1 LANGUAGE, 3 ACCENTS! UK vs. USA vs. AUS English Pronunciation!

English with Lucy

2138

- Hello everyone,

and welcome back to English with Lucy.

I have the most incredible treat for you today.

I am shortly going to welcome two lovely guests

who have generously given their time to help teach you

the differences between Australian English,

American, English, and British English.

We're going to look at how we pronounce words differently.

We've already done a video on differences in vocabulary.

You can click on the link in the description box

If you want to improve your pronunciation

and your listening skills even further

then I highly recommend the special method

of combining reading books

whilst listening to that audio book counterpart on Audible.

This is how you use the method.

Take a book that you have already read in English

or a book that you would like to read in English,

I've got plenty of recommendations

down below in the description box.

And read that book

whilst listening to the audio book version on Audible.

Reading alone will not help you with your pronunciation

because English isn't a strictly phonetic language.

The way a word is written in English

may not give you much indication at all

as to how it's pronounced in English.

But, if you listen to a word at the same time as reading it,

your brain will start making connections.

And the next time you hear that word

you'll know exactly how it's spelled,

and the next time you see that word written down,

you'll know exactly how it's pronounced.

It is such an effective method,

and the best part is you can get one free audio book,

that's a 30 day free trial on Audible,

all you've got to do is click on the link

in the description box and sign up.

I've got loads of recommendations down there for you.

First up, we have Emma.

- Hey there, I'm Emma from the MMMEnglish YouTube channel

coming at you from Perth in Western Australia.

- And we also have Vanessa.

- Hi, I'm Vanessa and I live in North Carolina in the U.S.

I run the YouTube channel Speak English with Vanessa.

- And I'm speaking with modern received pronunciation.

So not everyone from Britain speaks like me.

It depends where you're from.

These are two fantastic teachers,

and I have left all of their information

in the description box

so you should definitely go and check them out.

We are going to look at six sounds,

and for each of these six sounds,

I have included five example words.

So you'll hear us say the words

and then we'll look at how we pronounce them differently.

Okay, we've got the first five words.

So you can hear that Vanessa

does something called yad dropping.

In British English and Australian English

these words have a yuh sound.

In American English they often drop this yuh sound.

It's called yad dropping.

- You can also hear when we join tuh and yuh sound

sometimes we blend these together to make a chuh sound.

And Emma does this when she says Tuesday.

- This is also common in British English.

It's something that I do,

especially when I'm speaking quickly.

Can you give me some tuna?

It's Tuesday today.

Many people say this is wrong or lazy.

It's not, it's efficient.

Let's have a look another time at Vanessa

saying what I call duty.

- She says duty.

So not only does she drop that yuh sound to make do,

instead of dew,

she also replaces the tuh sound

with a duh sound,

and that is something we're going to look at

a bit more later on.

Emma also replaces the tuh with a duh sound.

But she doesn't drop the yuh sound.

I say duty, she says Judy.

- And that's funny because we do say Judy in English,

but it only refers to the woman's name Judy,

Let's have a look at the next set of words.

All of these in British English pronunciation

have an ah sound.

Now you can hear that where we say the ah sound

Vanessa, in American English says the awe sound,

- She also pronounces the awe, the er sound

at the end of the word,

and we don't tend to do this in British English.

Now the Australian pronunciation is very similar here

to the British English pronunciation.

Emma's ah sound is maybe slightly more relaxed,

but the difference is absolutely tiny.

I say bottle, (laughs)

which can sound quite posh.

If I were to speak really quickly,

I might say bawdela water.

But if I'm speaking slowly and clearly,

a bottle of water.

Australian English, American English,

they replace that T with a D.

- So Australian English and British English here

are extremely similar.

American English is quite different.

So, now we're going to look at the tuh sound

or naught in some cases,

because in American English and Australian English,

sometimes they don't pronounce the letter T as a tuh.

Now it's interesting because both Vanessa and Emma

do seem to alternate slightly.

Sometimes they use the tuh sound

and sometimes they use the duh sound.

- Okay, for me personally,

these T ones are kind of weird.

Sometimes it's a flap T,

sometimes it's a fully pronounced T.

The flap T is pretty common in Australia though.

So you can see here with the word little,

or little how I say it.

- They both use a duh sound in the middle,

but in other words they use the tuh sound like percentage.

- Vanessa really does pronounce that er sound

at the beginning.

She says percentage, percentage.

So in these ones,

we are looking at the R sound.

For me, it's quite different in American English.

And there's a slight difference in Australian English.

I wonder if you'll be able to pick up on it

'cause it is very, very slight.

- Car.

- Car.

- Car.

- Car.

- Car.

- Car.

I would never say that. (laughs)

So let's start with American English.

They pronounced the er sound

- Car.

- In British English and Australian English

We don't use this er sound in the R words.

But, British English is more of an awe sound.

Australian English is ever so slightly more open

than the British vowel sound here.

- Car.

- Can you hear the difference?

It's almost like the vowel sound is shorter

and slightly more open.

- Now let's look at words with the O sound

in British English.

- Go.

- Go.

- Go.

- Go.

- Go.

- Go.

- No.

- No.

- No.

- No.

- No.

- No.

Can you hear the ever so slight difference

between the British English no,

and the American English?

- No.

- In British English we start with the shore sound ah,

and then it's a diphthong.

So we blend that into the uh sound.

In American English pronunciation

they start with the ah sound,

which starts further back in the mouth

and then they blend it into the uh sound.

So it's a wider vowel sound

coming from further back in your mouth.

Now Australian English pronunciation can be very different.

Emma's accent is quite light,

but there are a couple of times where she goes oh,

It's almost like she includes a yuh sound.

One example is where she says both.

- I use both, I use both.

And another one is when she says overflow.

It's just leaning towards overflow.

- But then at other times

she almost completely matches my pronunciation as well.

Okay, let's look at how we pronounce

E R

Words that end in E R.

- Harry Potter.

- Harry Potter.

- Harry Potter.

- Harry Potter.

- Harry Potter.

- Harry Potter.

So with the pronunciation of E R at the end of words,

and this works for many A R words as well.

In American English they pronounce the R at the end,

and in Australian English and British English we don't.

- Also pay attention to the way they pronounce the T's.

In American English in the middle of words

this is nearly always a du sound.

- In Australian English it completely depends, it appears.

Sometimes Emma uses the duh sound,

sometimes she uses the tuh sound.

- Water, later.

- It might be depending on her mood. (chuckles)

For me, and I'm speaking with modern received pronunciation.

So not everyone from Britain speaks like me.

It depends where you're from.

Sometimes if I'm speaking quickly

and in an informal situation I might use that duh sound.

For example, instead of saying "But I want to go",

I might say "But I wanna go,

but I wanna go".

I might use a glottal stop instead of the tuh sound,

but I want to go.

So, there you have it.

Some of the most profound differences

between American English pronunciation,

Australian English pronunciation,

and British English pronunciation.

If you like this video,

we have a much more lighthearted vocabulary lesson as well,

where we compare the way we say,

where we compare the different vocabulary words that we use.

Thank you so much to Emma and Vanessa

for generously giving up their time

to help me make this video for you guys.

I have left all of their information in the description box.

Go and check out their channels.

They are really fantastic teachers.

Don't forget to check out Audible.

You can claim your free audio book.

That's a 30 day free trial.

All you've got to do is click the link in the description.

And don't forget to connect with me

on all of my social media.

I've got my Facebook, my Instagram, and my Twitter.

And I shall see you soon for another lesson, muah!

(mellow electronic music)