouth even more. Struct, struct, struct, cup. Now there might be times when in a whole sentence this struct sounds heads into the schwa. But for now, it just might be helpful to really play with those sounds in isolation and make sure that your jaw is releasing fully. Where does your own vowel sounds come into when you're thinking about those sentences as well as a reminder, please fill out the workbook as you go along and you will have a literal recording of me speaking through the kidneys sentences so you can compare. But practicing these British product dogs are gonna be so helpful in your accent learning process because it's basically half of the sounds you need for every single word. As soon as you've mastered a word like bath, you'll also master a word like start palm, Francis, cough, and the world is your oyster. So we're going to pause the video there. Now that we've introduced vowels, the vowel chart, bucket list, and the British monotones tune in for the next lesson to start talking about the diphthongs. Well done, and I'll see you next time. 9. Lesson 7: Vowels part 2: Hello and welcome back to another lesson where we are gonna be continuing on from our last lesson. So do make sure that you have listened to add caught up with where we are at so far in the course because we're going to be looking at the diphthongs today. Now, what is a diphthong? Well, a diphthong is a sound formed of a combination of two or more vowel sounds. In the last lesson, we just looked at words like kit, dress, strapped, lot, thoughts, bath. And those are all vowel sounds that contain one type of sound. Whereas diphthongs are where we're going to merge a couple of sounds together. So our articulators are gonna be moving as we're saying one vowel sound. As a reminder, you will have your kidneys sentences below as well as recording of me speaking than through which you can slow down or speed up as your leisure in case you miss any of what I'm about to say. The first thing that we're going to look at in the British accent is the word face, a face. For this diphthong, we're actually starting with where we start for dress, so around cardinal vowel number three, and we then moving up to an a, face a. You can practice this with words like face, place, maze, trace, crazy. And once again, remember to be filling out your own workbook on what you think your accent does on their sound. Because that's how you're then going to a complete your project for the module, but also be able to deconstruct it to match mine. The second step then we're gonna be looking at is the word price I, price I, i. Now, this one, we have our jaw really nice and open a slightly further back than where we might have found our struct sound. And then once again, we're going closer to that e sound. I, however, I don't need to shut my jewel quite so much. I'm almost allowing my tongue to make the e sound with an open door. Prize. I price. I'm not going to pry ease. I'm almost smoothening it out. Price. I I I can feel my jaw moving slightly out of my tongue moving slightly, but not to any extremes. You can practice this word with words like price, cry, time, rice, lyse. The third word we're going to have a look at is choice, boy, boy, boy. Now in this sound, we start with a back sound of a almost like the word lot. My lips are rounded, my door is closed, boy, boy. And then they kind of releasing a little bit into a front vowel, choice. Choice. This vowel sound also comes up in words like oysters, joy, moist, poised. It kind of feels like a kissing shape and then you're relaxing. And I also think this vowel sound might be a quicker one compared to many of the other diphthongs we find choice. The next step we're going to look at is the word mouth, our mouth. This is a very open sound. I would say when it comes to dip thumbs, I can really feel my jaw releasing and everything widening our mouth, mouth again, you might find this vowel sound in words like mouth. Proud, house counsel, I'll, I'm kinda moving from a slightly further back as entrapped position and then into a oh. I'll remember that with most of these diphthongs we're just smoothing and really trying to elongate the vowel sound. And there's very little choppiness which we're gonna be talking about in the next few lessons and other diphthong it would be useful to have a look at is goat. Goat. Now, this one is really close to the bubble of the schwa. As you can see, my lips hardly move. Goat, a goat, goat, boat. Moldy. I'm hardly read my lips. They're staying relaxed. Going back to the overall posture of the British accent, which is where my back molars are released, my jaw is released, my cheeks or down. My lips and tongue are also relaxed. Oh, oh, try to see what that feels like. You might want to round your lips a bit more. And that is a little bit more old-fashioned then what we want for modern RP, we can also have a look at a sound like square. Again, we've got a very open forward sound. I'm a diphthong is coming in from an F. F. So very slightly moving the lips and the tongue. Square pair. Scarce, nice and open. And the last sound that I think is one of the biggest things for if you're coming from a rhotic accent to try and get your head around is the word nurse. Nurse. Because I'm not pronouncing the R. It's actually really close to the Schwab, but with a much more open jaw. But church much. Hopefully that's given you a good insight into how the British diphthongs work and where they are on that vowel chart. Don't worry too much of the vowel chart at this point isn't too helpful for you. Just use what is helpful for you, even if that's just listening to the Caitlin sentences and just even drawing diagrams. Remember, tried to be creative in your instruction manual to a British accent person, tried to learn your own accent if you want to use diagrams or you just want to say the open, MID, open, close position in your breakdown of your own accent for your project, you can absolutely do that. It's important that at the end of this process you are using the terminology that works for you. So don't feel like you have to draw trapezium and follow that way. But I hope your projects are coming on really nicely and that you are filling them out in a way that makes sense to you and who your designated British acts and person theoretically is. As a reminder, I will have examples in the description that you can have a look at. Remember to upload your own when your dad, I cannot wait to see them. That is all of the continents and the vowel sounds cupboard. And next time I'm so excited because we're going to be chatting a little bit more about vowel sounds in the context of something called lexical sets. Steak you for tuning in. I will see you for the next lesson. 10. Lesson 8: A note on lexical sets: Hello everyone and welcome back to another lesson on mastering the British accent, where we're gonna be continuing on from our work on vowels. So do make sure you have watched those videos before clicking on this one. And we're gonna be talking a little bit about lexical sets. Now, lexical sets are groups of words that share the same vowel sound. For example, the words cat, man, trap, and hats are all part of the same lexical set. Well, for my accent at least. So this is the tricky thing when it comes to doing lexical sets and learning about lexical sets. The first thing is that when you learn the lexical sets or when you have a good idea and lexical sets, you'll realize that actually learning there's Caitlin. Words are going to save you a lot of time because you'll understand what words share the same vet school set as kit dress trap. And it's not like you're having to learn a new bowel sound for every single word. However, one of the biggest things I always tell people to get familiar with in the lexical sets is because what might be a lexical set for the British accent might not be electrical set for you. For example, for the modern RP accent, which is the one we're learning, bath palm and starts all the same. Whereas there are many accents where bath might be pronounced as bath rather than barf. And so they would have bath palm start rather than me, which is both palms start. So really it can help your overall fluency with their British accent and helped me to figure out which words belong in which set. Especially also words like foot and goose, which are both spelled with two o's but have slightly different sounds. In your references. You should be able to find a whole document and fill up the lexical sets. And why I always ask people to do is print it out and start noting down which words belong in which, for example, if you are a lecturer or you are at work, and the same word comes up again and again and again. And you're like, What is that? And the British accent lexical sets. You can start to add it into the right group and eventually you'll realize, okay, actually, it's not as overwhelming as I thought. It really just says These Kaitlyn words and just figuring out which words belong in which group. So when you must have the lexical sets, that really is the last step of mastering your vowel sounds within the British accent. You can even write down in your instruction manual as a little notation which lexical sets the British accent has that you don't have, just so that you make sure you remember for the future. I remember all of this work will take time, tried to do so curiously with big exploration to try to make it as enjoyable as possible. Be creative with it, be patient with yourself and see it kind of is like starting a quest to figuring out your own accent rather than a big chore that you've got to do with that mentality is going to make this process so much easier to becoming the master of a British accent. 11. Lesson 9: Musicality: Hello and welcome back to another lesson on mastering the British accent. So now that we've done this sort of technical stuff, I'm really excited for today's session because it's really the bigger picture of the British accent, which is the musicality. We're going to explore the basics of what musicality of an axon is. Different techniques to figure out what your own musicality is and how to compare it to the British accent. So what do I mean by musicality? Or you might also hear me refer to it as prosody of an accent. It is simply the musical elements of spoken language, such as the rhythm, the intonation, and the stress. These elements are really going to help you bring together all of the itty bitty, nitty-gritty elements of the British accent that we have been looking at and how to really put it into texts and free speech. What exercise you can do to figure out the musicality of your own accent as well as the British one, is to really try and imitate the speakers pitch patterns. What you might want to do is grab a piece of paper and a pen. And you might want to listen back to some clips of either myself speaking or maybe your own recording. And you're going to start with the pen on one piece of paper. When you hear me rise, you're gonna go up on your piece of paper. And when you hear me Go down, yogurt also going to go down in pitch as well. And if you do this for quite a few sentences or even a good thirty-seconds of text, you'll actually start to probably notice some sorts of patterns on when I go up and when I go down. You might even want to add in where you think a thought finishes or a sentence finishes. Because usually these patterns tend to happen nearing the end and at the beginning of a sentence. Another technique that I like to use is looking at lab and effort. Now this kind of comes into my work I do with actors, but lobbing was a practitioner who came up with these efforts. We're not gonna go into too much detail about them today. But some of the efforts you can see here, you can play with speaking through the days of the week while, for example, pushing an object or pressing something. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And you can sort of feel what effect that has on my voice and how heavy, how direct and how sustain that sound is compared to if I was to flip my words like this, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And you can tell that I'm immediately going lighter, quicker and a little bit more sporadic. So if the British accent had a lab and efforts, or if you're accident had a love and effort, Which one do you think it melts between the biggest things I want you to bear in mind when it comes to the British accent musicality is that falling intonations tend to occur at the end of a sentence or a thought. Whereas a rise at the end of a sentence or a thought tends to be when I'm asking a question or maybe I'm not quite sure about what I'm saying. For example, Tom went to the beach yesterday, didn't he? Tom went to the beach yesterday, didn't he? You can hear my falling intonation and you can hear me go upwards afterwards. In terms of lobbying efforts, I like to see the British accent is almost like a glide. Tom went to the beach yesterday, didn't he? Towards the beach yesterday, didn't he? A very soft accent that's tends to be very sustained and we tend to elongate all of our words together. In fact, one action you can look at, which at a sharp and J Hayden Rouse users is this figure of eight where I'm just going to bring my hand like this. And as I go up, I will go up and as I go down, I'll go down. And this tends to help with the consistency of the smoothness and the elongation. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And you can play around with that. Remember you're coming from a different starting point to anyone else. So first figure out what your intonation might be like and how does that differ to the British accent? Maybe the intimations are the same, that maybe the lab and effort you find is a little bit heavier or a little bit sturdier or Elizabeth more sustained or even quicker. But try to find at least one difference between your own musicality and the British accents musicality. And use that as your advocate for the next few lessons. And the beautiful thing about this musicality is that depending on the context, depending on the day, it can absolutely change. So make sure that you're finding something that works for you right now. But it's not bible. You can keep exploring it. And we'll talk more about how you can then embody this musicality in the next lesson. 12. Lesson 10: Embody it!: Hello and welcome back to another lesson on mastering the British accent. So last time we talked about the musicality and now I want to continue from that in talking about how we can now embody the accent. First of all, what do I mean by embodying and accent? Well, an axon can be quite easy to theoretically understand, especially if you have a history of understanding the vowel chart, phonetic symbols, which I find a lot of my clients and students already do. But it might not feel quite authentic to them because they haven't practiced where that sound sits in their body. What I mean by that is it's a cerebral understanding and intellectualized one rather than one that's connected to your breath, connected to your diaphragm, and connected to your sense of self. So how can we start to embody and accent and make it feel like it's coming from our own bodies when we might not necessarily have been around that axon for our whole life. Well, the first step is to listen and to observe, just like you've been doing. Really tried to engulf yourself in the British accent, to watch as much media as you possibly can and just start to notice even the cultural habits that the British accent might obtain because you cannot separate accent from culture. For example, I spoke about how the oval posture is really quite relaxed. That can also be known as the stiff upper lip example that we have in England. Then as you're trying out the accent for yourself, I want you to really key into this sensory genus of it. Even though you might have an intellectual and theoretical understanding, your body needs to start understanding the accident for itself, for example, is there a texture that reminds you of the British accent? For example, maybe it's a stone or maybe it's a feather. Maybe there's something that you can hold that will help you feel like you're learning and almost absorbing the British accent for your bones. For example, with a general American accent, I tend to find that as a heavier accent. For example, if I speak like this, it feels more direct and it feels more sustained than my own. I might pick an object like a stone or rock, something that feels hard on my skin. Whereas for the British one, it is a lot lighter. So maybe I'd pick something like a feather or something that I can wave around to help me with this love and effort, then it's important to try to practice. There's embodiment in different contexts. Can your accent Hold up when you're speaking in different situations? What does anger look like for this accent? Can you find a clip of a speaker with this accent who's speaking quite quickly and angrily and uphold it. Remember that as long as you're going back to this texture, to this felt sense of what the accent feels like and where it comes from for you. Then you should be able to stick to it when you're in different emotional contexts as well. Finally, remember to try to be sensitive when you are embodying an accent because like I said, you cannot really detract accent from its culture. There is a reason people speak like that. It is a historical and really, really sensitive thing to a lot of people do try to respect it when you are taking it on. But also with that in mind, remember there's a thin line between being sensitive and being tentative. We want to be sensitive. However, if we are to tentative and we allow ourselves to cross over that line, then really you're going to restrict yourself. You're going to feel unconfident. You're going to feel tight. That's going to take away so much of your progress in those articulation and release exercises. So ultimately, once you've done all of the theory, we now need to play with it with the body, find ways to try to move with the accent, allow the musicality to hit you. Whether that's through textures, whether that's through listening to different musics, whether you think of it as a color, anything that's going to start to D intellect realize it and start to feel like it's coming from your voice. You can even play with breadth and making sure that your breath is dropping nice and low. And if you need more advice on that, remember I am an accent and voice coach, so you can always reach out and ask for 15-minute consultation with me if you think that'll be helpful. 13. Lesson 11: Practice and integration: Okay, so welcome to another lesson in firstly, congratulations, you have gotten to the point in the course where you have finally gone through all of the units with what you're starting places, where your accent is coming from and where you need to take it in order to embody the British accent. Congratulations to you, that is huge. I cannot wait to see all of your workbooks, but before we finish up, I wanted to finish with some practice tips and how to integrate this into your day to day because you'll find all of this is really about muscle memory. And if you're not repeating a lot of exercises and if you're not going about it the right way, then you can see progress really start to stagnate. My first it is listen as much as possible. British films, British YouTubers. Anyone who has that Southern English style accent, good resources that you might find helpful. Or on dialects archive.com, you can find lots of Southern English ones on that, as well as my YouTube channel where I always talk about different references and I have loads more free content all on how to figure out the British accent as well as other accents as well. Because actually you can even use my own YouTube videos as reference points and as a way to listen to the British accent to help you start to integrate it. Next, tried to practice in a really structured way. It's so easy to just sit down and think, okay, I'm going to practice this accent, but maybe you should try and incorporate a specific thing. For example, is it going to be the British? Are, is it going to be the British teachers? Is it going to be smoothing it out and thinking of that figure of eight, is it going to be your price sound or a specific face or lexical set? Really try to treat yourself as an athlete just like an athlete wouldn't go into a training session with no plan, tried to plan out your own acts and ideas. And if you need more help with that, I also have PDFs which will really detailed lots of different templates that you can do as well. Another tip is to find a friend and practice with a partner. We never quite hear ourselves the way we actually sound. So taking the chance to have someone else's advice and have someone else's ears can be so helpful and also make the process so much more enjoyable when you are practicing. And lastly, it's really important to be patient with yourself, be kind to yourself. This process takes a lot of time, a lot of energy, but as long as you keep it up with the thought of, let's be curious and let's explore that. I promise I've seen how much progress can be made just through that mental shift, rather than seeing it as something I have to do in order to do X, Y, Z. Actually see it as a quest, see it as an adventure, see it as something that you want to do. It's going to make the process so much more easier. And finally, if you did need more help and how to integrate it into your day to day life. When you've practiced on friends and family and even just buying milk, then you can also reach out to myself as I have a free 15-minute consultation length that will be linked somewhere at, as well as all of my social media. I would love to hear from how you've found this course and any more tips I can give you in order to integrate the British accent into your schedule. And even if you wanted some private one-on-one sessions, we can go through specifically which sounds I think you need help with. And we can do that just in one session if you do it alongside this course, remember that it's all muscle memory. You have to practice in order to keep this up. But there are so many different ways that you can do so 14. Congratulations and Wrap up: Hello and congratulations, you have reached the last lesson of the course of mastering the British accent, and I hope you have found it really, really valuable. We've covered a lot of ground over the last 14 classes, 13 causes. And so I just thought I'd make a quick roundup video going through what we've covered in the first lesson, we looked at your starting place. So what is your oral posture? Making some brief first impressions on the consonants that stand out for you, your vowel sounds and your musicality. Because remember you have to know your own starting place before molding it. We then delved into the specifics of the British accent, specifically the overall posture and the continents. Thinking about R's, L's teaches case. And then we started to explore the vowel sounds, both monotones, diphthongs and the Caitlin sentences. Really trying to delve out that workbook that you've been doing for your project. And then we looked at the musicality of the British accent, discussing how smooth it is, how long it is, how this figure of eight and this elongation can really help you think of that bigger picture. And finally, we looked at how consistent practice and muscle memory is really what's going to help you with your progress of the British accent. And my biggest tips and tricks on how to integrate it into your everyday speech. I hope that these lessons have been helpful and informative for you along your journey. Remember to practice regularly, be patient with yourself and see it as a request, an adventure, if you like, into not just the British accent, but really your own instrument as well. Don't forget to post your projects on the project gallery and share your progress with Skillshare. There's a great community on here and I would love to also see all of your projects and how you get on as well. If you have enjoyed the class, please do leave a review to let me know what your favorite parts were and follow me on Skillshare because I might make lots more courses, as you can probably tell, go into so much more detail on every single one of these topics. So if you would like to see that, do let me know and thank you so much for taking this class. Best of luck with your journey, and I'm sure I will see you very soon. Well done everyone, Bye.