There is no such thing as a 'British' accent as there are loads of different accents in the UK.
This post will focus on pronunciation in the standard southern British English accent, which is a variant of what's known as RP, or received pronunciation. It's the accent that you'll see transcribed in the Oxford or Cambridge dictionaries.
Today, you'll learn how to pronounce R in a British accent.
Here's a video explaining everything, or just keep reading below.
There are many, many, many types of Rs around the world in different languages and in different pronunciation systems, but we're only going to focus on this one.
In this accent, speakers curve the tip of the tongue up in the front of the mouth, so the tip is pointing towards the roof of the mouth, or what's known as the gum ridge, or the alveolar ridge. Then they part and slightly pout the lips, just a little bit. The sound travels over and around the tongue.
There is actually a growing trend for people to touch their lower lip against their upper front teeth. I don't tend to encourage people to do that, because it blocks the sound as it travels out. So the way I'm going to teach you is to have the lower lip down a little bit.
The kind of pitfalls that you might fall into is having the tongue too close to the roof of the mouth. Many speakers from the Indian subcontinent tend to pronounce Rs this way. Your tongue might actually be touching the roof of your mouth, albeit very briefly. Many accents and languages in Europe tend to do this.
Or the back of your tongue might be all the way up in the back of your mouth, touching what's called the uvula right in the back part of the palette. Speakers who tend to do that are particularly from France. There are some accents around the world that do that, but particularly Parisian speakers tend to do that.
So there's lots of variation. And all we really need to know is, what are we doing with the lips? And what are we doing with the tongue in order to sound this way? So pout the lips a little bit, have the teeth a little bit apart, and then curl the tongue up, almost like it's a wave that's going back into the back of the mouth.
You hear it in words like (listen and repeat in the video above): rip, ran, railway, rocket, crash, scream, marry, carry, worry.
It's all about curving the tongue up and pouting the lips slightly, not having the tip too far up and not having the back of the tongue high at all. The back of the tongue is low, just during the sound itself. Before I share with you some sentences that you can practice with, it's just worth knowing that I have a free course on the standard southern British English accent.
Here are some sentences (listen and repeat in the video above):
The road we live on is right next to Reading train station.
Ralph is always running late. His unpredictability is infuriating.
Chris is the through the really problematic phase of his treatment.
Would you put that furry grey cat outside the orange basket.
I’ve been brought the wrong files. Who is responsible?
Here's a link to the free course to learn the standard southern British English accent.
Written by...
Ashley Howard MA, a UK voice coach with 18+ years experience, can help you speak the way you've always wanted to speak.
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