42. Want to sound British? You might regret it...

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[00:00:00.00] - Oliver (Host)

Hello and welcome to English and Beyond, a podcast for advanced-level English learners looking to improve their comprehension and vocabulary through interesting real-world topics. If you find this podcast hard to follow, please be aware that we also have an intermediate-level version. And remember that you can find the transcript as well as vocabulary flashcards for the trickiest new words at www.morethanalanguage.com. My name is Oliver, and I am your teacher for this episode. Now, this episode is about accents, and therefore, surely shouldn't be too controversial. However, as much as I'd like to say this is a neutral topic, accents are surprisingly contentious, particularly in Britain. George Bernard Shaw, a famous Irish playwright, once said, "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him". So there are two dimensions to this episode, one about the perception of accents within the UK and one about the perception outside of the country. I want to deal with the latter first.

[00:01:15.17] - Oliver (Host)

I hadn't thought too much about my accent until I started meeting a lot of people from other countries. When I was living in China, for example, I had for the first time some close American friends who were simply fascinated by my accent. In particular, I remember that they were really amazed by the way that I pronounced the sentence, Can I have a bottle of water? First, they were mystified, confused by what I was asking for, and then they were highly amused. And part of the reason for that is that they thought I just sounded, in their words, just incredibly British. In fact, whenever an American or an Australian, or anyone really, tries to imitate a British accent, is almost always based on the same stereotypical British accent, something between the Queen and Downton Abbey. Hollywood is full of examples of this infamously posh accent, but it's not really one that you hear that often on the streets in the UK. There is, of course, no such thing as a single British accent as such in truth. First, there are four countries within the UK that could be termed British. Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England. Each of these countries' accents are really self-evidently quite different from each other. And then within each of those constituent countries, there is a remarkable level of accent diversity. Despite this reality, as I mentioned previously, for many people around the world, there is a British accent which has a single well-defined sound, often associated associated with what we call received pronunciation, RP, or the Queen's English.

[00:03:07.04] - Oliver (Host)

And the prominence of this accent in other countries' perception of the UK has a significant impact on how they perceive us as a country in general. Accents in the UK have long been linked to class, education, and prestige. In the past, RP was the standard for proper English, while regional accents were sometimes looked down upon. But in recent years, attitudes have shifted, and accents that were once considered uneducated or working class are now not only far more accepted, but actually more desirable for many people than a modern RP accent. Why did RP become the dominant accent in terms of representation in the elite spaces of media, politics, finance, entertainment, and so many other parts of British life? Why were regional accents historically seen as inferior, and how have things changed in the last few decades? Accents in the UK are deeply connected to class. In the UK, more than in many other countries, it seems that the way that you speak can immediately reveal something about your social background, education, and even potential job prospects. This is something that I hear from people from other countries living in Britain very often. Of course, this is not unique to the UK.

[00:04:37.00] - Oliver (Host)

Many other countries have their own accent-based prejudices, though some people may not recognise them as readily. But it's true that for much of the 20th century, having an RP accent in the UK gave you a clear advantage in life and employers often preferred RP speakers, believing they sounded more intelligent and trustworthy, which would certainly be considered very offensive to say nowadays. People from working class backgrounds, particularly from Liverpool, Newcastle, or Birmingham, sometimes felt pressured to change their accents to sound more professional if they wanted to succeed in life. For much of the 20th century, received pronunciation, also known as BBC English or even Oxford English, was considered the gold standard of spoken English. One of the interesting aspects of this accent is that RP is not tied to any particular region. It developed among the upper and upper middle classes of Southern England and was associated with public schools, which in Britain means elite private schools, as well as the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. However, I've met people from all over the UK who didn't speak with their country or county's regional accent. What I mean by this is that being upper middle class can have more of an impact on your accent than the geographical place that you happen to come from.

[00:06:07.07] - Oliver (Host)

Very significantly, when the BBC was founded in 1922, only RP speakers were allowed on air because RP was seen as neutral, clear, and authoritative. Through to the 1950s and '60s, regional accents were virtually banned from news broadcasting. It goes without saying that if people only hear one accent in formal, educationally elite settings, they internalise the connection between that accent and perceived intellectual characteristics. In the 1980s and '90s, the BBC began allowing more regional voices, and today, the BBC actively promotes diversity in accents. You'll now hear Geordie, Scouse, Mancunian, Scottish, and Welsh accents everywhere on the radio and TV. This shift shows how language and power have evolved in Britain. Modern RP still exists, but it no longer dominates in the same way it once did. One of the biggest changes in accent discrimination, therefore, came in the late 20th century, where these evolutions in the television and entertainment industry meant that people throughout the country were exposed to accents much more regularly and in a broad range of contexts. Despite this trend, some aspects of accent discrimination remain pretty deeply ingrained. A 2019 study by Queen Mary University of London found that accents associated with the working class were still perceived as less competent and less employable than modern RP.

[00:07:46.21] - Oliver (Host)

Another 2020 study found that 28% of workers in the UK have felt discriminated against because of their accent. Even in Parliament, some MPs have been mocked for regional accents, suggesting that modern RP still holds some linguistic prestige in certain spaces, even places where the intellectual content of people's words should be the focus. Incidentally, although it wasn't an incident of mocking, there was one memorable encounter in Parliament where a New Zealand-born MP simply couldn't understand a Scottish colleague's question in the House of Commons, asking him to repeat his sentence three times in total. This was an interesting mini event, not just because it shows how there can be misunderstandings because of accents, but also because much was made in certain sections of the media about the fact that the man who had trouble understanding was a Tory, a Conservative MP. There was almost an assumption that a posh Conservative MP was so out of touch that he couldn't even understand an ordinary Scottish accent, even though in reality, the Tory had a clear Kiwi accent, one from New Zealand and thus didn't have a modern RP accent himself.

[00:09:04.20] - Oliver (Host)

I have spent a lot of time talking to people who were born outside of the UK about accents. It's certainly the case, rightly or wrongly, that many learners of English have their own opinions about the difficulty of understanding particular accents. If it ever comes up in conversation that my mum is from Scotland, this fact is often met with a sharp intake of breath and a look of horror on the other person's face as they whisper about embarrassing situations where they haven't been able to make out a word of what was said to them on trips north of the border to Scotland. I think ultimately, this is a very subjective topic, in terms of how much someone likes a particular accent or not. How understandable an accent is or not is also largely down to how much you're exposed to it. For example, I am totally sure that a Spaniard learning English in Glasgow would have no problem with other Scottish accents in comparison to someone who had studied in Devon. But I am glad that we don't hear just one particular accent on TV anymore. The UK is lucky to have such accent diversity in a relatively small geographic space. And although I am very happy for people to tell me that I sound incredibly British, I do want to emphasise that there is definitely more than one way to sound incredibly British.

[00:10:30.26] - Oliver (Host)

Today, I'm excited to have a guest for the first time who is not someone that I'm related to or someone who is a close friend of mine, but instead, she is a friend of César's and an expert in this field.

[00:10:45.21] - Oliver (Host)

So thank you, Emma, very much for coming on to the podcast. In fact, I should say before we've even started, thank you for being here.

[00:10:52.04] - Emma (Guest)

Oh, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It's so nice to... I'm going to say to be here, but I'm in my office. It's nice to have you two here, I could say.

[00:11:00.10] - Oliver (Host)

Yeah, well, I always say to César, thank you for coming, as if he hasn't had to just move into the living room to record an episode with me. But as I said, because you're the first person that I've interviewed outside of my immediate family, essentially, I've actually got some questions written for you.

[00:11:19.29] - Emma (Guest)

Oh, like a proper interview. Let's go.

[00:11:22.11] - Oliver (Host)

Exactly. I'm going to start with a big hitter, theoretically easy, but potentially controversial. Do you have a favourite accent from the UK or Ireland?

[00:11:33.20] - Emma (Guest)

Does it have to be from the UK or Ireland, or can it be any accent? English accent?

[00:11:41.07] - Oliver (Host)

That's true, yeah, actually. We'll expand it. Any accent at all.

[00:11:44.09] - Emma (Guest)

Because I do. It's the Boston accent. I just love the sound of it. When I hear people using it, and it's not in a gangster film, because in gangster films, they tend to have this stereotypical accent, right? I don't know how, the history of how that came to be. But when I hear someone using it as part of their normal accent, there's something about it. I don't know. It just does something to me. It sounds so nice. But in terms-

[00:12:16.25] - Oliver (Host)

Have you been to Boston?

[00:12:18.07] - Emma (Guest)

I haven't, but this year, hopefully, I will.

[00:12:22.08] - Oliver (Host)

I was going to say it could be your ideal easy to fulfil ideal location, right? You walk into the city and you're like, "Oh, my God. There, here, everywhere."

[00:12:31.18] - Emma (Guest)

I'll never want to leave because I'll just be so captivated by the accent. But yeah, hopefully this year I'll end up going. In a few months, actually, we're planning a New York trip. So I'm intrigued, actually, to go to New York and hear the different accents because being from the UK, we're both from the UK, right? So for us, it's like, Oh, well, there's an American accent. There's just the one. And then you have the Southern American accent where have the drawl and stuff. In our minds, we just have the two American accents, if that makes sense. So it's going to be really interesting to go to somewhere like New York and hear this mixture. I'm quite intrigued, but I am weird. I did study linguistics. This is my thing.

[00:13:15.15] - Oliver (Host)

You studied linguistics, and so obviously you have this huge pronunciation hub, helping people to perfect their accents. Well, actually, their pronunciation, because there's a distinction, right? I was just wondering if you could tell us how you ended up specialising in this particular part of language learning.

[00:13:35.24] - Emma (Guest)

Yeah, it's a good question, and there's so many layers to it. We could easily spend an hour on the whole history of how I got started. So the topic of, let's say, phonetics and phonology, I would say when I was at university, that's where I started becoming interested in that topic. It was very scientific and quite like... I don't know how to describe it. It's like a combination of music, yet anatomy and science and just all these things together. And I really loved it. I still remember sitting in what they called the Linguistics Lab, basically a fancy computer room for the Linguistics students. And we would just sit and use this program called Praat, which is hilarious, but spelt double A, so it's like Praat, if that makes sense. We would sit -

[00:14:35.08] - Oliver (Host)

I was going to say, César, sorry to interrupt you, but do you know what a prat is?

[00:14:39.03] - César (Guest)

No.

[00:14:39.21] - Oliver (Host)

How would you define Prat?

[00:14:41.24] - Emma (Guest)

How would you define it? Like an idiot? Someone's stupid.

[00:14:45.18] - Oliver (Host)

It feels to me a very British English word, right? I can't feel like the Americans are going around saying Prat.

[00:14:52.19] - César (Guest)

At the beginning, I thought you had said Brat, and I was like, What a cool name for a name.

[00:14:57.12] - Emma (Guest)

No, no. You know what the word Prat is quite funny because I live in Barcelona and the airport is called El Prat. I always say to my boyfriend, Oh, we're going to the Prat airport. He's like, Emma, it's been three years of this. Please stop.

[00:15:12.07] - César (Guest)

Get over it.

[00:15:13.00] - Emma (Guest)

But I like my funny jokes and my weird sense of humour, so I don't stop. But yeah, what was I saying?

[00:15:22.19] - Oliver (Host)

The Praat programme.

[00:15:23.29] - Emma (Guest)

The Praat programme, that was it. We would analyse speech waves and frequencies and things like that. It was very, very detailed. It got to a certain point where I was like, Oh, this is a bit too much for me. This is real nerdy stuff. But I found it so interesting just learning about the rules. We speak every day, but you're not really thinking about the pronunciation rules. You're not thinking about how you're saying things. To learn about that, it's like, Oh, God, yeah, that's weird. Yeah, why do we say that? Why do we do that? I still remember this lesson on intonation we did, and we were analysing intonation patterns and different types of questions and stuff. I was like, Oh, my gosh, you're right. You can say, Where's the sugar? And, Where's the sugar? It's the exact same grammatical structure, but changing that intonation, it just changes the meaning. That's something that us native speakers know instinctively, if that makes sense. You know if I say, if I use a different intonation, you know the connotations.

[00:16:40.25] - Oliver (Host)

Where's the sugar? I'm bored of asking.

[00:16:44.11] - Emma (Guest)

Exactly. You've moved it every single time. I've put it in the same place. Where's the sugar? I'm getting annoyed now, but where's the sugar? Completely different meaning. It's weird. I really liked that, and I found that no one else was really teaching that. So that's where the love, let's say, the interest for phonetics started. But the actual teaching started because, one, no one else was doing it at the time. And two, in my lessons, for example, I always remember this one specific lesson. I was sitting with a student from Spain. This is when I lived in Bristol. And I said something like, Oh, did you come by car? Or, Do you have a car? Or something like that. I used the the word car in this question. And the student had a very high level, like B2, C1. And they were like, Car? Car? What's that? And I'm like, What's wrong with the student? They know the word car. They have a B2 level. They're really good. So I was like, Car, wrote it on the board, car. They're like, Car. I'm like, No, it's not car. It's car. So it really made me realise that there's this disconnect between what people are understanding and what people are actually producing. That's why I started.

[00:18:07.26] - Oliver (Host)

For sure. I think something that you have on your website, which I think is really sensible and really key is, I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it's something like, We do the pronunciation now because everyone else just keeps putting it off. The teachers always say, We'll do it later. I have been so guilty of doing that with my own languages. I'll deal with it later. I'm interested in the grammar now.

[00:18:33.23] - Emma (Guest)

Exactly.

[00:18:34.23] - César (Guest)

When you said that it's something that I've never taught, or back in the day, at least in Spain, we learn English for 20 years in primary school, secondary at university. But I've never been taught pronunciation. And then you go to England, for example, and when I first got there, I was like, wow, I know how to read and I understand everything that is written, but there is no way that I'm mispronouncing so many words. The first thing I said in England is, Can you tell me how to get to Old Street? And I pronounced Old Street, I don't know, with a very thick Spanish accent. No one could understand what I was saying. It was really frustrating. I hope this is changing. Now at schools, people are being taught to pronunciation, but it's really key, firstly, to be able to communicate, and secondly, to understand better as well.

[00:19:36.07] - Oliver (Host)

This does take me on to my next question, which is basically about what you were saying, César, that English, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, because obviously, you will definitely know so much better than me. But English, it seems to have a huge number of sounds in terms of the vowel sounds, everything like that, in comparison to Spanish's quite limited five vowels, or thereabouts. So -

[00:20:01.06] - César (Guest)

So basic.

[00:20:02.02] - Oliver (Host)

You have this issue that people-

[00:20:04.06] - Emma (Guest)

It's simple.

[00:20:04.22] - Oliver (Host)

It's simple, yeah. Refined. Minimalist. People come to the UK and they're excited to use their English, and then they realise that actually it's quite a different endeavour, it's quite a different task than what they thought it was going to be. I imagine that that's probably quite in your favour in terms of loads of people having to put a lot of effort into the pronunciation, into the accent for English. So my question is, obviously, when you're learning a language, I think lots of people have the hope that they're going to end up sounding like someone specific. Do you have a particular accent, British, a particular regional accent within Britain, where people say to you, I want this accent more than any other?

[00:20:45.13] - Emma (Guest)

Oh, my goodness. Yes. When our queen was alive, not now, but when our queen was alive, so many people would say to me, I want to sound like the Queen of England. I used to say, "No, you don't, because you will get bullied." And I had to educate my students. For them, it's just sound. They don't understand the connotation of sounding like the queen. If I spoke with the queen's accent, it would sound overly posh and overly formal. And I would, for sure, when I go back home to the north of England, get bullied. I would be kicked out of Yorkshire for speaking like that.

[00:21:30.15] - Oliver (Host)

I mean, I'm from the Southeast, and you definitely be bullied there, too. It's beyond parody, her accent, wasn't it?

[00:21:36.09] - Emma (Guest)

Yeah, it was really, really over the top compared to a lot of accents that are used every day. So yeah, I used to get a lot of students saying, I want to sound like the queen. And of course, I'm not one to say, "No, you shouldn't." But I am the one to say, "Okay, if you want to sound like the Queen, then do be prepared to have these kinds of reactions from people and do be prepared to have these comments because people will say these things to you." So I would just educate them, and then they would very quickly switch and they'd be like, "Okay, I don't want to sound like the queen and get bullied. What should I learn instead?" And then I would say, "Okay, just learn modern  received pronunciation. That's not what the majority speak, but it's what more people speak, let's say."

[00:22:26.23] - César (Guest)

What's the difference between the modern RP and the traditional RP?

[00:22:32.01] - Emma (Guest)

Yeah, it's very subtle differences. It's not two completely different accents, let's say. One example would be, instead of saying, "Hair", like, "Oh, your hair. I love your hair." That would be RP. What people tend to do nowadays is they say, "-air. I love your hair." Because hair sounds much posher. If I said hair to you, you'd be like...

[00:23:05.14] - Oliver (Host)

As soon as you said it, I could help but laugh.

[00:23:09.24] - Emma (Guest)

Exactly.

[00:23:10.17] - César (Guest)

But interestingly, from the point of view of a foreigner, it's way easier to pronounce the traditional...

[00:23:18.11] - Oliver (Host)

What, hair?

[00:23:20.02] - César (Guest)

Yeah.

[00:23:20.09] - Emma (Guest)

Really? With the 'schwa' for a Spanish speaker?

[00:23:23.07] - César (Guest)

I think so.

[00:23:23.22] - Emma (Guest)

Because it's just a long 'air' like Emma, but with a long -

[00:23:27.10] - César (Guest)

Yeah, but it's like two different syllables, almost, right? Hair. I don't know.

[00:23:31.24] - Emma (Guest)

With the RP one, yeah, it's eh-uh, air. But with the modern RP, it's just one sound. It's like a long eh, like in Emma.

[00:23:41.26] - Oliver (Host)

You might have sown a terrible seed here, Emma, where César, he's going to commit fully to the queen's accent on the basis that it's just easier.

[00:23:50.25] - Emma (Guest)

The next podcast episode is going to sound like the queen.

[00:23:53.28] - Oliver (Host)

Exactly.

[00:23:54.17] - Emma (Guest)

I would love that.

[00:23:56.13] - Oliver (Host)

Well, thank you, Emma, for that. Because I'll have to live with it. And that actually also segues nicely into my next question as well, because you, like me, have a Spanish partner.

[00:24:06.11] - Emma (Guest)

I do.

[00:24:07.10] - Oliver (Host)

When you met him, when you got to Spain, and you speak Spanish, don't you?

[00:24:14.00] - Emma (Guest)

Now I do.

[00:24:15.05] - Oliver (Host)

You do now. Okay, so when you first arrived then and you were speaking in English to everybody, I guess, did you find that you were stripping your accent and your language back? Because I definitely, when I was living abroad, I felt like I ended up speaking a very, very neutral international English. And I wonder whether... Did you have to do that with the accent as well?

[00:24:37.14] - Emma (Guest)

Yes. But my stripping back of the accent, let's say, wasn't because of my boyfriend. So about 10 or 12 years ago, I lose track of time. Yeah, it's going to be 12, nearly 13 years ago. Oh, my God, time's going by way too fast. I was studying abroad in Spain in Tarragona, the English way Tarragona. It feels so weird when I say it that way. I was basically a language assistant in a secondary school, but it was part of my studies as well. So I did it for credits. It wasn't a job or anything. It wasn't volunteering. And I still remember one time in this lesson, we were talking about this certain sound, this 'uh' sound, in cup and pub, and so on. So Spanish speakers, they say 'ah' instead of 'uh', so instead of saying like, "Oh, I want a cup", they'll say, "I want a 'cap'". They make the vowel an equivalent to a Spanish one in terms of being 'ah' sound. And I was correcting them on their pronunciation. But of course, the 'uh' sound doesn't exist in Yorkshire. We say 'uh'. So I was drilling this sound with words like, pub, cup, and up with a class of 16-year-old teenagers, a class of 20 teenagers, and they were all like, pub, cup, up. I was like, "Ah, no, I need to change. I need to change this. This isn't good". Because I don't want them to get bullied because they were learning a certain accent and I didn't want their accent to be too influenced. Do you know what I mean?

[00:26:28.20] - Oliver (Host)

I personally I love that particular sound that you pick out there because my ex-boyfriend is from Sheffield. I used to love it when he said, "Let's go to the pub." I can't do it. Actually, I am so bad with accents and I find it a real shame because as I said to you, the idea of stripping it back, you are capable of doing that with your accent because you know how these things work. Whereas for me, I can't strip back my accent at all because I'm not capable of identifying the different sounds that I should be stripping back yet. I mean, I've been learning a lot about it because César doing a course on pronunciation for Spanish, and I've been learning so much about my own accent.

[00:27:08.16] - Emma (Guest)

You learn a lot. Once you start learning about pronunciation and stuff, you're like, Yeah, I do say things like that. Why? It's quite interesting. You start to reflect a little bit and become self-conscious after a while.

[00:27:23.20] - Oliver (Host)

Exactly. And so for me, because I'm not yet... I have learned a lot recently, but basically, my only recourse has been to just say it again, say it more slowly, do that thing where people just shout, basically. So, Emma, thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview. It was genuinely so interesting for me, and I really, really had a good time. So thank you very much.

[00:27:47.02] - Emma (Guest)

My pleasure.

[00:27:47.20] - César (Guest)

Tell us where people can find you if they want to know more about you and your project.

[00:27:53.27] - Emma (Guest)

My project? Well, I've got many projects on, always. There's something going on. Pronunciation with Emma, you'll find me anywhere on any platform. The main platforms are YouTube and Instagram, Pronunciation with Emma. The podcast, I've recently rebranded, actually. I've changed it. So it's no longer the Procrastination podcast, it's now very, very creatively named, wait for it, The Pronunciation with Emma podcast.

[00:28:22.04] - César (Guest)

Amazing.

[00:28:23.23] - Emma (Guest)

Thank you. It took me a while to think of that name. Actually, I joke when I say that, but it genuinely did because I wanted to create a nice name for it. But never mind. I was like, I'll just keep it with the branding, pronunciation.

[00:28:37.25] - César (Guest)

You know what my first podcast is called Intermediate Spanish Podcast.

[00:28:42.13] - Oliver (Host)

I mean, César is now on podcast number seven, and we've just launched the new English one, which I should put here for the intermediate learners of English, the Intermediate English Podcast. So he's had a big journey in five years of originality.

[00:29:01.27] - César (Guest)

Creativity.

[00:29:03.14] - Oliver (Host)

Well, again, thank you very much, Emma.

[00:29:06.18] - Emma (Guest)

My pleasure. Thank you.

[00:29:08.09] - César (Guest)

Thank you, Emma. Ciao, ciao.