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 about rhoticity in a British accent.
Here's a video explaining everything, or just keep reading below.
Rhoticity is the subject of when and when not to pronounce the letter R.
Some speakers are what you call rhotic speakers. Rhotic speakers follow a very, very simple rule, which is, when they see an R, they say an R. Many speakers in Scotland do this. Many speakers in Ireland, in the West Country (southwest coast of England) and many people in North America are rhotic. It's it's very prevalent in many speakers, in many different languages and accents.
However, some speakers are non-rhotic. These speakers only say an R if it is followed by a spoken vowel.
Standard southern British English speakers are non rhotic, so they only say an R it's followed by a spoken vowel.
It's not good or bad to be one or the other. They are just different.
Consider the R's in a sentence like this:
Rebecca ran quickly through the flowers and around the river to catch Rover, her manic dog.
Based on the non-rhotic rule, which of the R's would not be said?
Those that would be silent in this accent are as follows:
Rebecca ran quickly through the flowers and around the river to catch Rover, her manic dog.
To avoid an R the thing to really pay attention to is to keep the tip of the tongue down behind the back of the bottom teeth.
The only exception is for speakers who might raise the back of their tongue in the back of their mouth to make an R, which means that the tip is already down (French speakers do this). The challenge for those speakers is not only to have the tip down, but also to have the back of the tongue down, and then you will successfully avoid the R sound.
A quick way to avoid an R is to think of words that do not end with R's then compare them to those that do.
For example, compare a word like 'tuna' to the word 'tuner'.
For rhotic speakers the ends of these words are pronounced differently because of the R.
But for non-rhotic speakers, they are the same - the tongue tip is down for both. This means that the ends of the words rhyme with one another.
By the way, if you are actually interested in how speakers of this accent pronounce R's that would be said in this accent, I have any post and video about that here.
In the video above you can listen and copy along to me pronouncing the following sentence in the the standard southern British English accent.
Rebecca ran quickly through the flowers and around the river to catch Rover, her manic dog.
If you are rhotic it will probably feel as if you're not pronouncing the word correctly when you are trying to avoid the R, and that's normal.
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):
Here we are. Our fourteenth anniversary party under the dark blue skies.
Cover your supper Matthew, your father worked hard to make it.
The more we argue the further you push us apart.
It is far worse to endure this hardship than I think you understand.
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.
Comments