How To: Speak with a British accent

Hmmm, I'm English and this doesn't sound like any of the countless British dialects that I know. Different parts of the British Isles have massively different accents. Some places we have trouble understanding each other! And to all wrap of them into one form of pronunciation is like saying there is one American accent. Listen to Gwyneth Paltrow and Renée Zellweger. Flawless British accents from US actors. Do not listen to Dick Van Dyke!

Right OH! 44Bongo Right OH!

Actually, Bongo's right. My family are English and being raised in Ruislip, their accents are more of a typical Londona. Roight, moor loik Vinny Jounes, but we also know people on the Northern end and the further North you go, the thicker the dialects with the welsh and scots being the hardest to understand.

Scots and welsh being the hardest to understand really?, i would say it works both ways, you may think these accents are hard to understand but Scottish and Welsh people would probably say the same about your accent, their only difficult to understand if you don't come from that area but it works vice versa. Personally i find cockny and londoner accents very tricky to understand.

This is amazing... 28 chapters later and you are no more capable of speaking with a convincing British accent than you were 35 minutes ago. How can you expect to teach a convincing British accent when you can't speak with one?!

complete crap

lol very amusing! And no bad really although I can see it would take a lot of practice.

One thing I'd point out is that we don't say "matta", we say "matteh" as in the French e. Some of us dislike t's and just omit them, so you get ma-eh, with a brief pause in the middle. Words like garage and partridge aught to have a sharp "j" sound on the end. None of this French ashj or ishj. Short vowels really must be very short, harsh and subtle and long vowels have a very subtle y after them, but it shouldn't be too audible.

And finally, replace the phrases "I should" and "Should I" with, respectively, "I aught to" and "Shall I" if you don't want to sound reluctant about doing something. "Shall I/I aught to get you a cup of tea" sound like you actually want to and plan to get someone a cup of tea, rather than it being a chore.

Either way, if you try talk like us, we'll think your mad, give you British reserved confused looks and edge quickly away in the other direction. It also works if you make pig sounds. I managed to speed up a lady and then she started to run in high heals when I burst into fits of laughter.

if she says British Dialect one more time I swear I'll swing for her. Listen luv, I'm from London and I'm English, not Welsh, Not Scots, not Northern Irish. But I sound nuffink like the bloke from the uvver side of the Thames. Saying the accent you were attempting and failin at btw was standard British is a bit of an insult to my Scottish cousins etc. What you seem to be attempting is some sort of London and the home counties accent but it changes from palce to place. I'm from North London but I can spot and Eastender ( 6 miles away) no problem. South Londoners again have a different twang. You can learn this stuff from text books you basically have to have an ear for it, listen to a bunch of locals and fall into it.

oh and I live in Canada now and have to suffer the terrible "British" accents on the radio and TV here. BUT to the average every day North American who can't tell my North London accent from someone who grew up dodging Kangaroos on the other side of the world the accent we hear on TV and Radio are 'good enough'. I actually perform regularly as a voiceover artist for various projects across the States and Canada and was told once by some ad exec in Savanah that my London accent wasn't convincing enough. He was looking for Dick Van Doike (sic) and what I gave him was the real thing. He didn't like it and wanted it to sound like DVD so that the US audience could relate more. Gawd luv a duck guv'nor I asks ya?

British accent - no such thing. Yanks need to get it right. You can have various English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish accents but British - sorry, no. I have a strong London accent and Yanks think I'm an Australian!

Bongo...of course we all know that Bitain has got different accents.. that is pretty much the same in every country.. as In French for France, or italian for italy.. i believe that your observation was not a clever one. What is more, to give some credit to the lady in the video, she did say that in Britain there are different accents .. she was just trying to replicate the most common one .. the one the everyone knows abroad which is the standard English. the one that nobody speaks in Britain. I wanted to add that british especially have no clue in languages, they dont even know how their language work and they way it is structured or where the language come from....Ask a brit for a verb is ,, or what the subject of a sentence is....?!?!?!

thanks a lot^^.I feel better ...huhu but British accent is quite hard for me...I must try a lot to understand it T_T..
If i can't do,grade a in English subject by British teacher!! just be my dream...Ohh no...Y__Y...

She's doing alright. British accents are much more varied than American ones in my opinion, that's why I reckon they're hard. I'm a Kiwi and I can understand any American accent clearly whether it Boston, West Coast/Californian, Southern drawl (including variations) etc. But a thick Scottish or Welsh accent can be challenging. Need to also keep in mind that Americanisation of the English language (I wonder if Hollywood has anything to do with that) is occurring at a global level. The effect being today's standard British accent s not quite what it was 50 years ago. Don't believe me? Listen to a BBC radio recording by the Queen (or someone else with an equally plummy accent) 40-60 years ago. Tell me it isn't far more nasal and purse-lipped then today's .

Very Thorough, thank you

Who IS this woman??? But more importantly, why does she keep referring to 'dialect' when she really means 'accent'? I'm afraid I have little faith in the accent coaching abilities of anyone who confuses the two.

What happened with the 18 part?!

She does make the point that this is a general British accent and not specific to a region. I think the region is a few doors down from Hugh Grant. Why does everyone think all Brits sound like this?

There is no such thing as an English accent. The language is called English and anyone who is not has the accent. There are of course dialects within English; Welsh and Scots have already been mentioned as being difficult to manage for non-Brits, but these pale into insignificance compared to a strong Geordie dialect:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF4b2rpLXPc