British vs American English Pronunciation
KJ44
Posts: 38,093 Forum Member
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I found this to be a fascinating video. Assuming you're British, try to guess how the words are pronounced by the American person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nAnT3PASak
It's harder to do a US accent than one might think!
PS I absolutely distance myself from any attempts to cause animosity as can happen with this subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nAnT3PASak
It's harder to do a US accent than one might think!
PS I absolutely distance myself from any attempts to cause animosity as can happen with this subject.
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Obviously these are the standard British and standard American pronunciations. Accents do vary some within each country.
Overall it seems pretty accurate to me. I've heard Americans say route either way, though.
"Vase" caught me out, that was a total surprise.
Interesting, but as has been pointed out, accents vary from one part of a country to another. Having been born and raised in Scotland, I tend not to drop the final "r" in words like "other" and "clever", so the pronunciation is more like American English than British English. It's also very common in this country to pronounce gah-raj instead of ga-rage, address instead of address, and inquiry instead of inquiry, especially when referring to a formal investigation. The one I can never get my head round is "alooominum"!
The pronunciation of words also changes with time. When I was younger, I never heard anyone say "harassed". It was always "harassed" ... but that seemed to change when "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em" came along!
Yes - e.g. the word 'work' in the West of England is pronounced much the same as in the U.S.
I'd say on the East Coast they do.
Not mentioned on the video.
I'm stuck at question 1!
Aunt rhymes with none of those.
Rhymes with "can't" for me.
It's the same as "ant" for me, rhymes with "pant" or "rant".
Yes, Vic, NSW, QLD. They also say scone.
We do know how to use periods (full stops) in sentence structure though.
You missed a trick with your mini rant. You could have also said Americans say aluminium wrong because they spell it wrong too. :rolleyes:
It's not a case of "right and wrong"! English is spoken in different ways all round the world, including within England itself. A Cockney, a Yorkshireman and a Geordie do not pronounce letters or words in the same way.
D'ye no ken that?
Americans get it 100% right, "it" being American English. It's not some degenerate form as you imply.
Play nice.
You're absolutely right, the two types didn't diverge overnight, there are differences in accents, so one can find exceptions to disprove any generic statement about differences between British and American English.
Dig around on the YouTube sidebar on that page and you'll see some great stuff about "how to get a proper British accent". The fascination for me was learning the rules we absorbed as children that others fnd so opaque.
Conversely I know that US English has its rules too, so British people like me can enjoy figuring them out.
I'd really like to learn from US chums what we British get wrong about US English
In those particular words I always heard it more as a flap t sound, so it sounds more like a d. Cad and hud.
Not as noticeable as when words like better or butter almost become bedder and budder in American English, but still sort of there, just about.
and Dentist is Dinniss.:rolleyes:
I was always surprised that, over the many years since the USA was a colony, that the term American wasn't used for the language, instead of using American English. It would stop all this 'you say it wrong/right' malarky if it were given it's own name as it is it's own language.
After all, we don't say that we here in the UK speak Scandinavian/Latin/Gaelic English (add any other language that our language has derived words from to the list