English Accents from Around the World

There are 1.3 billion English speakers around  the world. The vast majority are using it as  

a second language. English has become a lingua  franca to communicate with each other. I live  

in London and in one afternoon I could speak  to an Italian barista, a Polish shop assistant  

and a Brazilian taxi driver. And their English  is generally amazing. So much better than my  

Spanish. But speaking another language is really  hard, right? You've gotta think of so many things.  

Choice of vocabulary, choice of grammar, word  order, stress, intonation, not to mention how do  

you say this word or this word or this word? It's  so hard, right? There's so much going on. Now the  

reality of English communication today is that so  much of it is done by people who have English as  

a second language. And I've noticed that this can  cause problems, particularly with pronunciation.  

Confusion creeps in when sounds are missed and  familiar words are said in unfamiliar ways.

Think about the context that you speak English in.  Are you speaking to people who have English as a  

first language? Or are you speaking to people  who are just like you learning English? If you  

come to London, the likelihood is that you'll be  communicating with people from around the world,  

and you need to know what pronunciation features  to look out for. So in this epic lesson,  

I've invited my Eat Sleep Dreamers to submit  a video, teaching us one pronunciation feature  

that speakers of their language find  difficult in English. So for example,  

if you know that many French speakers drop the H  sound on words like hotel and hospital, then when  

you are speaking to someone from France, you'll  be much better prepared to understand them. Now,  

just before we get going, guys, if you would  like to receive my weekly newsletter ESD notes,  

which has brand new lessons and bonus  content, then you can sign up using the  

link in the description below. Okay, let's get  going with our first contributor, Samantha,

Hello Teacher Tom and hello everyone. My  name is Samantha Daige and I'm from Lebanon.  

And I want to share with you an interesting  thing concerning Arab English speakers. First,  

because the letter P does not exist in the  Arabic alphabet we replace it with the sound B.  

So instead of saying 'Paris', we say 'Baris'  we also use the word 'bantalon' for trousers.  

You might hear some of us say  'bizza', not 'pizza' or 'combuter',  

not 'computer', or even 'Esbana' not 'Spain'.

So Egyptian find so many difficulties with  English, sound such as P and B and that. So  

let takes the word 'peach'. It begins  with P and the sound kicks in with each,  

each. So you must say 'peach'. What about  apple? If you don't turn off your vocal cords  

on the sound, it's going to be 'able'.

Okay, so Samantha and Muhammad are explaining that  /p/ and /b/ variation. The fact that there is no  

per sound in Arabic, so the /b/ is replacing  it. So there's an area that perhaps we have to  

adapt our listening to be aware that,  okay, there could be this variation.  

So we have to be aware that instead of 'Paris'  is 'Baris', instead of 'pizza' it's 'bizza'.  

Now often context will help us, of  course, but sometimes it might not. Now,  

of course not all Arabic speakers make  this variation. It's simply that Samantha  

and Muhammad have made this observation in a  lot of Arabic speakers. Now, interestingly,  

this pattern also exists in Vietnamese and  we've got Hao here to explain it to us.

Hello everyone. My name's Hao. Today  I'm going to talk about the words  

containing the letter P and B, that many  Vietnamese young learners find hard to pronounce.  

Here are some common words,  backpack, purple, happy,  

pineapple, hippo. A lot of Vietnamese  students say backpack, purple, hippo,  

happy pineapple We really got struggle. We tongue  twist, like have a happy birthday party poll.  

I think we normally say 'Have a happy birthday  party Polly'. Thanks for listening bye bye.

So we've got these plosive sounds causing some  Vietnamese speakers problems as well. Backpack.  

We had pineapple we had purple. So again, not,  it's not impossible to understand them. No,  

you can still kind of figure it out. And  certainly in context, maybe we're in the  

airport and they say I've lost my backpack.  Okay. I know it's backpack, but sometimes  

context doesn't help us. Okay. Let's go into  Spanish and hear from Eat Sleep Dreamer Pablo

Hi, Eat Sleep Dreamers. This is Pablo from  Madrid, Spain. And I like to teach you the  

difference between two sounds that lots of  Spanish speakers mispronounced or mix when  

speaking English and these two sounds are the /dʒ/  sound and the /j/ sound which is called the yod.  

The reason why we tend to confuse these sounds is  that in Spanish, we've got a very similar sound  

in words like 'yo', which means I and 'ella',  which means she and in English, we've got loads  

of examples like Jack, the, the name and a yak  the animal, uh, a jet, which is an aircraft.  

And, uh, yet the adverb. A Jew, which is a Jewish  person and you the pronoun and a joke, which is a  

funny story and a yolk, which is the yellow part  of an egg. So in order to make the /dʒ/ sound,  

we've got the tip of our tongue, just behind the  hard ridge at the front of the top of mouth. And  

to produce the /j/ sound we've got to raise the  sides of our tongue to the roof of our mouth.  

So I hope it's been useful, uh, by  everyone and a big help for you, Tom.

Yes. This is one that I've really noticed in  a lot of my Spanish students over the years,  

this combination of /dʒ/ and /j/ and  the kind of confusion between the two  

we're using /dʒ/ when it should be /j/ and /j/  when it should be /dʒ/. So I remember a student  

saying to me, yeah, 'Jess, I like it'. And I was  like, who's Jess, why are you calling me Jess?  

And they meant, yes. Also, uh, 'Tom I'm I'm  yolking with you. I'm yolking with you'. Yolking  

you're yolk egg yolk. Well, oh, joking with  me. Oh, okay. So there is that confusion again,  

of course not all Spanish speakers, uh, do this,  but Pablo has definitely raised our awareness  

so that when we're next speaking to a Spanish  speaker, we can think, ah, I know what's happening  

here the /j/ and the /dʒ/ get confused. Perfect.  Okay. Let's move on to French. And Chelsy-Love

In French. The letter H is silent. So when  we speak in English, we don't pronounce  

the /h/ sound. Instead of saying 'high school  musical' high school musical 'Hansel and  

Gretel' it's 'Hansel and Gretal' 'happy birthday'  happy birthday, Tom Holland, Tom Holland,  

Harry Potter, and Harry Potter, hamburger  hamburger, Prince Harry and Prince Harry.

Okay. So I mentioned at the top of the video  that there's this /h/ dropping in French,  

it's a classic feature, and I'm sure you've  probably heard it, or you're aware of it. Uh,  

Chelsy-love gave us some great examples, hotel,  uh, Hansel and Gretal, uh, happy birthday,  

Harry Potter. Very, very common. And of  course, if you are aware of it, you know,  

should be fine, right. And certainly context  will help. Now, this reminds me of a story  

about Charles de Gaulle, who was an iconic French  figurehead. Uh, he was at a dinner with his wife,  

and I believe his wife was talking to  someone and they asked her, uh what's you  

know, what, what are you looking forward  to in the future? And she said 'appiness  

and the person said, sorry, what? And she  said 'appiness, and the person said, uh,  

and then I think Charles de Gaulle lent over and  went, my love I think it is pronounced happiness.  

And she said, oh, quite different. But yes,  the most important thing in life is 'appiness.  

All right. Moving swiftly on. Oh, I just wanna  quickly mention that this pronunciation feature is  

not just French speakers. It's actually in British  accents as well. So for example, in Cockney,  

uh, in Mancunian, /h/'s are also dropped in  a Yorkshire accent or some Yorkshire accents,  

the /h/ is dropped. So this  isn't just, uh, French speakers.  

Actually, we find it here, people that,  uh, speak English as a first language  

might also drop that /h/ if you wanna know more  about all the British accents or 20 of them,  

at least I've got a video right here. You can  check it out. Let's go to Koosha and Farsi.

Hello, I'm Koosha. I'm 22 years old. I'm from  Iran. And I've been teaching English for quite  

a while actually. And you know, the problem that  most students have, especially at the beginning  

is when they want to pronounce a noun or a verb  or a word in general that starts with S and a  

consonant. So a simple example would be the word  student, instead of pronouncing it as they should  

students, they would say 'estudent'. So they kind  of add an extra E at the beginning or another one  

study, instead of saying study, like I study every  day, they would say I 'estudy'. So, yeah, that's  

one of the main problems that the beginner  students have, especially here in Iran. Bye!.

This is a really interesting feature that  adding the vowel sound before the S so,  

uh, you've got 'estudent' and you've got  'estudy'. I have noticed that in some  

of my Iranian students over the years. I've  also noticed an issue with the /v/ and /w/.  

So 'vater', instead of 'water', 'vatched', instead  of 'watched', now, this doesn't cause too many  

problems, but you have to be aware of it. Okay.  Let's jump to Tanzania where Simon is gonna talk  

to us about Swahili. Speaker 8 (10:46): 

Hello, Tom. My name is Simon Kubo from Tanzania  in Arisha city. I'm a native speaker of Swahili.  

And today I want to talk about the pronunciation  mistake, which is made by Swahili speakers  

when pronouncing the words with the diphthong /əʊ/  

as in 'go'. Swahili speakers tend to use the  monophthong /ɒ/ instead of that diphthong. Uh,  

the reason for this mistake is that, uh,  that it does not exist in Swahili language. 

That's fantastic. Okay. So now we've dived into  diphthongs, which is fascinating. A diphthong is  

two vowel sounds together. So he's talking about  the O sound O. Now he's saying that in Swahili  

it's oh, so it's just a monophthong sound. So  we're going from a diphthong, two vowel sounds  

to a monophthong, one vowel sound. Um, so 'go'  'low' 'no'. So a 'no go area' would be a 'no go  

area'. So not too difficult to understand, but  you might find that familiar words are gonna be  

pronounced in unfamiliar ways. And if you are  trying to communicate with someone who, who  

speaks Swahili, then this could be an issue. So  really great that we know that this diphthong  

now becomes a monophthong or can become a  monophthong. Okay. Now we're moving on to Polish  

and Agnieszka is gonna talk about two  sounds that might cause them problems.

Hi, I'm Agnieszka and I'm from Poland.  Uh, I think that Polish people struggle  

with a long and short, uh, /i:/ like  /i:/ and /I/ right. Um, in Polish,  

you don't have this difference. So  that's why maybe it is the case, but,  

um, I can hear it, especially in pairs  of words, like sleep and slip or, um,  

cheap and chip, or maybe heat and hit, right? So  that's the main difference. I think, seed and sit,  

most Polish people would say 'six silly sisters  are sweet to meet' where we put like a lot of,  

uh, /i:/ sound, but, uh, the proper pronunciation  would be 'six silly sisters are sweet to meet.'

Okay. The classic /i:/ and /I/ the  long /i:/ vowel sound and the short /I/  

This is a problem in many, many different  languages. Um, it's the distinction between  

that length of /i:/ and /I/. That Agnieszka  demonstrates for us really, really well here,  

that tongue twister is a classic one to help  us differentiate between those two sounds. Now,  

with this pronunciation issue, you do have to  be careful because if you use the wrong sound,  

you might say a bad word. So for example, the  classic example, beach and bitch, okay. So the  

beach where the sand, that's a of sand by the sea,  and then bitch is a rude word for someone. So you  

have to be careful. There's a couple of other  examples. I've actually done a video all about  

this. If you wanna watch that it's right here,  but don't overthink it. Don't worry about it.

Just practise that long /i:/ and the short /I/,  

this pronunciation feature does exist in lots  of other languages. I know that lots of my  

Spanish students and my Italian students have  had issues with this, but there by no means the  

only ones, lots of people have problems with this.  Just practise that long and short sound, E E E E  

a huge thank you to all the contributors  for sending in their videos. My goodness,  

you guys did a fantastic job. Thank you  so much. Now, if you wanna learn more  

about British English accents, you can click  on this video here. And if you wanna learn  

about British English vocabulary, you can click  right here and I'll see you in the next video.