But that works even in many other countries, maybe most of them. For example I am Czech and I also always think about where that person is from by their accent, when a person from Moravia is trying to speak in common Czech, it's pretty annoying, or Slovak trying to use Czech colloquial words, it should be illegal. 😀 Or sometimes you focus more on a question if that person is Ukrainian or Russian more than on what that person is actually saying. 😀
Not just socio-economic status. Location too. Growing up in Birmingham, with family around the city and throughout the black country, I used to completely weird people out by telling them where they were from, down to a few streets.
It's not only accents. Just reading your one sentence - and your unaccountable failure to capitalise the 'B' in British - tells me that you almost certainly do your shopping from Iceland, you greasy peasant!
All you’re doing is speaking English, you wouldn’t fool any person in the United Kingdom. You sound too false and almost robotic! most people in the UK are just too polite to tell you to your face that you don’t sound English or British!
You actually sound incredibly German- like a very good English speaker who is native to German. Have no idea how you managed that. It’s definitely the the staccato. Seriously uncanny.
I think German comes from the top of the mouth whereas 'normal' English is more from the bottom. Try doing a German accent and notice where in your mouth you are making the sound.
Yep...he sounds German regardless of what accent he tries to adopt. He sounds like a German who moved to Britain as a teenager and learnt most, but not all, of the accent. He doesn't sound British to British people.
@@didrikmesicek4825 Yeah same. I'm from the midwest US and usually besides a few specific words (progress, eh, about), a lot of Canadians are usually indistinguishable from the midwest US accent but he doesn't sound like that to me. He sounds like english isn't his native language even when speaking in his original accent for some reason which probably translated over to when he was attempting an English one.
I think it's a feature of his Canadian accent. The likeness to northern Europe is unsurprising, given immigration history of Canada. Northern US states have similar Germanic or Scandinavian features.
Yes, the sounds aren't quite right...like they're too tight in places and the vowels sound off somehow, but it's hard to explain. Maybe if he tried doing a really good impersonation of an English actor it would help? so he has something very specific to refer to.
Actually I thought the sounds were pretty close, it was his rythm that was off. I noticed the same effect when at school during lessons about public speaking. We're taught to avoid using words like "er" or "like" or "ya know" or any other space fillers. A lot of people have trouble keeping those out of their speach and, as a result, develop a rather disjointed rythm as they're concentrating so hard on what they're saying. It just doesn't sound like they're speaking with a natural flow. In fact pretty much exactly this chap. The South African accent sounds similar to me.
I think its because he's accent sounds 'rough' to say, like the words stop abruptly. Whereas most english accents are smooth to the point where it may sound like slang. 10:30describes it better after finishing the vid
I think your accent sounded more South African than Dutch, but there is obviously a connection between the two. South African English has the more clipped vowels of RP English.
I think it sounds more like a German person who learned British English than a Dutch person because the shorter vowels and word spacing sound more similar to German than Dutch
Paul’s regular Canadian accent sounds a bit German to me. All very clipped and precise. This is maybe why Paul’s RP accent sounds German/Dutch/Swedish.
Really? Where are you from? He absolutely sounds Canadian to me! When he slipped up with the RP accent, the errors still came across as North American, although difficult to place exactly because they were very short slips.
@@ChristianJiang No, but i wouldnt explicitly call it foreign sounding either. He just sounds like he's forcing some of the sounds out, stiff or robotic. As other commenters pointed out he could be purposely emphasizing his pronunciations to sound as neutral as possible, which, just like the RP examples in this, sounds uncanny to those who natively have that accent.
@@technicolourmylesHe has a very staccatto way of speaking and it doesn't sound like the more usual Canadian accent with which I am familiar, maybe he's Quebecois, that would make sense because that accent is totally different from non French speaking Canada.
First impression is I keep hearing a South African twang to your accent but it’s one where you sound like you’ve also lived in the UK for several years.
I am from Germany and when I discovered your channel many years I ago thought you were a non-native speaker of English probably Danish or from another Scandinavian country. The way you shorten vowls and the stiff way you pronounce sentences also came through slightly when you were speaking in the RP accent.
Yeah, I'm a native English speaker from the US, and I thought he was not a native speaker when I first found his channel. My husband (a German) still thinks he sounds weird, for the same reasons you listed. He has an unusual cadence to his speech, like you mentioned, and it definitely was still there when he was trying to affect the British accent. I think it probably threw people off. I think his parents are Dutch or Danish, so I do wonder if that's why he has such an odd cadence.
RP is actually that high-pitch clipped accent developed especially for the radio. It was never the natural accent of any group of people (not even the Royal family) but it did develop into the later BBC accent, which became contiguous with a generalised middle-class accent and more recently with Standard Southern British. As for the queen and now the king, that family and aristocrats in their circle have an accent all of their own. Langfocus guy is a Canadian, and like many North Americans he confuses RP and "BBC"
@@DrWhomI know, but to the average teenager who has never heard of RP, calling it the BBC news accent is the quickest way to make them understand what you mean. Kids on live chat are not going to sit around for your lecture.
@@DrWhom RP wasn't deliberately designed. It developed naturally during the 19th century in south-eastern England: th-cam.com/video/OMEf9AqI-b0/w-d-xo.html
@@MB-st7be I think anyone who's interested in language, or British accents, knows what RP is. If somebody asks, you can explain it with the BBC newsreader idea, although the BBC start allowing... accents!... into their serious programmes a couple of decades ago. So they might not even get that reference. Good, RP needs to die. It's a horrible accent, sounds ugly, and was created from snobbery anyway.
@@DrWhomI heard that 'Received Pronunciation' was what they taught you to speak when one entered the Public School system. As only very wealthy people can generally afford to goto Public School, the accent is associated with the upper classes but, seriously, noone really speaks it. If they did, they'd get a good kickingm
One of the biggest issues ive noticed is that you dont quite use words and phrases that a british person would use. You just try to adjust the vowel sounds to what a british speaker would do.
I've noticed that happens a lot when Americans are writing British characters too (and presumably happens the other way around as well). I was watching a show on Netflix the other day that's set in London with English characters but all of the dialogue sounded so off because the phrasing and vocabulary were what an American would use, with the odd "wanker" "bloody" and "mate" thrown in. I looked up the writers and they were American. Doesn't feel natural even when the accents are fine.
Yeah. Like, you'd probably never hear an American say something like, 'Right, gonna have a bit of a wander over here. See what I can find'. Just an example of someone who's, well, going to have a wander somewhere. lol. 'It's rather a bit odd, that'. Americans tend to just throw a 'bloody hell' in it and call it a day.
Hi Paul, Brit here. I think you did a really good job in terms of pronunciation, I would say it was pretty accurate. What gave you away though I would say are two factors: 1) Sentence rhythm, we tend to 'eat' many of the words such that several words get mashed together like "do you know what I mean" becomes "dyunoewatamin" whereas you were clearly pronouncing individual words. Regional accents do this more but even people with neutral accents do this in the UK, so the way you spoke sounded a bit robotic, like someone learning English as a second language. 2) I actually think throwing in some regional pronunciations would have helped you, so a mostly RP accent with some South-East local accent features. This is because very few people in the UK really speaks in a pure RP, most will have some minor traces of a local accent even if they are middle class/posh. For example I'm from the East Midlands and the way I speak is very close to RP but pronounce certain words differently like 'path' as /paθ/ instead of /pɑːθ/ Overall good job and I look forward to seeing you attempt this accent plus other accents in the future
I thought it was good also, but I noticed that in the video, there was no mention of the (mid) central vowel (schwa). Native British speakers (in RP and many regional accents) use a schwa for almost every unstressed syllable.This distinguishes modern RP from the more clipped traditional RP that (to modern ears) sounds rather more like South African English. Thus for example "garage" with an unstressed second syllable can sound more like "garudj" than "garidj".
He gets better I think but I disagree that even his pronunciation is accurate. Like most attempts at UK accents, his vowels are all over the shop IMO (some spot on, some way off). And of course unlike the guy himself, I bet neither of us watching were really expecting people to call BS on his accent - sure, we can be a cynical bunch in the UK but English people especially have basically turned politeness into a combat sport, unless explicitly invited very few are going to enter into the potential social minefield of challenging a stranger about who they present themselves as. Not without being at least 3 pints deep anyway :). Still a good effort though, he gives it a proper go. (and no one has a "neutral" accent incidentally. RP uses a specific set of sounds, just like any other accent. Unlike the label's implication, there's no meaningful sense in which it's a "non accent" or "what happens when you take any regional elements out" and though it's _less_ region specific than many UK accents - because its "region" is effectively "posh" :) - it's still pretty closely associated with the south-east of England. As a related aside BTW, I used to live in Nottingham and a few of the Notts natives I worked with would insist they "didn't have an accent", a claim which I, as a _non_ Notts native, found absolutely hilarious :)
jeah. shust shrough een sum raindoem shite. there are sooo many REALLY strong accents in UK, that most people only recognize the one locally nearby and some generally well known ones (like that gosh darn brummie 😆)
@@anonymes2884 I think the reason it's considered 'neutral' is because although it is like you say associated with the south-east and originates from there, people all over the country speak a kind of RP. In Leicester where I'm from, having a "neutral" vs local accent is often a marker of whether you are from the middle/working class. I've met many people from the north who also haven't adopted the local accent, in fact only last week I was travelling in India, and met a guy from Newcastle who spoke in a very RP-like accent and only after some time and careful listening could I make out any Geordie accent features. But that's exactly my point, even people from posh backgrounds interact on a daily basis with people who speak with their local accent, and so they speak a version of RP with some traces of regional pronunciation. I imagine in the south, this takes the form of more (for example) cockney/essex/east anglian/west country influences on someone's accent.
@@harriehausenman8623although a lot wouldn't necessarily be able to distinguish a true Brummie accent (eg Ozzy) and a Black Country one (e.g. Adrian Charles)
Same here when I, a Dutch speaker from the Netherlands, spend time in Belgium. I don't do it all the time (only in certain situations), but the Dutch accent can be a little jarring to a Belgian in the same way an American accent can be to a Brit. It's just easier and prevents misunderstandings, questions, or even prejudice in some situations.
This was really cool! As a native Englishman the only things giving you away was overpronouncing the T sounds and the overall flow of speaking was slightly unnatural, however it was honestly an amazing attempt that probably would have fooled me at least for a while!
Yeah the "flow" sounded somehow a bit rigid, which is why it came across as a tad German to me too at times. Which makes sense as he's been studying individual words & sounds rather than adopting a language naturally via normal flowing conversation. Bloody impressive though
Exactly, even as an American I could tell the difference, this goes to show that immersion is the way to learn any language. As a matter of fact, I think that if I move there, the accent will just stick regardless at the end, like it or not 😂
@@LangfocusActually, as a South African who's lived in the UK for 2/3 of their life, your RP accent started bringing out my Saffa accent in my inner monologue haha! It's definitely the vowels - that's by far the biggest difference between my accent and a native Brit's. And I'm an English Saffa, so I don't even have the Afrikaans accent. The ɑ:, the ɔ:, and especially the ɪ exemplify the key differences between the British and Saffa accents, and I'd say, at least until 10:00, you were rocking the first 2 pretty often.
From about halfway through, in the segment with the voice coach, I actually forgot that your voiceover was you doing the accent because it sounded so natural! So cool to see the progression of honing it
@@Kivikesku Or by using more idiosyncratic (?) English, like saying "whereabouts" instead of just "where". It's a subtle difference, but it suggests you're saying "where in the UK" rather than "where in the world" without being obvious or deceptive.
The standard relaxed nearly RP is VERY difficult to fake. English is my first language but I found it easier to 'pick up' and switch off the local accent in the region of Spain where I used to live. When I was in London I was instantly conscious of other English as a first language speakers trying to fake it!
"Fake" is a very loaded term, admittedly. During the video there is an evolution in how I think about adopting an accent. And I think "faking" and accent comes across quite differently from *adopting* an accent with genuine intent.
@@Langfocus Agreed... Faking and genuinely trying to adopting and learning the accents are two different things... By faking we learn nothing.. But the later helps us to master any accent..
@Langfocus I just meant fake as in, it's not my authentic accent. When I'm in Spain, I can lean in or out of the Elx accent, so I understand the distinction you're making. You're not faking. You're learning how to make it.
@@LangfocusIt seems to me that you and Susana perhaps talked past each other because they assumed that you were aware of the normalcy of rampant accentism and classism in the British society. It needs no mention that we the linguists have no distinction except operational between a dialect and a language. Now, this is heart-wrenchingly painful to hear: "I just meant fake as in, it's not my authentic accent." What this means is that the societal pressure literally _forces_ people to _rescind their native language,_ a large part of their core authentic identity, and learn (adopt, fake, whatever) a different one. _Of course_ it feels fake-for it _is_ fake! This is really a terrifying situation. Your healthy self wants to reject this transplant. But if you refuse to cave in and keep yourself whole, you're in for a rough ride. You'll be unfairly judged who you are by your language. You might not get a job that you would otherwise get. You may be laughed at in your face _for speaking your native language, for being who you are!_ This is really a terrifying situation, and barely anyone even speaks out except for a few linguists-this is how deeply ingrained into the society fabric this aberration is. It shouldn't exist in the modern world. People do suffer from it daily, and it takes its toll on mental health. I touch on this in my longer top-level comment, if you wish to read it (although it's focussed more on how choosing SSE was setting you up for a failure of the experiment). We despise racism, at least pretend to scorn at sexism, but are absolutely fine with accentism. It's extremely ugly and plainly wrong. And languages keep dying out.
Paul, you don’t even sound Canadian. You have always sounded like you are not a native English speaker - I always thought you were Eastern European or something
I find this to be common in parts of Canada where French is spoken. When I went to Montreal I felt like I was in a very foreign country because people around me not only spoke french most if the time, but when they spoke English they sounded to me like English was very icy not their first language, but this wasn't true in Ontario
I'm definitely not French Canadian. I'm an Anglophone Canadian who barely says an unscripted word on his channel and always speaks extremely clearly for an international audience. That's pretty much it. This video is one of the few times I've said anything unscripted, and it wasn't in my own accent.
Excellent attempt! For a short time attempting to get it right, it's pretty good! Brits definitely are able to pick up different accents very quickly though, as one person already said because of economic status (lol - that's true) but also because British accents vary so much over short distances so our ears are trained to notice differences much more. There's a few things I noticed: Firstly, you speak with a hard attack, while British people tend to speak with a soft attack. Even RP. I think this is why some people are saying Germany/Eastern Europe too as that's common there. Secondly, it sounds like you're producing a lot of sounds from the front of your mouth, sometimes almost nasally (I don't think I'm describing this perfectly lol, but I believe North American accents typically produce more sounds from the front of the mouth/nose while Brits speak from the middle/back of the mouth) so this is another indicator that your accent isn't native. I remember learning once that because Brits speak more from the back of the mouth & Americans speak from the front, this means that typically it's easier for Brits to fake American accents than it is for Americans to fake British accents as it uses more facial muscles. Next, your vowels are just a touch shorter & not as wide as British & RP accents usually are. For example with the sentence "Go back about a thousand years," your pronunciation sounds like "goh buck abot a thohsund yihs" (I've exagerrated my spelling there because I don't know how to spell it properly phoenetically) whereas in RP it'd be more like "gOw bAck abOWt a thOWsund yIIHs". I suspect this is the Canadian slipping through a tad. Also, your U's are shorter & don't have that "y" sound just preceding in some words, which certain words in RP are pronounced with due to the Norman French influence. For example, with the words "during" & "neutral" your pronunciations are more like "dooring" and "nootral" whereas in RP they'd be pronounced as "dyuring" (or even "jyuring") and "nyootral". Similarly, with "Tuesday" an RP accent would say "Tyoosday" while a more typical Southern accent would say "chyoostday". Lastly, there's a lack of glottals in your speech. Your Ts & Ds sound like they're pronounced with your tongue softly touching just behind your top teeth, whereas in British or RP they'd either be pronounced more hard & clearly with the tongue clearly touching behind your top teeth, or with with the tongue not touching at all & producing a glottal stop in place of a T. These were some of the main things my own ears picked up on! I hope this didn't come off as "lecturey" at all, because I don't mean it to haha! Just identifying the things that I personally noticed & giving my best tips to help you nail it next time round ;) But anyway, great video! Very fun & educational. Thank you 🙏
Those are the things I noticed, as well. I'm in the US, and I've picked up on British accents over many years of consuming British media. I started to find I was talking to myself with an SSB accent so I leaned into it. A few years ago, I had a friend in Kent, and we'd chat by video every day. One time, she heard me mumbling to myself when I forgot the camera was rolling, and she was startled because apparently it sounded native. :D When I was a kid, I was moved from one part of the US to another, and kids would beat me up for my accent, so I learned to change it very quickly. Maybe that makes it easier for me to do this now. I certainly did well at pronunciation in Spanish class as a kid, and now when I travel to Canada or other parts of the US, I slip into the local accent within a day or two.
I think if you did the same challenge in your native accent and then asked people where you're from they would mostly give the same answers thinking it's a trick, assuming you're a foreigner who has learnt English well
This. He got shocked that a few didn't say British but he "felt off" - yes, but because he's actively asking them this question, making them think. Makes it even worse that he chose RP, a non-specific accent, which makes it very sketchy when he asks them. Compare if he imitated a typical Scottish accent and asked non-Scot Brits, it would be very easy to point out he's Scottish unless somebody's extremely aware of Scottish accents. But then even then, if he asked them where they think he's from, they'll start thinking it's a trick question and that he is not in fact Scottish, and if his Scots accent was far from perfect, the imperfections will be noticed when he asks them where he's from
Or.... Say "I've been working on a Canadian accent. Do you want to hear it?" Then speak normal. Now, ask "Did that sound pretty good?" Let them answer that (and focus on it first). They might ask you where you are from originally, then turn that around and have them guess. That's probably the only way to get a real authentic guess without making them think it's a trick.
I am a Francophone Canadian who lived in France for a few years in the 70's. I did my best to speak with the best international French accent I knew. At first many correctly identified me as Canadian quite quickly, though quite a few asked me if I was Belgian or Swiss. None doubted that I was a native French speaker, but many just couldn't place me. After a year in France, I had people guessing I was French, but from maybe Vendée or Normandy - I by then sounded to them French, but regional . By that time when I told people I was Canadian, I often got the reaction: `Mais vous n'avez pas l`accent`. (I then had to explain that I was not Québecois but Franco-Ontarian, because they thought Francophone Canadians were all Québecois, but that's another story). Loved this video.
When I lived in Geneva, I had a friend from Montreal (but somewhat more internationalized accent because of ethnic origins), whose French totally flummoxed the local Swiss. But rather than thinking she was from someplace faraway or exotic, they thought she was from Vaud, one canton over. 😂 When I went to France with my Québécoise wife, by contrast, everyone kept switching into English on her!
@@i.d.6282 As a Brit who was living and working in France (Pas de Calais) I was often quizzed by locals saying "you're not from round here are you?". They would sometime ask if I was from Belgium. When I told them I was English they were quite surprised as in Calais they have the day trippers from England who by and large never speak any French. After being there a couple of years I answered the phone at work and was told "You are picking up a Calaisian accent" which I was quite proud off until I found out that a Calaisian accent was similar to a West Country accent in England. Many years later when I was back living in the UK I had to go to Brussels on business. I got a cab from The Eurostar station to my hotel and and was chatting to the cab driver. He then asked me "What is the weather like in Paris?" When I explained I was English and came from London he was quite impressed. He said "I thouught you were French as you speak French very well." That made my day!
Your pronunciation was accurate, and the occasional Canadian pronunciation was not obvious. But your enunciation was more precise than that of the average speaker of modern RP with clear gaps between the words, perhaps a very short glottal stop at the start of each word, giving your pronunciation the feel of a German who speaks excellent English.
I kept getting flashbacks to mr Data in star trek. Technically the accent was mostly there but it sounded like a bunch of words in a row rather than someone speaking normally where it flows more.
I agree mastering the English accent glottal (or should I say glo'al) will go long way. The stronger the glottal the less posh you will sound and more "everyman". But usually only used in the middle or ends of words and the words themselves can be more slurred together. Like for isn't - just say isn' on its own, or isenit for isn't it. If if you really want to sound like a London teenager say innit!
@@jennymulholland4319 That's good advice except for the innit, I reckon. I think that would only make the rest of his speech stand out as something extremely different.
You’ve clearly put in so much work. The reason why people were guessing you were German is because of two features (a) your vowel reduction in unstressed syllables syllables is not as extreme as native speakers tend to have; and (b) there is a lot of hard attack at the start of words with an initial vowel. To sound more natural, there should be more liaison and less attack. But really impressive results!!!
I think it also has to do with his appearance, I don’t know how to explain why I think it but there’s something very German about it. Wait upon reflection during the writing of this comment, it’s because I think he looks very similar to Flula Borg
He needs hard attack in the middle of words not at the beginning. He does a lot of it to make himself clearer but we do it in the middle of words because it's how English is now spoken.
@@raylewis395 He probably also needs to take more care to avoid rhoticisation but to use r-linking. It's really hard for North Americans to properly deploy linking elements. Paul should practice "law and order". Even RP speakers pronounce it "lorenorduh".
You could try "faking" some regional UK accent, so that when you ask the "where do you think I'm from" question, people would more naturally think "where in the UK", since the standard RP does not really have a location to it.
This was my thought too - if I hear the RP accent my immediate thought is that the person is covering up another accent. A lot of English people of a certain generation and class learned RP to cover up less desirable regional accents, and most foreign speakers learn RP. It's not something that I think of as genuine in anyone.
Oh true. Hardly anyone has a natural RP accent, apart from the royals. The closest is probably that general southern English accent but even that is toned down from RP
Here are a few more factors to consider, Paul: 1) When one asks people where are we from, it is usually implied we're from somewhere else. Therefore, people will start trying to identify foreign accents. Or else, if the accent is ambiguous enough, they'll try to establish where else in the same country you might be from. 2) You have your own peculiar way of speaking, superimposed on your native Canadian accent. I think you do have a particularly distinct way of speaking, which must be contributing to your sounding foreign. Your way of speaking is such (to my non-native English speaker ears), that even if you asked Canadians where are you from, you seem likely to get same sort of answers (i.e. originally German or Swedish, etc.). 3) The way you speak is kind of terse (or "dry" as we would say in Catalan), plus you were slightly tense due to the effort you were putting in, all of which suggested some foreign ingredient. 4) Who are often perceived, portrayed, or imagined to be terse, and/or have a language that sounds terse? Germans, Fins, Swedes, etc. I guess, which might be why more than one person answered "German". 5) You also have body language to consider. How do you look and how your anatomy might even account for some features in your speech. Your mouth opening, your lips and jawbone are rather wide and flat. If native English speakers already seem to open their mouth very little to speak, you seem to do it even less. It seems as if you learned to speak in this particular way for some reason, to correct or compensate for something as a young boy. Did you have any speech issue as an infant? Anyway, I wanted to thank you for all your videos, which I enjoy so much. They are very interesting and well done, and you are very talented! Congrats and keep it up! Oh, this reminds me something else, regarding the guy commenting on your posh accent, and the language coach commenting on some heightened features of it, also regarding your mouth and prosody: 6) Remember the expression about having or keeping a stiff upper lip? You might be coming across as literally keeping it stiff. 😉 th-cam.com/video/cEA7cGtUTm0/w-d-xo.html
My thoughts exactly. If he asked me where he's from with how he normally speaks I wouldn't guess Canada because he doesn't really pronounce words in a stereotypically Canadian way. He has very sharp pronunciation which combined with his facial features and way of only moving his lower lip makes me think he may be Scandinavian. Brits typically have longer faces and seem to let their jaw hang open more which creates more movement and opening when speaking.
@@newbilong That question already marks the enquirer as not being British. If they were, they'd most likely use 'part of the country' or 'town', not 'city'.
As an English person who's grown up around posh RP speakers, cockneys, and people from all over the country and the rest of the world, your RP attempt definitely sounds like someone from North/Western Europe who has learned to speak British English really well. But honestly, even your native accent from Canada sounds a bit unfamiliar, although I'm less familiar with the various regional accents around Canada than the US or my home country they UK! The best way to pick up the accent would be to come and live here for a few years and really listen closely. Thing is nobody's going to correct you because it's incredibly rude and perhaps even bigoted to "correct" an accent unless asked to. Anyways keep it up Paul, great video as always, been watching your stuff for years at this point :) Cheers
Spanish native here, I speak english and portuguese on a native level, people never believe i'm not american/brazilian. I'm amazed you never used the word "cadence" in this video, I think it's the most important part of trying to actually achieve a regional accent.
Hey I've moved to the UK for uni and I've got to say -- you've given yourself a much bigger challenge than you might think! When he said you sounded "posh," he meant upper class (possibly an accent instilled by private education -- he was asking you to be throatier to inhabit that). And when the person said he was trying to figure out what part of the UK, that person meant that he wasn't noticing any regionalisations that would add authenticity. I'd pick a specific British accent to learn and have another go!
Hard to imagine for an American but the average Englishman/Scot probably speaks to someone who speaks "RP" a handful of times a year. It's just not common among the regular people unless you're mingling with aristocrats or wannabe middle class twats.@@FartSquirel
@@FartSquirel It's a very uncommon accent, and more of a learned accent than one associated with a region. When I lived in Germany an English lady that had been living there for 15 years sounded English to the locals in Swabia (a part of South Germany), but sounded Swabian to non-local Germans. Also a few Germans there spoke with such a good American accents (to my ear)! So you'd definitely stand more chance of fooling people if you chose a specific regional accent. In some parts of Britain, you'd also sound a bit strange if you spoke differently to other people your age. Where I'm from older people tend to have thicker regional accents than the younger generation.
@@lk-music Received pronunciation is the antithesis of a British accent. It was once adopted by much of the uk media ie radio, tv to sound non-regional specific.
@@FartSquirelKind of -- it's taught in grammar schools and often times the result of many people from different regions coming together in a single setting like a university. But it's so sterile as an accent that it cannot be associated with any region. Normally, regional mistakes would slip through the accent. It's definitely a sign of a specific education -- but not a posh private school. I agree with the teens in this video -- his accent sounded less RP and more like an international student who spent a short amount of time at a 'public' school before leaving midway through the acquisition of that accent
I think the reason people kept saying Germany or Eastern Europe (and at times I heard bits that sounded *almost* South African) is the clip you had. A lot of it was in the way you carried your speech and some of your consonant sounds. I also feel that some people unintentionally overstress RP - you have to fight the urge to sound like a 1950s housewife. Having said that, you did remarkably well. English accents are much harder to emulate than most would believe. EDIT: I wrote this about 2/3 the way through the video. After that masterclass, the flow of your speech improved *significantly*. There is the occasional lilt in there, but you clearly gained confidence in it. I would suggest thinking about pitch and inflection a bit more to fine-tune it. Again, you did exceptionally well and this was a cool experiment. Thanks for uploading!
Hi @Langfocus. Great video and very interesting. I'm a native British English speaker from the south of England and also trained as an ESL teacher. My advice to you would be to also focus on the intonation and rhythm of the way English is spoken in England and compare and notice the difference to how you naturally speak. If you actively listen out for the differences, I think it will help you to implement a more natural England English accent too. Would love to see a part 2 of this video.
This was a great video, and I think your attempt at an RP accent was a really good one! One thing that I think makes your accent stand out, even without placing you as a non British speaker, is the lack of elision in your speech. You've got a lot of the sounds correct, but the diction is too formal to sound genuine. It comes across like you're reading from a script rather than talking comfortably. Conversational English in Britain, even amongst the poshest RP speakers, sees a lot of words run together, and sounds change based on the adjacent words. Looking forward to hearing how far you can take this accent!
You mentioned this at the beginning but, sorry to say, I think you made it almost impossible by choosing RP. The problem is not many people speak that way in the UK and so British would struggle to place you in a city or region unless it is perfect. I'd love to see you try a more distinctive regional accent like Geordie or Cockney. These are so recognisable to a Brit that I think they would hear the key sounds and overlook any small faults. Actually, you could try a Devon/Somerset accent because it's rhotic like your native accent. I believe it was actually the "RP/Standard/Posh" accent of it's time! Which is crazy because it's now the UK's "country" accent, far from posh.
i know i’m late but i’m certainly sure that if you were to ask more questions about yourself, asking them how old they think you are, or how tall, etc. and then where they think you are from. Your idea is quite clever but with more questions like them, it would probably make it less suspicious that you want them to say the UK. Great video!
@@LangfocusI second this recommendation. Dr Geoff Lindsay comes from a linguistics background, so he explains stuff differently from a vocal coach with a background in theater. His videos really go deep into the English phonetics.
The accent was too clipped and robotic. It didn’t sound natural. You also did not include linking R which really makes you sound more fluent. You sounded AI generated
That tension comes from his tight jaw. He's got to loosen up, relax. But even if you watch him speak in his native accent, you can see he keeps a very closed mouth.
To be honest, I always thought you had a scandinavian accent (or other european accents) even when you spoke in your own Canadian way. It's pretty cool actually! I think the way you pronounced certain consonants made me think that
People like Ria Lina, who went to an American school in Netherlands, can sound American or Canadian when they speak English, even if they've never been to either country. I've never been outside Canada for more than 8 days at a time and was told once that I sound European.
Same here. I am American, and I have always thought you sounded like English is your first language. I would have guessed you were originally Scandinavian or German. Most Canadians sound American to me, although I have met some French Canadians that sound different. Maybe it has to do with where in Canada.
I have been told that Canadian vowels are closer to Dutch vowels than any other accent of English. He was deliberately trying to change them to RP, but maybe a fake RP accent with a Canadian accent behind it sounded like a native Dutch speaker? The rhythm is wrong though.
@@toomuchjamI think most English text books used in European schools are based on British pronunciation and vocabulary, but people are exposed to American accents a lot through media, advertising, music etc, so they try to americanise their "school English". There's also the impression that rhotic pronunciation sounds more native and helps gloss over a foreign accent. (It doesn't, but people think that)
Paul didn't sound anywhere near posh. I thought he'd get to that point after mastering the sounds but nope. His intonation didn't change at all, he just slowed down a bit
That one kid nailed it when he said what city are you from, even RP speakers have regional inflections, if some one is speaking perfect RP they are not a native speaker
Ive been told I have a neutral English Accent that doesn't even sound like RP. I can go somewhere in the UK and I find myself slipping into their accent!...It can be very embarrassing and slightly unnerving tbh and I have to concentrate not to do it!
This was probably the most interesting experiment ever addressing accents and their subtleties. Thank you for such a good insight on how to go about this!
Great video, thanks. As a non native speaker of Portuguese and living in Portugal for 22 years, I’m always happy when people ask me where in Portugal I come from (not from which country). Keep the great work. I appreciate it for years.
it make so much sense thinking about it that you came across as german/dutch/swedish, because those people tend to learn uk english over american english. so hearing someone who has learned an rp accent would usually mean those groups. very interesting.
Very interesting video, thanks. As an RP speaker myself, my impression is that you did do very well, but I could also tell even without seeing the process of what you were doing that it "wasn't quite right". As an aside, your own native accent is interesting, because it doesn't sound like most Canadian accents that I've heard, it must be something regional I'm not too familiar with. You are giving off with your "fake RP" accent, a kind of German-who-has-lived-in-the-UK-a-long-time vibe, in that it's _almost_ perfect, but perhaps a bit too clipped or staccato for RP (in the way that German is quite a staccato language). Whilst RP is also clipped in the end consonants in particular, it also _flows_ and is actually fairly slow, so your river analogy perhaps works on that level. Your accent coach I think definitely helped you, but one thing I noticed from the clips of the videos that you showed in your prep work before that - and I do appreciate that those were probably just a small sample - is that most or all of the clips you showed were of _female_ RP speakers. Bear in mind is that men and women speak differently in subtle ways, even disregarding the amount of bass that gender difference on average brings. That might be why you didn't quite have that resonance that one of the listeners was looking for. As a man, listening to male RP speakers more will I think help you. One thing I noticed is that most of your British listeners were (a) very young (teenagers and early 20s) and (b) non-RP speakers themselves. RP is actually getting quite rare in the UK nowadays, especially in younger generations; I'm in my forties and went to a private (public) school, which helped solidify the RP, as that was the standard there. Most "Gen Z" youngsters will not know it's called "RP" (or that RP stands for Received Pronounciation), the Queen to whom it is also attributed passed away over a year ago and even the BBC consciously tends to use more regional accents now for its presenters. You might try calling it "James Bond English" (by which I mean the James Bonds after Sean Connery!) if people are struggling to understand what you mean by RP. It's why they sometimes reach for "posh" when trying to describe how you talk. We also have to remove some of the unconscious bias that perhaps was introduced by your question: "Based on how I'm speaking, where do you think I'm from?" immediately subconciously introduces the concept to the listener than you might not be what you are portraying yourself to be, then they might subconsciously look for other cues - including how you look. If I had not known you are Canadian, based on your look, I would have said German or Scandinavian - and I don't know perhaps that is in your heritage somewhere. Perhaps you would have scored better if this has been audio interviews rather than video.
It was fascinating listening to your progress. I'm what you might call a native RP speaker and I think a lot of your later speech in this video, especially in the conversation clips after your running water visualisation, was spot on. Something I found particularly interesting was that in the immediate aftermath of your session with the vocal coach, when you were focused on the running water idea and a different 'jaw feel', I thought you were beginning to develop a South African accent. You definitely succeeded in no longer sounding like Paul from langfocus though. You clearly worked hard at this and given that we English tend to be highly skilled at detecting imposter accents I think you should definitely take it as a win if we detect that something doesn't sound quite right but we can't tell you what. Thanks for this video and all the other great content in your channel.
As someone from England you did a pretty good job aiming at the RP accent, however I can't say I've ever ran into many people with an RP accent in real life so maybe not the best accent to aim for.
Yeah, fair point. Our main point of reference would be older royal media. We would never know what it's actually like to hear someone talking like that.
There's another thing that I'm not sure anyone has mentioned yet, but for English people specifically (and probably people from other UK countries) we would rarely describe ourselves as being "from the UK", especially when talking to someone else from here. I would say "I'm English" more than "I'm from England", and I'd hardly ever say I was from the UK.
I'm from western Canada and, when I first found your channel, I thought English was your second language and that you spoke it very well. It surprised me to learn you also are from Canada, and in the west.
That was brilliant. You sounded much more natural during that last interview. Using the flapped 't' in common words like 'gotta' and 'better' is natural for lots of southern English speakers in fast speech and no one will bat an eye if you use the vowel in 'cat' for a word like 'ask' instead of the usual RP vowel as a very large number of British accents do that too. We're used to hearing mixed accents so don't worry too much about that. I think you need to use a less open schwa because that certainly contributes to your sounding German 😂 Your O in 'go' is sometimes very High-RP so it would be good to work on a more true English O in the diphthong instead of the textbook /eu/. The only other thing I'd say is the final T sounds. Less aspiration or even doing an unreleased T is better than saying it too clearly! Amazing effort though! I'd give it an 8/10 for sure but I'm northern so I have less experience with hearing the Modern RP accent 😁 Love the channel, Paul ❤ xxx
Fascinating as ever, Paul. My natural dialect is traditional RP, but as a child I slipped in and out of "Sahf London" as the situation required. I learned German as an adult and, surprisingly, I am accent-free - only the sometimes wobbly grammar gives me away. My approach to accent in either English and German is completely different from the deconstructive and analytical approach you take. I just reflect what I hear. If I want to imitate a regional accent in either English or German, I just think of a speaker I know well and imitate their speech. I have no idea how I do this. Keep up the good work! John
This is what I do too, I prefer an analytical approach only regards to writing and grammar. Also it's rather useful to watch the face and mouths. I can do a reasonable enough Oop North impression thanks to watching Christopher Eccleston interviews so much. But more impressively, I managed to drop my native Standard West American for a Classic Southern Drawl..just to avoid Napoloen Dynamite comparisons. It worked.
My home accent (Medway) borrows a lot from the "Sahf London" type and my friend here up north makes fun of me all the time when I say brown or house or round.
What accent are you considered to have in Buckinghamshire? You are 30 miles from London. But you dont have an Essex accent. Is your accent interchangeable with London? Do you say 'yeah' at the end of every sentence? that is something I see a lot of .
@@bunjijumper5345 im from buckinghamshire and i'd just say people speak with a very general standard southern accent, nothing too special sadly- also i think it depends on the person whether or not they say "yeah" at the end of every sentence, not really an accent/dialect thing imo
This was a great video. You also have a distinct voice, so I was somewhat surprised that the quality of your voice changed so much when putting on the RP accent. And it was interesting to see how much of an accent is more than just the sounds themselves, but the vowel lengths and how relaxed your mouth is (pause).
I think you were really close in the last clip. I am an English speaker learning French and have noticed how the French speak at the front of their mouth with their lips rather than using the deeper sounds that come from the back as in English. I think that’s what I can hear in your accent. Your definitely right about the flow of sound as you speak - working on that would help. But honestly, your English is so good, why worry! Most of us, especially the English, are hopeless with languages! What you’re doing is amazing!
Hey Paul, I have followed you about 10 years and this was one of the most interesting videos you've made. Accents are very interesting thing. My native language is Finnish and our language has many accents or maybe they can be called as dialects. They are very strong that way that a person can live in another part of the country than they are originated, and even after decades it is often hearable where they originate. I am quite fluent in English but of course I have foreign accent. Sometimes foreign people have told me that I and other Finns sound "slightly American". At school we are taught "plain Oxford English", but in our country tv series, movies etc. are not dubbed but have subtitles and we hear the original speech. And because of that we Finns have heard a lot more American English than British in our lives. Of course that is the case with the internet too. I am sure it has a strong effect.
Someone else said you sounded staccato and that's it. You can learn the sounds but you have to also learn the delivery. Would love to see you continue accent challenges. Particuarly an urban accent from the UK and Ireland.
Amazing video. Thank you for making this. As an English man, it's quite interesting seeing a Canadian put so much effort into imitating an RP accent. You did a very good job, but obviously as a native British person I could very clearly hear the inadequacies. I would love to see you try a more colloquial accent, such as a northern accent (Manchester or Yorkshire). Not many people actually speak with the accent you were trying to emulate.
Sounds distinctly South African to me - the aggressive consonants and enunciation, tension, inflections, and the way you say path and laugh. Even the pitch of the voice. I have SA relatives, so I know the accent quite well!
This was very entertaining, you ended up with a verg good German/Scandinavian accent. 😂 I have noticed something and I wonder if there could be something to it. I'm British but I have an unusual accent due to various factors but RP underlies it. I was born in Somerset, but had a Nanny from Bath, and speech therapy when I was very young. Then when I was 5 years old I moved to Lancashire and got bullied a lot for sounding "posh", and I couldn't understand the locals. At 18 years old I moved to Yorkshire for University where a lot of people believed I was native to Germany, and then at 20 I moved to Berkshire. Nowadays (at 30) if I ask a Northerner where I'm from they say the South, and if I ask a Southerner they say the North. After many years, at least people know I am British now! Anyway, I find it interesting that they mistook you for German with a little experience in RP, whilst people mistook me for German at an age where I also had little practise speaking but used RP as the base when I did (I was selectively mute until my mid-20s, possibly due to being autistic). Perhaps RP just sounds a bit odd when you have little experience of it. You should try again but with a local accent, and see what happens then. 😁
As a German native speaker and former student of English studies, I picked up the RP-pronunciation to a nearly perfect level after years of practicing. What plays a big role in picking up the British accent is mastering the intonation correctly. That’s even more difficult than learning how to pronounce in RP properly. As for instance, which vowel in a word is stressed shorter and which one is stressed longer. Also, stressing the consonants, low or mid or high pitch sound etc. In addition to that, depending on the length of a sentence, the rules can change quickly. What helped me the most was just keep on listening to British radio presenters on a daily basis for many years. Still, the reaction of BE native speakers is interesting since they get distracted by the fact that I don’t speak a particular local British accent but in RP.
This video has to be the gateway to a video on the Mid-Atlantic accent we used to speak with in North America! 🇨🇦🇬🇧🇺🇸 I would add that because English is spoken by so many non-native speakers in the form of ESL, we have become accustom to hearing a varied range of accents. This has lead to the avoidance in questioning one’s accent (or origins) in English, I believe. This phenomenon doesn’t apply to non-native speakers in less common languages, where native speakers are quick to apply their curiosity and question speakers on their accent.
Can resonate with that second point. Sometimes when I’m curious about where a non-native speaker of English is from, I shy away from asking because I wouldn’t want it to make them uncomfortable. It’s ironic because I myself am a non native speaker of English who moved as a child so have attained a fluency that’s native.
Paul, another great video! I can relate to it but in reverse! I listened to countless hours of RADIO when I moved to Toronto from Brazil in 1994 so that I would sound more "Canadian" - The effect was so good that when I went to U of T to ask about university applications, the secretary assumed I was a nice speaker! Oddily enough, I now have a little more of an accent now than I did 30 years ago! And I have lived here since then. Also, regarding your first question: I am Brazilian and my wife is Portuguese from the Azores. We learned each other's accents. We both taught Canadian Diplomats who served in Brazil, Portugal, and Moambique, and taught Potuguese at both Ottawa universities. She can emulate a Brazilian accent to the point people believe she's Brazilian but can't place her exactly within Brazil. She can talk like three different people and... yes, her body language and demeanor change from one to the other. I learned to emulate the European Portuguese accent and I can teach Portuguese using both general Brazilian and General European Portuguese accents and do a very good job. My own accent in Brazil is an almost extinct accent from the city of São Paulo, heavily influence by Italian immigrants. The accent is now a little closer to Rio de Janeiro Portuguese because of TV's influence since the 1970s. I learned how to imitate Rio's accent too, but they always realize I'm faking it. Finally, I learned how to talk extensively in my wife's native accent - The Micaelense Portuguese of the Island of São Miguel, Azores. It is quite different from every Continental Portuguese accent and all Brazillian accents too. And there are no accent coaches for it! So, I had to use the power of observation to master it! BTW, you should do a video on Portguese accents. It's quite fascinating!
The accent you used from about halfway through the video in the voiceover until the last chapter actually sounded really good. not necessarily accurate or very british, but soothing and enjoyable for lack of a better way of putting it. for example, 12:06 "imagery" was perfection. you do clip ending consonents though. just a bit later at 12:37 the way you said "accent" wasnt even close to how id imagine another british person saying it.
I think one of the biggest differences in dialects is the rhythm. Every lenguaje has a different rhythm, also there is the presence of a vowel sound that is use more, another thing is the "thinking vowel", some languages use the "a" sound, other the "e" sound and so on. You can sound more natural and local if you get the right rhythm and entonation, even if you are saying the word wrong is gona feel right, for example for me now, with the danish language, even if a say something wrong, because I aim the entonation and this other small details, sometimes they think I have a accent from a small island or a corner in denmark. I feel like in your case, the dominant vocals in Canada are the "a" and "e", but for the British accent is more like "o" and "u", also they have a tendency to lengthen vowels like in "sound" "pound", they sound for me more like "soouund" "pooouund", but in your case are shorter, more like a strike, is the same in how you end the words, you cut the word when ends, but they have the tendency to make the vowels longer.
he sounded like a baked private school boy, he sounds high af, and has possibly once heard multicultural london english and thinks he is doing that a bit but still sounds like he goes to eton, but he ain't speaking 'straightforward' like how much has he smoked lol
Great video! It made me think of three questions: 1) Have you done a video comparing American and Canadian accents? 2) Have you done a video comparing the various Canadian accents? 3) I've seen many older movies and documentaries (especially from WW2) where some Canadians spoke with a distict British accent. Can you discuss the linguistic background of that phenomena?
I once achieved a near-native accent of English, when I spent a few months actually living in Britain. I don't sound like a native speaker anymore, because a lot of what made me sound more British was simply imitating people around me. Since getting back to my home country, I've had fewer opportunities to practise with native speakers, which is why my accent is now fluctuating between RP and mid-Atlantic (sort of British with a few Americanisms mixed in). I did keep my British accent for a few years though, RP with a few elements of regional Oxfordshire, and was sometimes asked by Brits where in Britain I was from because they couldn't quite place my accent. I count that as a win.
As I'm sure has been pointed out already, your starting point is one in which you speak with impeccable, almost robotic enunciation. That is very helpful for all your videos where you try to explain linguistic concepts to us. But it's likely a big part of what your test subjects were picking up on and describing as less colloquial or too formal.
Yes, this is a good point. I remember wondering if he was a native English speaker when I first watched a video because his prosody is reasonably unusual.
I am English and pretty good at accents and lived in the US for 10 years and had friends from NY and Texas. I remember going to a party in the US and did a southern accent all night and nobody new I was English. When I spoke my native tongue the Americans thought I was Australian! I think you sound Scandinavian to me.
Your observation about people who learn authentic pronunciation is very interesting. Cultural immersion vs. observation and such. I'm an English speaker from America, and I learned Spanish in college, but it wasn't until I spent a semester in Spain that I learned to speak it decently well. I was very fascinated by the country around me and felt deeply connected to it. Spanish speakers know immediately that I'm not Spanish, but once in a classroom in America, one of my students from Colombia heard me speak Spanish and commented that I had an accent. As in, my Spanish was different from the Spanish she was used to, not that it was off or lacking. It felt pretty good to hear that. Best wishes to all the language learners out there.
The thing that speakers of American English just can’t ever get right is phonemic vowel length. Length is so important in English that it really needs to be considered the main differentiator amongst pairs of similar vowels, with timbre being secondary (but also important). You only really make timbre distinctions, with length varying allophonically. So, when you try to say ‘off’ properly, it ends up sounding as if it were ‘orf’. Edit: I’ve just got to the bit where you introduce Molly, and I literally only understood because her name was on screen. It wouldn’t otherwise have been comprehensible, as what you said would have to be spelt ‘morley’ or something. It sounds like a plausible surname, but has no resemblance to the name Molly. You might as well say Polly. Basically, it’s like when English speakers try to speak languages with long consonants, but make no distinction between _pero_ and _perro,_ and don’t understand why they’re not understood. It’s a completely different phoneme for natives.
@@BoxStudioExecutive I can hear they can't because they f it up so consistently. They don't even know what they are doing. They can't hear what they are making long or short.
I wonder if that varies with how much exposure you have to British content. I am American and I watch a lot of British TH-cam, and I definitely automatically perceive an elongated vowel spoken by a British person as having an R at the end. I don't know if I could produce it though.
When speaking in your standard, Canadian accent, I actually thought you sounded Scottish at first. After learning you’re Canadian, I could definitely pinpoint the Canadian accent, but I feel as if you don’t draw-out the hardest, most distinguishable aspects of the Canadian accent; yet, you very clearly have them. (I know this isn’t a comment on your RP attempt, but still, I just wanted to share something interesting I noticed. I actually speak 3 languages myself and an okay amount of a 4th. My degree is in Speech Communications.)
@@Ok-ze7rg Yeah, I probably should've clarified what I meant better now that I reread my comment. I didn't mean his overall, standard accent. I only meant small parts/moments of it sounded Scottish; some of the subtleties. In no way does he actually sound like a full Scot.
Im using RP accent too. And ive met some british people complimenting that my accent is so perfect. It makes me so confident to talk, tho im still learning.
I think it is rather difficult for someone to learn a different accent in your own language, for a variety of reasons. Then again, I thorougly enjoyed watching you, great effort !
Even if you didn’t realise what you were doing, you perfectly encapsulated the imagery of what being British feels like; standing over the edge of an extreme drop looking down.
I'm about 13 minutes in and my thoughts on your accent so far are: About sounding German/Dutch/Swedish, you started out sounding a bit staccato (to my N. American ears), which I think some English speakers might associate with German accents, though your prosody smoothed a little as you continued. Your words sometimes sounded over-enunciated (to my N. American ears), and I wonder if teaching English as a second language contributed to this. At a couple of times during the video, your accent reminded me of Australian accents, and at least once, New Zealand. With more practice, I think your accent could be pretty convincing. Edit: After coaching, pretty good.
I'm Irish and I've been watching your videos for years, but for a long time I assumed you weren't a native English speaker because of your usual accent. I wonder if you did a similar video and asked Canadians where they thought you were from what their reaction might be. (Edit - I didn't intend for this comment to seem ungenerous or critical. I suspect Paul, like myself, almost only ever speaks English with non-native speakers, and that might well have been the case for many years. I haven't lived in Ireland for 35 years. When I visit, people tell me that my English is excellent and ask me what part of Germany I am from, though interestingly English people are much quicker to detect the Irish still present in my somewhat mixed and diluted accent. Hence my interest in seeing another native English speaker being mistaken for a non-native speaker.)
@@veirant5004It’s so staccato that it could almost be Japanese, although no one would guess that because of his appearance. I bet if he were Asian, people would think his way of speaking were due to coming from an immigrant family, rather than a personal quirk.
@@AmyThePuddytat yeah i believe his caucasian face with blond hair and clear eyes is part of the reason why people though he was from Northern/Eastern Europe.
I'm Scottish, and I've just spent a couple of days in Manchester. It reminded me just how wide a range of accents there are in England, particularly in the bigger cities. There's a lot of people from continental Europe or further who may have emigrated and attempted to integrate with English culture, or who may live around people mostly from their native country, or may have been born in England to foreign parents, so even within specific regional English accents, there's quite a range. There's a lot of diversity, and most people are generally fairly tolerant of variances in accents without even thinking about it. It's just a natural part of interacting socially.
Great video! I really enjoyed this challenge. Anecdote from me - I'm trans, and when I started transitioning I knew that I wanted my new voice to be a huge part of my focus. When you're male-to-female trans, your voice doesn't change automatically - hormones don't affect it (they do for trans-men though), so any vocal change can only take place through training. A friend of mine was also trans-femme and had the most beautiful voice - I asked her once how difficult it was to obtain it, and whether she could give me some sort of ballpark figure for the level of training and commitment it required. She thought for awhile and said "It's easier than learning German. But probably harder than learning a convincing Scottish accent." - that was all I needed to get started, and after a year of work (and liking my voice a lot now!) I think she was absolutely right. Your video reminded me of that, as I mentally tried to figure out what an accent change would take!
I've listened to a lot of langfocus videos, and I always assumed Paul was a native German speaker! I certainly did not have him down as a native English speaker at all! A good few of the interviewees had the same impression.
Well done. I'm British and can't do RP. Those youngsters speaking their (probably) affected urban English are an interesting audience too. I think you approached this very analytically and technically. It felt like you just needed to relax and "let yourself go" - and take the risk of impersonating a stereotype Brit.
Mastering an accent requires more than getting the phonetic sounds right. It also involves placement of sound in the mouth (as the dialect coach said), speech rhythms, intonation, and a lot more.
As a child of immigrants growing up in Montreal I had to go to a French school and of course learned to speak with a native French Canadian accent (I think learning it as a child is the only way to truly sound authenic). I only learned English after that and my English unfortunately has traces of a French accent. When I speak to French people from Europe I try to make my French more "international" but they can hear I'm Canadian. But if I really spoke Québécois they wouldn't understand anything. 🤣
The british have an in built accent detector because from birth we are trained to know someones socio-economic status after a single sentence.
But that works even in many other countries, maybe most of them. For example I am Czech and I also always think about where that person is from by their accent, when a person from Moravia is trying to speak in common Czech, it's pretty annoying, or Slovak trying to use Czech colloquial words, it should be illegal. 😀 Or sometimes you focus more on a question if that person is Ukrainian or Russian more than on what that person is actually saying. 😀
U wot?
Not just socio-economic status. Location too.
Growing up in Birmingham, with family around the city and throughout the black country, I used to completely weird people out by telling them where they were from, down to a few streets.
It's not only accents. Just reading your one sentence - and your unaccountable failure to capitalise the 'B' in British - tells me that you almost certainly do your shopping from Iceland, you greasy peasant!
All you’re doing is speaking English, you wouldn’t fool any person in the United Kingdom. You sound too false and almost robotic! most people in the UK are just too polite to tell you to your face that you don’t sound English or British!
You actually sound incredibly German- like a very good English speaker who is native to German. Have no idea how you managed that. It’s definitely the the staccato. Seriously uncanny.
I guess since English is a Germanic language it still remains its German roots, even after many centuries of its own development. Interesting
I think German comes from the top of the mouth whereas 'normal' English is more from the bottom. Try doing a German accent and notice where in your mouth you are making the sound.
Yep...he sounds German regardless of what accent he tries to adopt. He sounds like a German who moved to Britain as a teenager and learnt most, but not all, of the accent. He doesn't sound British to British people.
He doesn't even sound North American to me in his normal accent. It's very odd. He speaks a bit choppy and mechanical and it doesn't feel natural
@@didrikmesicek4825 Yeah same. I'm from the midwest US and usually besides a few specific words (progress, eh, about), a lot of Canadians are usually indistinguishable from the midwest US accent but he doesn't sound like that to me. He sounds like english isn't his native language even when speaking in his original accent for some reason which probably translated over to when he was attempting an English one.
You sounded quite staccato, that's why some people thought that you might be German.
I sound like that in my native accent too. The reason for that is probably best left for another time and place.
@@Langfocus I always wondered why you sound a bit "foreign". If there's an actual reason, it would make for an interesting video. Love you Paul!
This is the main thing I noticed too - his speaking sounds very choppy, and not as fluid as someone with the accent natively.
I think it's a feature of his Canadian accent. The likeness to northern Europe is unsurprising, given immigration history of Canada. Northern US states have similar Germanic or Scandinavian features.
That’s exactly what I thought
He does sound like a German fella who’s learned British English. I think hanging around Brits helps wonders to pick up the accent.
Yes, the sounds aren't quite right...like they're too tight in places and the vowels sound off somehow, but it's hard to explain. Maybe if he tried doing a really good impersonation of an English actor it would help? so he has something very specific to refer to.
Exactly
Actually I thought the sounds were pretty close, it was his rythm that was off. I noticed the same effect when at school during lessons about public speaking. We're taught to avoid using words like "er" or "like" or "ya know" or any other space fillers. A lot of people have trouble keeping those out of their speach and, as a result, develop a rather disjointed rythm as they're concentrating so hard on what they're saying. It just doesn't sound like they're speaking with a natural flow. In fact pretty much exactly this chap. The South African accent sounds similar to me.
Even his normal voice sounds like a Germanic/Scandi person with fluent English.
I think its because he's accent sounds 'rough' to say, like the words stop abruptly. Whereas most english accents are smooth to the point where it may sound like slang.
10:30describes it better after finishing the vid
Put a lot of effort into mastering that RP, just to develop the Dutch accent - priceless
At least they didn’t say French!
Sounded more Afrikaans to me
Dutch? You've never heard Dutch people speaking English??
I think your accent sounded more South African than Dutch, but there is obviously a connection between the two. South African English has the more clipped vowels of RP English.
I think it sounds more like a German person who learned British English than a Dutch person because the shorter vowels and word spacing sound more similar to German than Dutch
Paul’s regular Canadian accent sounds a bit German to me. All very clipped and precise. This is maybe why Paul’s RP accent sounds German/Dutch/Swedish.
Really? Where are you from?
He absolutely sounds Canadian to me!
When he slipped up with the RP accent, the errors still came across as North American, although difficult to place exactly because they were very short slips.
Paul definitely sounds North American to me. Whether American or Canadian is a subtler distinction.
He sounds like he’s speaking English as a second language.
I really thought he was german
@@pukkavidz his face looks very german
the funny thing is that even if he spoke in his native canadian accent people would probably assume hes from germany or netherland
Yeah, I'm Canadian and was surprised when he said he was too, I assumed he was European at first as well.
Why does he have that accent? Is it a normal Canadian accent?
@@ChristianJiang No, but i wouldnt explicitly call it foreign sounding either. He just sounds like he's forcing some of the sounds out, stiff or robotic. As other commenters pointed out he could be purposely emphasizing his pronunciations to sound as neutral as possible, which, just like the RP examples in this, sounds uncanny to those who natively have that accent.
He doesn't sound Canadian at all, he really does sound more European.
@@technicolourmylesHe has a very staccatto way of speaking and it doesn't sound like the more usual Canadian accent with which I am familiar, maybe he's Quebecois, that would make sense because that accent is totally different from non French speaking Canada.
First impression is I keep hearing a South African twang to your accent but it’s one where you sound like you’ve also lived in the UK for several years.
I am from Germany and when I discovered your channel many years I ago thought you were a non-native speaker of English probably Danish or from another Scandinavian country. The way you shorten vowls and the stiff way you pronounce sentences also came through slightly when you were speaking in the RP accent.
Ich hab das genau selbe gedacht😂
I am a native english speaker, and i also thought that!
Canadians clip and shorten everything to death we’re stiff af
Well, he doesn't have a potato in his mouth, so he's definitely not Danish.
Yeah, I'm a native English speaker from the US, and I thought he was not a native speaker when I first found his channel. My husband (a German) still thinks he sounds weird, for the same reasons you listed. He has an unusual cadence to his speech, like you mentioned, and it definitely was still there when he was trying to affect the British accent. I think it probably threw people off.
I think his parents are Dutch or Danish, so I do wonder if that's why he has such an odd cadence.
If you're trying to explain to British teenagers what RP is, call it the BBC news accent. They'll immediately know what you mean.
RP is actually that high-pitch clipped accent developed especially for the radio. It was never the natural accent of any group of people (not even the Royal family) but it did develop into the later BBC accent, which became contiguous with a generalised middle-class accent and more recently with Standard Southern British. As for the queen and now the king, that family and aristocrats in their circle have an accent all of their own.
Langfocus guy is a Canadian, and like many North Americans he confuses RP and "BBC"
@@DrWhomI know, but to the average teenager who has never heard of RP, calling it the BBC news accent is the quickest way to make them understand what you mean. Kids on live chat are not going to sit around for your lecture.
@@DrWhom RP wasn't deliberately designed. It developed naturally during the 19th century in south-eastern England:
th-cam.com/video/OMEf9AqI-b0/w-d-xo.html
@@MB-st7be I think anyone who's interested in language, or British accents, knows what RP is. If somebody asks, you can explain it with the BBC newsreader idea, although the BBC start allowing... accents!... into their serious programmes a couple of decades ago. So they might not even get that reference.
Good, RP needs to die. It's a horrible accent, sounds ugly, and was created from snobbery anyway.
@@DrWhomI heard that 'Received Pronunciation' was what they taught you to speak when one entered the Public School system. As only very wealthy people can generally afford to goto Public School, the accent is associated with the upper classes but, seriously, noone really speaks it. If they did, they'd get a good kickingm
One of the biggest issues ive noticed is that you dont quite use words and phrases that a british person would use. You just try to adjust the vowel sounds to what a british speaker would do.
I've noticed that happens a lot when Americans are writing British characters too (and presumably happens the other way around as well). I was watching a show on Netflix the other day that's set in London with English characters but all of the dialogue sounded so off because the phrasing and vocabulary were what an American would use, with the odd "wanker" "bloody" and "mate" thrown in.
I looked up the writers and they were American. Doesn't feel natural even when the accents are fine.
he does sound dutch or swedish. i mistook a Swede for an American when i was younger... they grow up with a lot of US-ian TV
Yeah. Like, you'd probably never hear an American say something like, 'Right, gonna have a bit of a wander over here. See what I can find'. Just an example of someone who's, well, going to have a wander somewhere. lol. 'It's rather a bit odd, that'. Americans tend to just throw a 'bloody hell' in it and call it a day.
@@hanonholdWhich show?
@@hanonhold what show is that?
Imagine being Canadian, and everyone thinks you're not a native english speaker.
Quebec has joined the chat
@SilverEyeStallionhe for sure is from the french parts
Hi Paul, Brit here. I think you did a really good job in terms of pronunciation, I would say it was pretty accurate. What gave you away though I would say are two factors:
1) Sentence rhythm, we tend to 'eat' many of the words such that several words get mashed together like "do you know what I mean" becomes "dyunoewatamin" whereas you were clearly pronouncing individual words. Regional accents do this more but even people with neutral accents do this in the UK, so the way you spoke sounded a bit robotic, like someone learning English as a second language.
2) I actually think throwing in some regional pronunciations would have helped you, so a mostly RP accent with some South-East local accent features. This is because very few people in the UK really speaks in a pure RP, most will have some minor traces of a local accent even if they are middle class/posh. For example I'm from the East Midlands and the way I speak is very close to RP but pronounce certain words differently like 'path' as /paθ/ instead of /pɑːθ/
Overall good job and I look forward to seeing you attempt this accent plus other accents in the future
I thought it was good also, but I noticed that in the video, there was no mention of the (mid) central vowel (schwa). Native British speakers (in RP and many regional accents) use a schwa for almost every unstressed syllable.This distinguishes modern RP from the more clipped traditional RP that (to modern ears) sounds rather more like South African English. Thus for example "garage" with an unstressed second syllable can sound more like "garudj" than "garidj".
He gets better I think but I disagree that even his pronunciation is accurate. Like most attempts at UK accents, his vowels are all over the shop IMO (some spot on, some way off). And of course unlike the guy himself, I bet neither of us watching were really expecting people to call BS on his accent - sure, we can be a cynical bunch in the UK but English people especially have basically turned politeness into a combat sport, unless explicitly invited very few are going to enter into the potential social minefield of challenging a stranger about who they present themselves as. Not without being at least 3 pints deep anyway :).
Still a good effort though, he gives it a proper go.
(and no one has a "neutral" accent incidentally. RP uses a specific set of sounds, just like any other accent. Unlike the label's implication, there's no meaningful sense in which it's a "non accent" or "what happens when you take any regional elements out" and though it's _less_ region specific than many UK accents - because its "region" is effectively "posh" :) - it's still pretty closely associated with the south-east of England. As a related aside BTW, I used to live in Nottingham and a few of the Notts natives I worked with would insist they "didn't have an accent", a claim which I, as a _non_ Notts native, found absolutely hilarious :)
jeah. shust shrough een sum raindoem shite.
there are sooo many REALLY strong accents in UK, that most people only recognize the one locally nearby and some generally well known ones (like that gosh darn brummie 😆)
@@anonymes2884 I think the reason it's considered 'neutral' is because although it is like you say associated with the south-east and originates from there, people all over the country speak a kind of RP. In Leicester where I'm from, having a "neutral" vs local accent is often a marker of whether you are from the middle/working class.
I've met many people from the north who also haven't adopted the local accent, in fact only last week I was travelling in India, and met a guy from Newcastle who spoke in a very RP-like accent and only after some time and careful listening could I make out any Geordie accent features. But that's exactly my point, even people from posh backgrounds interact on a daily basis with people who speak with their local accent, and so they speak a version of RP with some traces of regional pronunciation. I imagine in the south, this takes the form of more (for example) cockney/essex/east anglian/west country influences on someone's accent.
@@harriehausenman8623although a lot wouldn't necessarily be able to distinguish a true Brummie accent (eg Ozzy) and a Black Country one (e.g. Adrian Charles)
As an American studying in the UK, i often pull a decent fake rp accent to avoid extra questions when I'm asking where something is 😂
Same here when I, a Dutch speaker from the Netherlands, spend time in Belgium. I don't do it all the time (only in certain situations), but the Dutch accent can be a little jarring to a Belgian in the same way an American accent can be to a Brit. It's just easier and prevents misunderstandings, questions, or even prejudice in some situations.
Just so long as you’re not asking for directions to Worcestershire you might get away with it!
If you keep at it you might just pick up a British accent and stop having to fake it!
it's not fake rp. you're just using rp. roger moore had to learn rp like the rest of us.
either fake it well enough to avoid detection...or do it so bad that people are embarrassed to point it out...and just let you move on 🤣🤣
This was really cool! As a native Englishman the only things giving you away was overpronouncing the T sounds and the overall flow of speaking was slightly unnatural, however it was honestly an amazing attempt that probably would have fooled me at least for a while!
Yeah this - maybe too much precision and clarity gives impression of conscious effort, even when the sounds are themselves perfect?
@@DanBrickleyalso having a play button behind you and telling them you’re a language youtuber probably puts people on edge once he asks the question
Yeah the "flow" sounded somehow a bit rigid, which is why it came across as a tad German to me too at times. Which makes sense as he's been studying individual words & sounds rather than adopting a language naturally via normal flowing conversation. Bloody impressive though
The amount of work and effort you have put into this video is amazing! Well done!
As an English person, I can hear a massive difference between day 1 or day 2
Exactly, even as an American I could tell the difference, this goes to show that immersion is the way to learn any language.
As a matter of fact, I think that if I move there, the accent will just stick regardless at the end, like it or not 😂
"or"? You mean "and"
yup, day 2 would have me fooled, he sounds like one of these posh quizmasters
I think the first attempt sounded more South African to me 😂
A lot of people are saying that! 😄
@@Langfocus
Yes, I'm British and if you'd have asked me I May have said South Africa but it sounds like a fake South African accent.
@@LangfocusActually, as a South African who's lived in the UK for 2/3 of their life, your RP accent started bringing out my Saffa accent in my inner monologue haha!
It's definitely the vowels - that's by far the biggest difference between my accent and a native Brit's. And I'm an English Saffa, so I don't even have the Afrikaans accent. The ɑ:, the ɔ:, and especially the ɪ exemplify the key differences between the British and Saffa accents, and I'd say, at least until 10:00, you were rocking the first 2 pretty often.
🤣🤣🤣
I also thought South African-esque, because of the clipped vowels, but there were also some decidedly un-south African sounds too
Was a pleasure to chat with you. Nice video! ❤
I notice you also spoke to mainly the younger generations - and amongst them I would suggest that the slangy street pronunciation is more common.
@@Cymraesarall As one of the people in the video stated, it's "chavvier".
@@allendracabal0819 I was trying to be….polite, lol
From about halfway through, in the segment with the voice coach, I actually forgot that your voiceover was you doing the accent because it sounded so natural! So cool to see the progression of honing it
When you ask people in the context of a quiz, "where do you think I'm from?" People will assume the answer is not what it seems.
That’s definitely something I wasn’t quite sure how to approach.
@@Langfocus You could ask "which part of the UK do you think I'm from?" Even if your speech rhythm did sound German.
@@Kivikesku Or by using more idiosyncratic (?) English, like saying "whereabouts" instead of just "where". It's a subtle difference, but it suggests you're saying "where in the UK" rather than "where in the world" without being obvious or deceptive.
@@avaggdu1 or ask the other person where they're from first, turn it into more of a game than a surprise quiz
@@caramelldansen2204 Yeah, that works; anything that takes their mind away from "which foreign country do you think I'm from?".
The standard relaxed nearly RP is VERY difficult to fake. English is my first language but I found it easier to 'pick up' and switch off the local accent in the region of Spain where I used to live. When I was in London I was instantly conscious of other English as a first language speakers trying to fake it!
"Fake" is a very loaded term, admittedly. During the video there is an evolution in how I think about adopting an accent. And I think "faking" and accent comes across quite differently from *adopting* an accent with genuine intent.
@@Langfocus Agreed... Faking and genuinely trying to adopting and learning the accents are two different things... By faking we learn nothing.. But the later helps us to master any accent..
@Langfocus I just meant fake as in, it's not my authentic accent. When I'm in Spain, I can lean in or out of the Elx accent, so I understand the distinction you're making. You're not faking. You're learning how to make it.
@@Langfocus also, I made my comment before I watched the video. It was an interesting process.
@@LangfocusIt seems to me that you and Susana perhaps talked past each other because they assumed that you were aware of the normalcy of rampant accentism and classism in the British society. It needs no mention that we the linguists have no distinction except operational between a dialect and a language. Now, this is heart-wrenchingly painful to hear: "I just meant fake as in, it's not my authentic accent." What this means is that the societal pressure literally _forces_ people to _rescind their native language,_ a large part of their core authentic identity, and learn (adopt, fake, whatever) a different one. _Of course_ it feels fake-for it _is_ fake! This is really a terrifying situation. Your healthy self wants to reject this transplant. But if you refuse to cave in and keep yourself whole, you're in for a rough ride. You'll be unfairly judged who you are by your language. You might not get a job that you would otherwise get. You may be laughed at in your face _for speaking your native language, for being who you are!_ This is really a terrifying situation, and barely anyone even speaks out except for a few linguists-this is how deeply ingrained into the society fabric this aberration is. It shouldn't exist in the modern world. People do suffer from it daily, and it takes its toll on mental health. I touch on this in my longer top-level comment, if you wish to read it (although it's focussed more on how choosing SSE was setting you up for a failure of the experiment). We despise racism, at least pretend to scorn at sexism, but are absolutely fine with accentism. It's extremely ugly and plainly wrong. And languages keep dying out.
Paul, you don’t even sound Canadian. You have always sounded like you are not a native English speaker - I always thought you were Eastern European or something
As a Canadian, I can affirm that Paul sounds distinctly Canadian when speaking in his native accent. 🇨🇦
I find this to be common in parts of Canada where French is spoken. When I went to Montreal I felt like I was in a very foreign country because people around me not only spoke french most if the time, but when they spoke English they sounded to me like English was very icy not their first language, but this wasn't true in Ontario
I'm definitely not French Canadian. I'm an Anglophone Canadian who barely says an unscripted word on his channel and always speaks extremely clearly for an international audience. That's pretty much it.
This video is one of the few times I've said anything unscripted, and it wasn't in my own accent.
@@Langfocus thanks for the reply and clarification. I wouldn't have expected you to reply so late at night
I don't particularly think so. There are many canadian accents, not always one or the other.
You are very gifted. Its a fascinating subject. Really enjoyed this post. Well done
Excellent attempt! For a short time attempting to get it right, it's pretty good! Brits definitely are able to pick up different accents very quickly though, as one person already said because of economic status (lol - that's true) but also because British accents vary so much over short distances so our ears are trained to notice differences much more.
There's a few things I noticed:
Firstly, you speak with a hard attack, while British people tend to speak with a soft attack. Even RP. I think this is why some people are saying Germany/Eastern Europe too as that's common there.
Secondly, it sounds like you're producing a lot of sounds from the front of your mouth, sometimes almost nasally (I don't think I'm describing this perfectly lol, but I believe North American accents typically produce more sounds from the front of the mouth/nose while Brits speak from the middle/back of the mouth) so this is another indicator that your accent isn't native. I remember learning once that because Brits speak more from the back of the mouth & Americans speak from the front, this means that typically it's easier for Brits to fake American accents than it is for Americans to fake British accents as it uses more facial muscles.
Next, your vowels are just a touch shorter & not as wide as British & RP accents usually are. For example with the sentence "Go back about a thousand years," your pronunciation sounds like "goh buck abot a thohsund yihs" (I've exagerrated my spelling there because I don't know how to spell it properly phoenetically) whereas in RP it'd be more like "gOw bAck abOWt a thOWsund yIIHs". I suspect this is the Canadian slipping through a tad.
Also, your U's are shorter & don't have that "y" sound just preceding in some words, which certain words in RP are pronounced with due to the Norman French influence. For example, with the words "during" & "neutral" your pronunciations are more like "dooring" and "nootral" whereas in RP they'd be pronounced as "dyuring" (or even "jyuring") and "nyootral". Similarly, with "Tuesday" an RP accent would say "Tyoosday" while a more typical Southern accent would say "chyoostday".
Lastly, there's a lack of glottals in your speech. Your Ts & Ds sound like they're pronounced with your tongue softly touching just behind your top teeth, whereas in British or RP they'd either be pronounced more hard & clearly with the tongue clearly touching behind your top teeth, or with with the tongue not touching at all & producing a glottal stop in place of a T.
These were some of the main things my own ears picked up on! I hope this didn't come off as "lecturey" at all, because I don't mean it to haha! Just identifying the things that I personally noticed & giving my best tips to help you nail it next time round ;)
But anyway, great video! Very fun & educational. Thank you 🙏
Those are the things I noticed, as well.
I'm in the US, and I've picked up on British accents over many years of consuming British media. I started to find I was talking to myself with an SSB accent so I leaned into it. A few years ago, I had a friend in Kent, and we'd chat by video every day. One time, she heard me mumbling to myself when I forgot the camera was rolling, and she was startled because apparently it sounded native. :D
When I was a kid, I was moved from one part of the US to another, and kids would beat me up for my accent, so I learned to change it very quickly. Maybe that makes it easier for me to do this now. I certainly did well at pronunciation in Spanish class as a kid, and now when I travel to Canada or other parts of the US, I slip into the local accent within a day or two.
I think if you did the same challenge in your native accent and then asked people where you're from they would mostly give the same answers thinking it's a trick, assuming you're a foreigner who has learnt English well
This. He got shocked that a few didn't say British but he "felt off" - yes, but because he's actively asking them this question, making them think. Makes it even worse that he chose RP, a non-specific accent, which makes it very sketchy when he asks them. Compare if he imitated a typical Scottish accent and asked non-Scot Brits, it would be very easy to point out he's Scottish unless somebody's extremely aware of Scottish accents. But then even then, if he asked them where they think he's from, they'll start thinking it's a trick question and that he is not in fact Scottish, and if his Scots accent was far from perfect, the imperfections will be noticed when he asks them where he's from
Yeah he should have asked them first, as if it's like a friendly thing and not a challenge or trick question
Yeah. Just ask them "Where do you think I'm from?" And if you're doing a good British accent, they will guess a region in the UK.
this
Or....
Say "I've been working on a Canadian accent. Do you want to hear it?" Then speak normal.
Now, ask "Did that sound pretty good?" Let them answer that (and focus on it first). They might ask you where you are from originally, then turn that around and have them guess.
That's probably the only way to get a real authentic guess without making them think it's a trick.
I am a Francophone Canadian who lived in France for a few years in the 70's. I did my best to speak with the best international French accent I knew. At first many correctly identified me as Canadian quite quickly, though quite a few asked me if I was Belgian or Swiss. None doubted that I was a native French speaker, but many just couldn't place me. After a year in France, I had people guessing I was French, but from maybe Vendée or Normandy - I by then sounded to them French, but regional . By that time when I told people I was Canadian, I often got the reaction: `Mais vous n'avez pas l`accent`. (I then had to explain that I was not Québecois but Franco-Ontarian, because they thought Francophone Canadians were all Québecois, but that's another story). Loved this video.
When I lived in Geneva, I had a friend from Montreal (but somewhat more internationalized accent because of ethnic origins), whose French totally flummoxed the local Swiss. But rather than thinking she was from someplace faraway or exotic, they thought she was from Vaud, one canton over. 😂
When I went to France with my Québécoise wife, by contrast, everyone kept switching into English on her!
@@i.d.6282 As a Brit who was living and working in France (Pas de Calais) I was often quizzed by locals saying "you're not from round here are you?". They would sometime ask if I was from Belgium. When I told them I was English they were quite surprised as in Calais they have the day trippers from England who by and large never speak any French. After being there a couple of years I answered the phone at work and was told "You are picking up a Calaisian accent" which I was quite proud off until I found out that a Calaisian accent was similar to a West Country accent in England. Many years later when I was back living in the UK I had to go to Brussels on business. I got a cab from The Eurostar station to my hotel and and was chatting to the cab driver. He then asked me "What is the weather like in Paris?" When I explained I was English and came from London he was quite impressed. He said "I thouught you were French as you speak French very well." That made my day!
This video is very good and fun. I'm following you now. I'm from Brazil and trying to learn English haha
Best to learn from an English RP person
Your pronunciation was accurate, and the occasional Canadian pronunciation was not obvious. But your enunciation was more precise than that of the average speaker of modern RP with clear gaps between the words, perhaps a very short glottal stop at the start of each word, giving your pronunciation the feel of a German who speaks excellent English.
I kept getting flashbacks to mr Data in star trek. Technically the accent was mostly there but it sounded like a bunch of words in a row rather than someone speaking normally where it flows more.
Yes, it sounded like there was a lot of hard attack in his speech. (Paul might have that in his usual Canadian speech as well.)
Yeah mate was talking too well 💀
I agree mastering the English accent glottal (or should I say glo'al) will go long way. The stronger the glottal the less posh you will sound and more "everyman". But usually only used in the middle or ends of words and the words themselves can be more slurred together. Like for isn't - just say isn' on its own, or isenit for isn't it. If if you really want to sound like a London teenager say innit!
@@jennymulholland4319 That's good advice except for the innit, I reckon. I think that would only make the rest of his speech stand out as something extremely different.
You’ve clearly put in so much work. The reason why people were guessing you were German is because of two features (a) your vowel reduction in unstressed syllables syllables is not as extreme as native speakers tend to have; and (b) there is a lot of hard attack at the start of words with an initial vowel. To sound more natural, there should be more liaison and less attack. But really impressive results!!!
This comment is spot on!
I think it also has to do with his appearance, I don’t know how to explain why I think it but there’s something very German about it. Wait upon reflection during the writing of this comment, it’s because I think he looks very similar to Flula Borg
He needs hard attack in the middle of words not at the beginning. He does a lot of it to make himself clearer but we do it in the middle of words because it's how English is now spoken.
@@ardentspy I’m a bit confused by that - are you talking about T-glottalisation?
@@raylewis395 He probably also needs to take more care to avoid rhoticisation but to use r-linking. It's really hard for North Americans to properly deploy linking elements. Paul should practice "law and order". Even RP speakers pronounce it "lorenorduh".
You could try "faking" some regional UK accent, so that when you ask the "where do you think I'm from" question, people would more naturally think "where in the UK", since the standard RP does not really have a location to it.
This was my thought too - if I hear the RP accent my immediate thought is that the person is covering up another accent. A lot of English people of a certain generation and class learned RP to cover up less desirable regional accents, and most foreign speakers learn RP. It's not something that I think of as genuine in anyone.
Oh true. Hardly anyone has a natural RP accent, apart from the royals. The closest is probably that general southern English accent but even that is toned down from RP
The downside to that is that people may not be as familiar with that regional accent, and thus not pick up on any inaccuracies.
You did a great job on learning a South African accent tbh
Here are a few more factors to consider, Paul:
1) When one asks people where are we from, it is usually implied we're from somewhere else. Therefore, people will start trying to identify foreign accents. Or else, if the accent is ambiguous enough, they'll try to establish where else in the same country you might be from.
2) You have your own peculiar way of speaking, superimposed on your native Canadian accent. I think you do have a particularly distinct way of speaking, which must be contributing to your sounding foreign. Your way of speaking is such (to my non-native English speaker ears), that even if you asked Canadians where are you from, you seem likely to get same sort of answers (i.e. originally German or Swedish, etc.).
3) The way you speak is kind of terse (or "dry" as we would say in Catalan), plus you were slightly tense due to the effort you were putting in, all of which suggested some foreign ingredient.
4) Who are often perceived, portrayed, or imagined to be terse, and/or have a language that sounds terse? Germans, Fins, Swedes, etc. I guess, which might be why more than one person answered "German".
5) You also have body language to consider. How do you look and how your anatomy might even account for some features in your speech. Your mouth opening, your lips and jawbone are rather wide and flat. If native English speakers already seem to open their mouth very little to speak, you seem to do it even less. It seems as if you learned to speak in this particular way for some reason, to correct or compensate for something as a young boy. Did you have any speech issue as an infant?
Anyway, I wanted to thank you for all your videos, which I enjoy so much. They are very interesting and well done, and you are very talented! Congrats and keep it up!
Oh, this reminds me something else, regarding the guy commenting on your posh accent, and the language coach commenting on some heightened features of it, also regarding your mouth and prosody:
6) Remember the expression about having or keeping a stiff upper lip? You might be coming across as literally keeping it stiff. 😉 th-cam.com/video/cEA7cGtUTm0/w-d-xo.html
My thoughts exactly. If he asked me where he's from with how he normally speaks I wouldn't guess Canada because he doesn't really pronounce words in a stereotypically Canadian way. He has very sharp pronunciation which combined with his facial features and way of only moving his lower lip makes me think he may be Scandinavian. Brits typically have longer faces and seem to let their jaw hang open more which creates more movement and opening when speaking.
My farts are better than Langfocus’ farts 💨
Ask "what city do you think i'm from"
Very good, well explained points!
@@newbilong That question already marks the enquirer as not being British. If they were, they'd most likely use 'part of the country' or 'town', not 'city'.
As a Brit, it is so funny to see you explain weird speech things that we all do so often XD
My farts are better than Langfocus’ farts 💨
@p-__ that's just disgusting dude 💀
@@Mentalmetalia😂😂😂
As an English person who's grown up around posh RP speakers, cockneys, and people from all over the country and the rest of the world, your RP attempt definitely sounds like someone from North/Western Europe who has learned to speak British English really well.
But honestly, even your native accent from Canada sounds a bit unfamiliar, although I'm less familiar with the various regional accents around Canada than the US or my home country they UK!
The best way to pick up the accent would be to come and live here for a few years and really listen closely. Thing is nobody's going to correct you because it's incredibly rude and perhaps even bigoted to "correct" an accent unless asked to.
Anyways keep it up Paul, great video as always, been watching your stuff for years at this point :)
Cheers
Mate this was brilliant, would love to see another upload of something similar. Going on video chat undercover with a different accent of some kind
Spanish native here, I speak english and portuguese on a native level, people never believe i'm not american/brazilian.
I'm amazed you never used the word "cadence" in this video, I think it's the most important part of trying to actually achieve a regional accent.
Estou aprendendo português. Eu sou Irlandês
Hey I've moved to the UK for uni and I've got to say -- you've given yourself a much bigger challenge than you might think! When he said you sounded "posh," he meant upper class (possibly an accent instilled by private education -- he was asking you to be throatier to inhabit that). And when the person said he was trying to figure out what part of the UK, that person meant that he wasn't noticing any regionalisations that would add authenticity. I'd pick a specific British accent to learn and have another go!
Bu isn't RP a specific British accent in itself?
Hard to imagine for an American but the average Englishman/Scot probably speaks to someone who speaks "RP" a handful of times a year. It's just not common among the regular people unless you're mingling with aristocrats or wannabe middle class twats.@@FartSquirel
@@FartSquirel It's a very uncommon accent, and more of a learned accent than one associated with a region. When I lived in Germany an English lady that had been living there for 15 years sounded English to the locals in Swabia (a part of South Germany), but sounded Swabian to non-local Germans. Also a few Germans there spoke with such a good American accents (to my ear)! So you'd definitely stand more chance of fooling people if you chose a specific regional accent.
In some parts of Britain, you'd also sound a bit strange if you spoke differently to other people your age. Where I'm from older people tend to have thicker regional accents than the younger generation.
@@lk-music Received pronunciation is the antithesis of a British accent. It was once adopted by much of the uk media ie radio, tv to sound non-regional specific.
@@FartSquirelKind of -- it's taught in grammar schools and often times the result of many people from different regions coming together in a single setting like a university. But it's so sterile as an accent that it cannot be associated with any region. Normally, regional mistakes would slip through the accent. It's definitely a sign of a specific education -- but not a posh private school. I agree with the teens in this video -- his accent sounded less RP and more like an international student who spent a short amount of time at a 'public' school before leaving midway through the acquisition of that accent
I think the reason people kept saying Germany or Eastern Europe (and at times I heard bits that sounded *almost* South African) is the clip you had. A lot of it was in the way you carried your speech and some of your consonant sounds. I also feel that some people unintentionally overstress RP - you have to fight the urge to sound like a 1950s housewife.
Having said that, you did remarkably well. English accents are much harder to emulate than most would believe.
EDIT: I wrote this about 2/3 the way through the video. After that masterclass, the flow of your speech improved *significantly*. There is the occasional lilt in there, but you clearly gained confidence in it. I would suggest thinking about pitch and inflection a bit more to fine-tune it. Again, you did exceptionally well and this was a cool experiment. Thanks for uploading!
Hi @Langfocus. Great video and very interesting. I'm a native British English speaker from the south of England and also trained as an ESL teacher. My advice to you would be to also focus on the intonation and rhythm of the way English is spoken in England and compare and notice the difference to how you naturally speak. If you actively listen out for the differences, I think it will help you to implement a more natural England English accent too. Would love to see a part 2 of this video.
This was a great video, and I think your attempt at an RP accent was a really good one!
One thing that I think makes your accent stand out, even without placing you as a non British speaker, is the lack of elision in your speech. You've got a lot of the sounds correct, but the diction is too formal to sound genuine. It comes across like you're reading from a script rather than talking comfortably. Conversational English in Britain, even amongst the poshest RP speakers, sees a lot of words run together, and sounds change based on the adjacent words.
Looking forward to hearing how far you can take this accent!
You mentioned this at the beginning but, sorry to say, I think you made it almost impossible by choosing RP. The problem is not many people speak that way in the UK and so British would struggle to place you in a city or region unless it is perfect.
I'd love to see you try a more distinctive regional accent like Geordie or Cockney. These are so recognisable to a Brit that I think they would hear the key sounds and overlook any small faults. Actually, you could try a Devon/Somerset accent because it's rhotic like your native accent. I believe it was actually the "RP/Standard/Posh" accent of it's time! Which is crazy because it's now the UK's "country" accent, far from posh.
I think if he'd chosen a Birmingham accent he'd have done better cos in the midlands our accents are basically a modulated yawn
I definitively noticed a huge improvement after your session with the accent coach!
i know i’m late but i’m certainly sure that if you were to ask more questions about yourself, asking them how old they think you are, or how tall, etc. and then where they think you are from. Your idea is quite clever but with more questions like them, it would probably make it less suspicious that you want them to say the UK. Great video!
You would love Dr Geoff Lindsay’s series on this very topic
Thanks! I'll look into it.
@@LangfocusI second this recommendation. Dr Geoff Lindsay comes from a linguistics background, so he explains stuff differently from a vocal coach with a background in theater. His videos really go deep into the English phonetics.
I love his channel❤
Lindsey, not Lindsay.
@@deleted01 Dr Geoff Lindsey, not Dr Geoff Lindsay.
The accent was too clipped and robotic. It didn’t sound natural. You also did not include linking R which really makes you sound more fluent. You sounded AI generated
Paul has too much tension in his voice like German and his diction was too precise for a real Englishman.
When evil youtubers have all been exiled, the melodic tone of AI voices will be all that will be heard!
That tension comes from his tight jaw. He's got to loosen up, relax. But even if you watch him speak in his native accent, you can see he keeps a very closed mouth.
To be honest, I always thought you had a scandinavian accent (or other european accents) even when you spoke in your own Canadian way. It's pretty cool actually! I think the way you pronounced certain consonants made me think that
I think he’s Danish. Even his “Canadian” accent is a little off lol. Nothing wrong with that, just noticed.
People like Ria Lina, who went to an American school in Netherlands, can sound American or Canadian when they speak English, even if they've never been to either country. I've never been outside Canada for more than 8 days at a time and was told once that I sound European.
Yes. I Really thought he is Danish. 😅
Same here. I am American, and I have always thought you sounded like English is your first language. I would have guessed you were originally Scandinavian or German. Most Canadians sound American to me, although I have met some French Canadians that sound different. Maybe it has to do with where in Canada.
@@whokidd124567 Noticed it too. His Canadian accent does not really sound Canadian. He sounds like himself. lol
I watched this vid cos one of the people in your thumbnail looked like Ren. But I am glad I did.... thank you for your time, I enjoyed.
Nothing wrong with sounding Dutch! 😂
(it wasn't a Dutch accent at all though 😂)
der is nohting rrrrong wid mai eccent, beut venn aii talkkkk laik dis, den dey vill no det ai kom frrrom de nederlands
Verre van!!
I have been told that Canadian vowels are closer to Dutch vowels than any other accent of English. He was deliberately trying to change them to RP, but maybe a fake RP accent with a Canadian accent behind it sounded like a native Dutch speaker? The rhythm is wrong though.
@@toomuchjamI think most English text books used in European schools are based on British pronunciation and vocabulary, but people are exposed to American accents a lot through media, advertising, music etc, so they try to americanise their "school English". There's also the impression that rhotic pronunciation sounds more native and helps gloss over a foreign accent. (It doesn't, but people think that)
There is if you're trying to sound English though 😂
Ironically the guy who asked you why are you speaking so posh sounds very posh 😂
He doesn't sound posh though...
To me that guy sometimes sounds posh and sometimes sounds working class, weird!
right
Paul didn't sound anywhere near posh. I thought he'd get to that point after mastering the sounds but nope. His intonation didn't change at all, he just slowed down a bit
That guy had a strange accent- it sounded posh at times and kind of farmer at other points
That one kid nailed it when he said what city are you from, even RP speakers have regional inflections, if some one is speaking perfect RP they are not a native speaker
This isn't correct the RAF were renowned for having a internal RP accent.
Ive been told I have a neutral English Accent that doesn't even sound like RP. I can go somewhere in the UK and I find myself slipping into their accent!...It can be very embarrassing and slightly unnerving tbh and I have to concentrate not to do it!
@@Really-hx7rl chameleon
*international RP accent
@@Emma-kz3zrAbsolute poppycock
This was probably the most interesting experiment ever addressing accents and their subtleties. Thank you for such a good insight on how to go about this!
Great video, thanks.
As a non native speaker of Portuguese and living in Portugal for 22 years, I’m always happy when people ask me where in Portugal I come from (not from which country).
Keep the great work. I appreciate it for years.
it make so much sense thinking about it that you came across as german/dutch/swedish, because those people tend to learn uk english over american english. so hearing someone who has learned an rp accent would usually mean those groups. very interesting.
Also has something to do with his clipped speech pattern- it really does sound Swedish
Very interesting video, thanks.
As an RP speaker myself, my impression is that you did do very well, but I could also tell even without seeing the process of what you were doing that it "wasn't quite right". As an aside, your own native accent is interesting, because it doesn't sound like most Canadian accents that I've heard, it must be something regional I'm not too familiar with. You are giving off with your "fake RP" accent, a kind of German-who-has-lived-in-the-UK-a-long-time vibe, in that it's _almost_ perfect, but perhaps a bit too clipped or staccato for RP (in the way that German is quite a staccato language). Whilst RP is also clipped in the end consonants in particular, it also _flows_ and is actually fairly slow, so your river analogy perhaps works on that level.
Your accent coach I think definitely helped you, but one thing I noticed from the clips of the videos that you showed in your prep work before that - and I do appreciate that those were probably just a small sample - is that most or all of the clips you showed were of _female_ RP speakers. Bear in mind is that men and women speak differently in subtle ways, even disregarding the amount of bass that gender difference on average brings. That might be why you didn't quite have that resonance that one of the listeners was looking for. As a man, listening to male RP speakers more will I think help you.
One thing I noticed is that most of your British listeners were (a) very young (teenagers and early 20s) and (b) non-RP speakers themselves. RP is actually getting quite rare in the UK nowadays, especially in younger generations; I'm in my forties and went to a private (public) school, which helped solidify the RP, as that was the standard there. Most "Gen Z" youngsters will not know it's called "RP" (or that RP stands for Received Pronounciation), the Queen to whom it is also attributed passed away over a year ago and even the BBC consciously tends to use more regional accents now for its presenters. You might try calling it "James Bond English" (by which I mean the James Bonds after Sean Connery!) if people are struggling to understand what you mean by RP. It's why they sometimes reach for "posh" when trying to describe how you talk.
We also have to remove some of the unconscious bias that perhaps was introduced by your question: "Based on how I'm speaking, where do you think I'm from?" immediately subconciously introduces the concept to the listener than you might not be what you are portraying yourself to be, then they might subconsciously look for other cues - including how you look. If I had not known you are Canadian, based on your look, I would have said German or Scandinavian - and I don't know perhaps that is in your heritage somewhere. Perhaps you would have scored better if this has been audio interviews rather than video.
He sounds south african
It was fascinating listening to your progress. I'm what you might call a native RP speaker and I think a lot of your later speech in this video, especially in the conversation clips after your running water visualisation, was spot on. Something I found particularly interesting was that in the immediate aftermath of your session with the vocal coach, when you were focused on the running water idea and a different 'jaw feel', I thought you were beginning to develop a South African accent. You definitely succeeded in no longer sounding like Paul from langfocus though. You clearly worked hard at this and given that we English tend to be highly skilled at detecting imposter accents I think you should definitely take it as a win if we detect that something doesn't sound quite right but we can't tell you what. Thanks for this video and all the other great content in your channel.
As someone from England you did a pretty good job aiming at the RP accent, however I can't say I've ever ran into many people with an RP accent in real life so maybe not the best accent to aim for.
Yeah, fair point. Our main point of reference would be older royal media. We would never know what it's actually like to hear someone talking like that.
I think that the accent too stereotypical which makes it harder for people to think its a real accent
There's another thing that I'm not sure anyone has mentioned yet, but for English people specifically (and probably people from other UK countries) we would rarely describe ourselves as being "from the UK", especially when talking to someone else from here. I would say "I'm English" more than "I'm from England", and I'd hardly ever say I was from the UK.
That's not correct at all. Many people I work with for example and locals refer to this country as The UK not just England or being English.
I'm from western Canada and, when I first found your channel, I thought English was your second language and that you spoke it very well. It surprised me to learn you also are from Canada, and in the west.
I immediately thought he was German or Dutch.
I still think he's a foreigner😂
i think he just speaks in a weird cadence
He is stiff in every dialect he attempts, including his own.
That was brilliant. You sounded much more natural during that last interview. Using the flapped 't' in common words like 'gotta' and 'better' is natural for lots of southern English speakers in fast speech and no one will bat an eye if you use the vowel in 'cat' for a word like 'ask' instead of the usual RP vowel as a very large number of British accents do that too. We're used to hearing mixed accents so don't worry too much about that. I think you need to use a less open schwa because that certainly contributes to your sounding German 😂 Your O in 'go' is sometimes very High-RP so it would be good to work on a more true English O in the diphthong instead of the textbook /eu/. The only other thing I'd say is the final T sounds. Less aspiration or even doing an unreleased T is better than saying it too clearly! Amazing effort though! I'd give it an 8/10 for sure but I'm northern so I have less experience with hearing the Modern RP accent 😁 Love the channel, Paul ❤ xxx
Fascinating as ever, Paul. My natural dialect is traditional RP, but as a child I slipped in and out of "Sahf London" as the situation required. I learned German as an adult and, surprisingly, I am accent-free - only the sometimes wobbly grammar gives me away. My approach to accent in either English and German is completely different from the deconstructive and analytical approach you take. I just reflect what I hear. If I want to imitate a regional accent in either English or German, I just think of a speaker I know well and imitate their speech. I have no idea how I do this.
Keep up the good work!
John
This is what I do too, I prefer an analytical approach only regards to writing and grammar. Also it's rather useful to watch the face and mouths.
I can do a reasonable enough Oop North impression thanks to watching Christopher Eccleston interviews so much.
But more impressively, I managed to drop my native Standard West American for a Classic Southern Drawl..just to avoid Napoloen Dynamite comparisons. It worked.
My home accent (Medway) borrows a lot from the "Sahf London" type and my friend here up north makes fun of me all the time when I say brown or house or round.
From Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire,🇬🇧
You are getting on really well
Keep it up my man
All the very best
Over and out
❤
What accent are you considered to have in Buckinghamshire? You are 30 miles from London. But you dont have an Essex accent. Is your accent interchangeable with London?
Do you say 'yeah' at the end of every sentence? that is something I see a lot of .
@@bunjijumper5345 im from buckinghamshire and i'd just say people speak with a very general standard southern accent, nothing too special sadly- also i think it depends on the person whether or not they say "yeah" at the end of every sentence, not really an accent/dialect thing imo
This was a great video. You also have a distinct voice, so I was somewhat surprised that the quality of your voice changed so much when putting on the RP accent. And it was interesting to see how much of an accent is more than just the sounds themselves, but the vowel lengths and how relaxed your mouth is (pause).
I think you were really close in the last clip. I am an English speaker learning French and have noticed how the French speak at the front of their mouth with their lips rather than using the deeper sounds that come from the back as in English. I think that’s what I can hear in your accent. Your definitely right about the flow of sound as you speak - working on that would help. But honestly, your English is so good, why worry! Most of us, especially the English, are hopeless with languages! What you’re doing is amazing!
Hey Paul, I have followed you about 10 years and this was one of the most interesting videos you've made. Accents are very interesting thing. My native language is Finnish and our language has many accents or maybe they can be called as dialects. They are very strong that way that a person can live in another part of the country than they are originated, and even after decades it is often hearable where they originate.
I am quite fluent in English but of course I have foreign accent. Sometimes foreign people have told me that I and other Finns sound "slightly American". At school we are taught "plain Oxford English", but in our country tv series, movies etc. are not dubbed but have subtitles and we hear the original speech. And because of that we Finns have heard a lot more American English than British in our lives. Of course that is the case with the internet too. I am sure it has a strong effect.
Someone else said you sounded staccato and that's it. You can learn the sounds but you have to also learn the delivery. Would love to see you continue accent challenges. Particuarly an urban accent from the UK and Ireland.
Amazing video. Thank you for making this. As an English man, it's quite interesting seeing a Canadian put so much effort into imitating an RP accent. You did a very good job, but obviously as a native British person I could very clearly hear the inadequacies. I would love to see you try a more colloquial accent, such as a northern accent (Manchester or Yorkshire). Not many people actually speak with the accent you were trying to emulate.
Sounds distinctly South African to me - the aggressive consonants and enunciation, tension, inflections, and the way you say path and laugh. Even the pitch of the voice. I have SA relatives, so I know the accent quite well!
This was very entertaining, you ended up with a verg good German/Scandinavian accent. 😂 I have noticed something and I wonder if there could be something to it.
I'm British but I have an unusual accent due to various factors but RP underlies it. I was born in Somerset, but had a Nanny from Bath, and speech therapy when I was very young. Then when I was 5 years old I moved to Lancashire and got bullied a lot for sounding "posh", and I couldn't understand the locals. At 18 years old I moved to Yorkshire for University where a lot of people believed I was native to Germany, and then at 20 I moved to Berkshire. Nowadays (at 30) if I ask a Northerner where I'm from they say the South, and if I ask a Southerner they say the North. After many years, at least people know I am British now! Anyway, I find it interesting that they mistook you for German with a little experience in RP, whilst people mistook me for German at an age where I also had little practise speaking but used RP as the base when I did (I was selectively mute until my mid-20s, possibly due to being autistic).
Perhaps RP just sounds a bit odd when you have little experience of it. You should try again but with a local accent, and see what happens then. 😁
As a German native speaker and former student of English studies, I picked up the RP-pronunciation to a nearly perfect level after years of practicing. What plays a big role in picking up the British accent is mastering the intonation correctly. That’s even more difficult than learning how to pronounce in RP properly. As for instance, which vowel in a word is stressed shorter and which one is stressed longer. Also, stressing the consonants, low or mid or high pitch sound etc. In addition to that, depending on the length of a sentence, the rules can change quickly.
What helped me the most was just keep on listening to British radio presenters on a daily basis for many years. Still, the reaction of BE native speakers is interesting since they get distracted by the fact that I don’t speak a particular local British accent but in RP.
This video has to be the gateway to a video on the Mid-Atlantic accent we used to speak with in North America! 🇨🇦🇬🇧🇺🇸
I would add that because English is spoken by so many non-native speakers in the form of ESL, we have become accustom to hearing a varied range of accents. This has lead to the avoidance in questioning one’s accent (or origins) in English, I believe. This phenomenon doesn’t apply to non-native speakers in less common languages, where native speakers are quick to apply their curiosity and question speakers on their accent.
Unless said non-native is an Anglophone, then the b**tards just switch to blinkin' English.
Can resonate with that second point. Sometimes when I’m curious about where a non-native speaker of English is from, I shy away from asking because I wouldn’t want it to make them uncomfortable. It’s ironic because I myself am a non native speaker of English who moved as a child so have attained a fluency that’s native.
Paul, another great video! I can relate to it but in reverse! I listened to countless hours of RADIO when I moved to Toronto from Brazil in 1994 so that I would sound more "Canadian" - The effect was so good that when I went to U of T to ask about university applications, the secretary assumed I was a nice speaker! Oddily enough, I now have a little more of an accent now than I did 30 years ago! And I have lived here since then.
Also, regarding your first question: I am Brazilian and my wife is Portuguese from the Azores. We learned each other's accents. We both taught Canadian Diplomats who served in Brazil, Portugal, and Moambique, and taught Potuguese at both Ottawa universities. She can emulate a Brazilian accent to the point people believe she's Brazilian but can't place her exactly within Brazil. She can talk like three different people and... yes, her body language and demeanor change from one to the other.
I learned to emulate the European Portuguese accent and I can teach Portuguese using both general Brazilian and General European Portuguese accents and do a very good job. My own accent in Brazil is an almost extinct accent from the city of São Paulo, heavily influence by Italian immigrants. The accent is now a little closer to Rio de Janeiro Portuguese because of TV's influence since the 1970s. I learned how to imitate Rio's accent too, but they always realize I'm faking it. Finally, I learned how to talk extensively in my wife's native accent - The Micaelense Portuguese of the Island of São Miguel, Azores. It is quite different from every Continental Portuguese accent and all Brazillian accents too. And there are no accent coaches for it! So, I had to use the power of observation to master it!
BTW, you should do a video on Portguese accents. It's quite fascinating!
The accent you used from about halfway through the video in the voiceover until the last chapter actually sounded really good. not necessarily accurate or very british, but soothing and enjoyable for lack of a better way of putting it. for example, 12:06 "imagery" was perfection. you do clip ending consonents though. just a bit later at 12:37 the way you said "accent" wasnt even close to how id imagine another british person saying it.
He sounds Danish - the word clipping you mention is a known feature in Danish.
I think one of the biggest differences in dialects is the rhythm. Every lenguaje has a different rhythm, also there is the presence of a vowel sound that is use more, another thing is the "thinking vowel", some languages use the "a" sound, other the "e" sound and so on.
You can sound more natural and local if you get the right rhythm and entonation, even if you are saying the word wrong is gona feel right, for example for me now, with the danish language, even if a say something wrong, because I aim the entonation and this other small details, sometimes they think I have a accent from a small island or a corner in denmark.
I feel like in your case, the dominant vocals in Canada are the "a" and "e", but for the British accent is more like "o" and "u", also they have a tendency to lengthen vowels like in "sound" "pound", they sound for me more like "soouund" "pooouund", but in your case are shorter, more like a strike, is the same in how you end the words, you cut the word when ends, but they have the tendency to make the vowels longer.
"Why do you sound so posh?" In the most posh accent 🤣
No but I get what he means because it’s a different kind of posh
Was going to add this comment myself if i didn't find it... hilarious!
My farts are better than Langfocus’ farts 💨
he sounded like a baked private school boy, he sounds high af, and has possibly once heard multicultural london english and thinks he is doing that a bit but still sounds like he goes to eton, but he ain't speaking 'straightforward' like how much has he smoked lol
@@jorgepeterbarton1324 for sure lol bless him
Great video! It made me think of three questions: 1) Have you done a video comparing American and Canadian accents? 2) Have you done a video comparing the various Canadian accents? 3) I've seen many older movies and documentaries (especially from WW2) where some Canadians spoke with a distict British accent. Can you discuss the linguistic background of that phenomena?
I once achieved a near-native accent of English, when I spent a few months actually living in Britain. I don't sound like a native speaker anymore, because a lot of what made me sound more British was simply imitating people around me. Since getting back to my home country, I've had fewer opportunities to practise with native speakers, which is why my accent is now fluctuating between RP and mid-Atlantic (sort of British with a few Americanisms mixed in).
I did keep my British accent for a few years though, RP with a few elements of regional Oxfordshire, and was sometimes asked by Brits where in Britain I was from because they couldn't quite place my accent. I count that as a win.
As I'm sure has been pointed out already, your starting point is one in which you speak with impeccable, almost robotic enunciation. That is very helpful for all your videos where you try to explain linguistic concepts to us. But it's likely a big part of what your test subjects were picking up on and describing as less colloquial or too formal.
Yes, this is a good point. I remember wondering if he was a native English speaker when I first watched a video because his prosody is reasonably unusual.
@jockcox thank you, you just gave me my new word of the day! I have never come across or seen the word 'prosody' until now. I like it a lot! 👍😉
My farts are better than Langfocus’ farts 💨
Was expecting this video to be super click-baity but was actually super interesting and informative
I am English and pretty good at accents and lived in the US for 10 years and had friends from NY and Texas. I remember going to a party in the US and did a southern accent all night and nobody new I was English. When I spoke my native tongue the Americans thought I was Australian! I think you sound Scandinavian to me.
Your observation about people who learn authentic pronunciation is very interesting. Cultural immersion vs. observation and such. I'm an English speaker from America, and I learned Spanish in college, but it wasn't until I spent a semester in Spain that I learned to speak it decently well. I was very fascinated by the country around me and felt deeply connected to it. Spanish speakers know immediately that I'm not Spanish, but once in a classroom in America, one of my students from Colombia heard me speak Spanish and commented that I had an accent. As in, my Spanish was different from the Spanish she was used to, not that it was off or lacking. It felt pretty good to hear that. Best wishes to all the language learners out there.
I’ve learnt to love my posh accent, it warms my heart to see people try to speak the way I do. ❤
The thing that speakers of American English just can’t ever get right is phonemic vowel length. Length is so important in English that it really needs to be considered the main differentiator amongst pairs of similar vowels, with timbre being secondary (but also important). You only really make timbre distinctions, with length varying allophonically. So, when you try to say ‘off’ properly, it ends up sounding as if it were ‘orf’.
Edit: I’ve just got to the bit where you introduce Molly, and I literally only understood because her name was on screen. It wouldn’t otherwise have been comprehensible, as what you said would have to be spelt ‘morley’ or something. It sounds like a plausible surname, but has no resemblance to the name Molly. You might as well say Polly.
Basically, it’s like when English speakers try to speak languages with long consonants, but make no distinction between _pero_ and _perro,_ and don’t understand why they’re not understood. It’s a completely different phoneme for natives.
This is so true- when he said his own name it sounded strange because he closed off the au sound and didn’t elongate it enough
@AmyThePuddytat I think you won the "I love language" phrase of the day: "timbre distinctions with length varying allophonically".
lol at assuming all American English speakers don't do vowel length
@@BoxStudioExecutive I can hear they can't because they f it up so consistently. They don't even know what they are doing. They can't hear what they are making long or short.
I wonder if that varies with how much exposure you have to British content. I am American and I watch a lot of British TH-cam, and I definitely automatically perceive an elongated vowel spoken by a British person as having an R at the end. I don't know if I could produce it though.
When speaking in your standard, Canadian accent, I actually thought you sounded Scottish at first. After learning you’re Canadian, I could definitely pinpoint the Canadian accent, but I feel as if you don’t draw-out the hardest, most distinguishable aspects of the Canadian accent; yet, you very clearly have them.
(I know this isn’t a comment on your RP attempt, but still, I just wanted to share something interesting I noticed. I actually speak 3 languages myself and an okay amount of a 4th. My degree is in Speech Communications.)
I’m English and he didn’t sound Scottish at all to me
@@Ok-ze7rg Yeah, I probably should've clarified what I meant better now that I reread my comment. I didn't mean his overall, standard accent. I only meant small parts/moments of it sounded Scottish; some of the subtleties. In no way does he actually sound like a full Scot.
I’m American and I would love to speak that RP accent on a daily basis. People would think I’d lost my mind, but it sounds so good!
Yeah just avoid the North of England or commoner areas. Cuz if they hear RP most will think your an upper class torie
Go for it
Or be proud of your native tongue and accent. Go for that.
I agree RP is a pleasant accent, but I think learning to like your own accent is easier and more socially acceptable lol
Im using RP accent too. And ive met some british people complimenting that my accent is so perfect. It makes me so confident to talk, tho im still learning.
I'm just glad the Brits can handle the basic trivia questions. Keep up the good work lads.
I am glad to know that it is not only the Amercians who are the dumb ones.
My farts are better than Langfocus’ farts 💨
I think it is rather difficult for someone to learn a different accent in your own language, for a variety of reasons. Then again, I thorougly enjoyed watching you, great effort !
Even if you didn’t realise what you were doing, you perfectly encapsulated the imagery of what being British feels like; standing over the edge of an extreme drop looking down.
this is great
I'm about 13 minutes in and my thoughts on your accent so far are:
About sounding German/Dutch/Swedish, you started out sounding a bit staccato (to my N. American ears), which I think some English speakers might associate with German accents, though your prosody smoothed a little as you continued. Your words sometimes sounded over-enunciated (to my N. American ears), and I wonder if teaching English as a second language contributed to this.
At a couple of times during the video, your accent reminded me of Australian accents, and at least once, New Zealand.
With more practice, I think your accent could be pretty convincing.
Edit: After coaching, pretty good.
I'm Irish and I've been watching your videos for years, but for a long time I assumed you weren't a native English speaker because of your usual accent. I wonder if you did a similar video and asked Canadians where they thought you were from what their reaction might be.
(Edit - I didn't intend for this comment to seem ungenerous or critical. I suspect Paul, like myself, almost only ever speaks English with non-native speakers, and that might well have been the case for many years.
I haven't lived in Ireland for 35 years. When I visit, people tell me that my English is excellent and ask me what part of Germany I am from, though interestingly English people are much quicker to detect the Irish still present in my somewhat mixed and diluted accent. Hence my interest in seeing another native English speaker being mistaken for a non-native speaker.)
I think it’s more his intonation rather than accent/phonology in a strict sense. He sounds robotic, like some people with autism.
@@AmyThePuddytatthe intonation reminds the Eastern Europian way of speaking, doesn't it?
@@veirant5004It’s so staccato that it could almost be Japanese, although no one would guess that because of his appearance. I bet if he were Asian, people would think his way of speaking were due to coming from an immigrant family, rather than a personal quirk.
@@AmyThePuddytat yeah i believe his caucasian face with blond hair and clear eyes is part of the reason why people though he was from Northern/Eastern Europe.
Did you mean unusual?
I'm Scottish, and I've just spent a couple of days in Manchester. It reminded me just how wide a range of accents there are in England, particularly in the bigger cities. There's a lot of people from continental Europe or further who may have emigrated and attempted to integrate with English culture, or who may live around people mostly from their native country, or may have been born in England to foreign parents, so even within specific regional English accents, there's quite a range. There's a lot of diversity, and most people are generally fairly tolerant of variances in accents without even thinking about it. It's just a natural part of interacting socially.
Great video! I really enjoyed this challenge. Anecdote from me - I'm trans, and when I started transitioning I knew that I wanted my new voice to be a huge part of my focus. When you're male-to-female trans, your voice doesn't change automatically - hormones don't affect it (they do for trans-men though), so any vocal change can only take place through training. A friend of mine was also trans-femme and had the most beautiful voice - I asked her once how difficult it was to obtain it, and whether she could give me some sort of ballpark figure for the level of training and commitment it required. She thought for awhile and said "It's easier than learning German. But probably harder than learning a convincing Scottish accent." - that was all I needed to get started, and after a year of work (and liking my voice a lot now!) I think she was absolutely right. Your video reminded me of that, as I mentally tried to figure out what an accent change would take!
You look and sound German to me.
He sounds Canadian to me. Not sure how you're hearing German?
I am canadian and he sounds german to me as well
Yeah, in your native (Canadian) tongue you sound German.
He looks German idk how
GERMAN!?! Mate, have you ever tried speaking english with a German? 😂
I've listened to a lot of langfocus videos, and I always assumed Paul was a native German speaker! I certainly did not have him down as a native English speaker at all! A good few of the interviewees had the same impression.
Well done. I'm British and can't do RP.
Those youngsters speaking their (probably) affected urban English are an interesting audience too.
I think you approached this very analytically and technically. It felt like you just needed to relax and "let yourself go" - and take the risk of impersonating a stereotype Brit.
I agree. Great effort but a bit stiff.
Yep don't ask those minorities who speak urban English to give expert advise on speaking English when they can barely speak it themselves.
Well done, a lovely project and video.
Great attempt, I really enjoyed it!
Mastering an accent requires more than getting the phonetic sounds right. It also involves placement of sound in the mouth (as the dialect coach said), speech rhythms, intonation, and a lot more.
Yes I think he speaks too far forwards in the mouth
As a child of immigrants growing up in Montreal I had to go to a French school and of course learned to speak with a native French Canadian accent (I think learning it as a child is the only way to truly sound authenic). I only learned English after that and my English unfortunately has traces of a French accent. When I speak to French people from Europe I try to make my French more "international" but they can hear I'm Canadian. But if I really spoke Québécois they wouldn't understand anything. 🤣
I'd rephrase - "my English has a trace of French Canadian". Be proud of that.
This has to be my new favourite video🤣🤣🤣 I love ittttt