Archive for 2012

LEARNING BRITISH ENGLISH RP ACCENT ONLINE

A new client recently asked me “How hard is it to learn a British English RP accent online?”. The answer, of course, depends upon a number of factors.

Firstly, what is your native accent and how strong is it? There are 24 vowels in RP English, so if your accent is very different from RP then you have to learn all of them. That’s a lot of work! It may be that you have to learn a number of the consonants, typically R and TH, so this also takes time. RP is heavily dependent upon the tune and stress pattern, and learning to apply this to the new sounds in your speech can also be very time consuming, as well as great fun. How many ways can you say “I gave it to him”?

Secondly, some people have a better ear than others when learning a new language. If you are an engineer who is good with numbers and spreadsheets you are less likely to have an ear for language. Also, men are generally not as good with language learning as women. Teenagers are better than adults because their speech is still relatively plastic. These are all generalisations, of course, but they will have an effect on your progress in learning a new accent.

Thirdly there is time and determination. This is the most important factor of all. If you are keen and diligent then there is no limit to what you can learn. Remember to put your hours of practice in and you will see results.

So the answer to the question about learning your new RP British English Accent is if you want to, you can do it! Training is available online and face to face.

Find out more about our live Skype online accent reduction training.

Posted in Prounouncing English |