BRITISH ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION RP accent e vowel sound hair parent air
hello and welcome back to english with
lucy today is an exciting day because
I’m starting a new mini series with you
guys all about British English
pronunciation now arguably one of the
most difficult parts of learning English
is the pronunciation of the many many
vowel sounds so the first part of this
series is going to be all about the
different vowel sounds that we use in
British English quickly before we get
started make sure you connect with me on
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and 100 cards before we get started I
just want to make one thing clear I am
not trying to make you get rid of your
accent accents make us unique I just
want to help you improve your
pronunciation so that you can be better
understood and can communicate more
easily so don’t go crazy and think I
must use my accent I must use my accent
because a it’s really difficult and be
why unless you want to be an actor for a
specific job role there’s no need a
story that might surprise some of you is
that throughout my childhood and some of
my teenage years I was really really
embarrassed of my accent I have a
relatively posh British accent and some
people used to make fun of me at school
but now I realised that accents don’t
matter what does matter is bad
pronunciation and this is where I come
in to help you guys okay so the vowel
sound that we’re going to use today is
the phoneme err and it’s written like
this I do think it’s important for you
guys to recognize things like these
because when you want to learn how to
pronounce a word you can search on any
dictionary and the phonetics will really
really help you understand how to
pronounce each word now I mostly teach
Spanish students
and they really really struggle with
this phoneme so exponent as a dip film
that means it is two vowel sounds
combined in one syllable so to make the
air sound we combine the egg and the up
air but normally British English
speakers will just say air and will
change the pitch air air so in the first
part of the diphthong we use the F sound
so I’ve got my mouth wide and my tongue
relaxed F and in the second part
it’s the up it’s a schwa ah my whole
mouth is relaxed and it’s just a little
push of voice ah ah so I’m going ah ah
ah ah the last thing that you must do is
propel a lot of air through your lungs
as you say this vowel sound so I want I
don’t want air
I want air breathy the breathy oh you
are the more British you sound so
firstly we have the word air is magic
gas that’s all around us now it’s
written a I are but we do not pronounce
the R at the end of the word Americans
however do pronounce it so we say air
and they would say air so after the air
vowel sound we don’t pronounce the R
unless a vowel then comes after the are
like in area area now I’m going to give
you a couple of examples of words that
end in the air sound that you might have
been pronouncing incorrectly firstly
we’ve got the words that end in a I our
air chair hair fair and millionaire and
then we’ve got the words that end in a
our II care aware
share square now we’ve got the words
that end in E a R so we’ve got bear ter
pair swear
then we’ve got air use in the middle of
a word so we’ve got things with AR
parent the names Mary Sarah various then
we’ve got words with a IR like hairy or
dairy and we’ve got the British spelling
for aeroplane with AER we’ve got
aeroplane or arrow mix and finally we’ve
got the e AR and words such as
unbearable hopefully today’s lesson has
helped you in some way make sure you
subscribe because there will be more
videos of this type coming very very
soon I really do want to help you with
your pronunciation and I think looking
at it Val by Val is really going to be a
good way of doing that so that’s it
today’s class and make sure you connect
with me on all my social media and I
will see you in the next episode bye bye
then we have our use in the middle of
the road in the middle of the road