To be honest, I never really cared about my pronunciation. I never asked myself whether I would like to speak with American or British Accent - for a long time I couldn't even name the main differences.
But things obviously have to change now, since pronunciation is an important issue for the next weeks and even the PC2. I read about the pros and cons of the two options and now decided to focus on British English. Even though I think American English would be easier to learn, especially because most of the English movies and TV shows are from America, I just prefer the sound of British English - I do not even know why. I guess the most important thing is to stay motivated to practice my pronunciation skills - and simply to imagine myself speaking fluently with a British Accent motivates me a lot more than the opportunity to watch a lot of American movies to learn the right pronunciation. Watching movies, by the way, is something I do not have time for at the moment, so this argument is irrelevant anyways. ;)
So, the first thing to do is:
The next step is to find some good examples.
At the following video, the main differences between American and British Accent are explained:
British Accent: Some Pronunciation Rules
- r:
If the letter "r" is in the initial position of a word or in the middle of it, there isn't a huge difference from the pronunciation in American English. (rain, drain, spring, berry)
However, the letter "r" is dropped if it occurs after a vowel in a monosyllabic word or at the end of a word.
(birth,turn, learn, work, farm, other, clever, director)
For example, if somebody with a British accent speaks the sentence "Are there more birds?", no "r" is heard, but if the sentence is changed to "Are there any birds?", an "r" is heard at the end of "there" because "any" starts with a
-t:
In British English, the letter "t" is always pronounced the same way. (In American English, the letter is dropped if it's at the end of a word.)
- keeping the vowel sound very small
If the vowel is short, it should be pronounced small (pit, put, pet, pot)
To come to an end, here is a short list of the main words (or letters) that are pronounced differently. To find out the right pronunciation in your preferred accent, check out the end of the video above.
- Z
- new
- adult
- brochure
- garage
- address
- laboratory
- route
- advertisement
- controversy
- patent
- apricot
- vase
- hurricane
- enquiry (Am: inquiry)
- leisure
- either
- neither
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