Accents

Many people contact us wanting to change their accent.  What clients usually want to do is to learn Received Pronunciation, or RP for short. The definition of RP is “the accent used by people who speak with an RP accent.” It is the accent of the educated middle class. A very strong RP accent sounds too “posh” – the Queen has an RP accent but it is very strong and most of our clients would not want to end up talking like that. It is a non-regional accent – people from all over the country can have an RP accent.

Although there is now more acceptance of regional accents in terms of the differences in vowel sounds, it is not generally acceptable for professional people to use non-standard contractions such as “gunnu”, “lorra” “wossa’?” So the first thing we do is to make sure that clients are following the “golden rules” that you will find on the “Elocution” page. Then we look at the vowel sounds in turn. English has 24 spoken vowel sounds, so as you can imagine, that can take a long time.

You also have to look at the tune of the voice. Different accents have different intonation patterns and clients have to learn to change not only the individual sounds but also the tune that they play over the whole phrase and sentence.   The quality of the sound produced also varies from one accent to another.  Some accents place the voice high up in the head whilst others tighten the throat leading to a more strangled sound.  Learning to relax the throat and breathe correctly in order to support the voice is often a vital aspect of accent work.

Accents also generally involve a certain amount of non-standard grammar. The grammar that we are looking for is called "Standard English". It is independent of accent but if you want to speak RP you have to use it with Standard English.

Acting students often want to learn an accent other than RP and this, too, can be accommodated. This is generally not such a difficult process because it is being learnt for a script and can be done parrot fashion.

Many of our clients have come from abroad and wish to lose their foreign accent.  Here the aim is to sound as clear and natural as possible.  Each foreign language brings different problems for the speaker when they are trying to learn English.  For example Far Eastern accents typically do not make the distinction between /r/ and /l/ whilst Asian accents have difficulty with /v/ and /w/ and Spanish accents often struggle with /v/ and /b/.  The /th/ sound is a common problem for many non-native English speakers and many foreign accents have difficulty making the distinction between, among other things,  “ship” and “sheep”. 

With all clients we look at each accent individually and start with the sounds which are causing the greatest problems rather than working through a standard list in a set order.  Each person’s specific needs are dealt with in order to produce an accent which is natural, fluent, clear and pleasant to listen to.  Sessions are recorded in high quality MP3 format onto your pen drive or other USB recording device giving you the opportunity to hear the correct pronunciation as you practice at home. This means that you do not have to spend time taking notes, you do not have to remember everything and, most importantly, you start to really listen to the sound of your own voice. Gradually you begin to learn to be objective about your voice and speech and hear the changes that are taking place. You can listen to the recording and have your lesson over and over again, making it even more valuable.