Learn English with Sir Paul McCartney | Scouse Accent

Eat Sleep Dreamers I'm very excited to announce that today we will be learning English with

a pop icon and absolute British legend Sir Paul McCartney.

Alright, are you ready? Let's do this.

Sir Paul McCartney is most famous for being one part of the Beatles possibly the greatest

band of all time. The Beatles were from Liverpool which is a city in the north-west of England.

Now Liverpool has a very distinct accent. It's called a Scouse accent. Now it's called

Scouse after a traditional local dish and as an accent it's definitely a reflection

of the city of Liverpool because Liverpool is port city and so it had lots of immigration.

It had a big Irish immigration, Welsh immigration and sailors coming in and out of its port

from all around Europe. So it really was a melting pot for language and that's reflected

in the accent today. Now one of it's great distinctive features is that it is quite nasal.

it sounds like it's coming from the nose. Now there are many suggestions for why this

is. One theory is that in the mid-nineteenth when the accent was being formed, it was a

very polluted area and people had colds. And this affected your adenoids, they are the

gland in the roof of your mouth that connect your nose and your throat. Now the adults

would have these blockages and they'd sound quite nasaly and the children would imitate

their parents and also have that same sound. Now that's how we learn language, right? Like

children imitate adults, that's how we learn and so this kind of continued the sound down

the generations until today. Now accents come in different shapes and sizes, don't they?

And you can have a very strong accent or you can have quite a weak accent. Now we are going

to look at the strength of Paul McCartney's accent. Does he sound like a true scouser

or has his accent changed over the years? So I have taken bits out of this interview,

we are going to analyse them, look at the sounds he's making and learn a bit of English.

Alright, straight away 'hey James, yeah man.' It could be an American getting into the car.

Yeah man. Clearly Sir Paul McCartney has travelled around the world, spent a lot of time in America.

He used to have an American wife. Understandably he has adopted or absorbed some American in

his accent. So yeah man, ok.

There's the first sentence and you can see how soft his accent is. Can't there he says

in almost received pronunciation. If it was a stronger scouse accent it would be can't.

It would be a wider /a/ but actually he says it with an /ah/ can't. Now the come and up

there he does have more of a scouse accent there with come and up. So it's more the /uh/

sound rather than /ah/. So it's /uh/ instead of /ah/ on the up. But it's very subtle and

it's very light. And then at the end there you've got lots of interesting intonation

with round. Kind of goes up, it almost does a little dance the intonation and that's maybe

a little feature of Paul McCartney is he does have some of the intonation of a scouse accent.

That kind of up at the end there.

Ok, this sentence definitely shows us his scouse accent is still there especially with

the word love. I would say it love, like in my accent love but here love. That /uh/ sound

there, love 'I'd love to'.

Here we go with the first time they are singing and there's

definitely an American accent here. Drive becomes drive my car. Baby you can drive my

car. I apologise for my singing, Terrible! But we've definitely gone American here and

again I think that's normal, right? When British people are singing we do tend to slip into

an American accent just because that's a lot of the music we have listened to. Now it's

not always true with Sir Paul McCartney. He definitely does sing in a more British accent

but on this occasion it sounded quite American to me.

There is a barber showing photographs. Listened to the way they say that. Photographs. It's

almost, definitely received pronunciation. Very kind of BBC English if you will. Definitely

different from how he was singing Baby you can drive my car. The accent now has become

much more anchored in Britain.

Here they get out of the car and they go and speak to one of the local people and suddenly

Sir Paul McCartney sounds completely scouse. Can we come in shop love?' Like the intonation

has changed, he's using the word love which is like a term of endearment that you use

maybe for a shop keeper or something like that or for someone you know. The intonation

has changed and he's suddenly using vocabulary that's much more local. Would he have used

that sentence if he was walking into a shop in LA? I doubt it.

That's completely normal

right? We change the vocabulary, we change the accent depending on where we are, interesting.

Ok, you've got the word last here. So instead of last, last. Instead of fast, fast. So there's that sort of /a/.

Here the scouse accent comes out again. 'That'' dropping that to tha. He

kind of takes that /t/ off the end of that. That's definitely a feature of the scouse

accent. They often drop the /t/ or the /d/ off the end of a word. So yeah like 'that'

would be tha or dad would be da. So he does that on the first that and using ye instead

of you that's a feature for sure. To ye not to you, to ye. And the intonation too, do

that to you, kind of going up at the end, again very scouse intonation, kind of flicks up at the end there.

Ah ok, another strong feature here, the last word there. There,

he says there. That's the /eh/ sound it's soft but it's there or there as he would say.

So that /eh/ sound. Instead of care it would be care. Or instead of wear it would be wear. So there.

As I say in Sir Paul McCartney's accent it's soft but it is still there.

There he goes again, hiya sweetheart. Hiya, like again really informal way to say hi and then

sweetheart another term of endearment for someone. So when he's speaking to the local

people he really drops into that local informal language.

Ok, the feature here 'me dad'. We

looked at this with Adele, in some accents it's not my it's me. Me dad or me nan or me

gran. This could come from Irish, the Irish immigration coming into Liverpool. It could

be a feature that's a legacy of that. But he uses it quite a lot in this interview like

me dad, me guitar, me gran whatever it might be. But other words in this sentence sound

like received pronunciation for example do the laundry. He says pretty much as you would

in received pronunciation. So there's evidence here that he still has his scouse accent but

also elements of received pronunciation and of course American coming into it as well.

I love this bit where they go from the American like she loves you yeah yeah yeah to she loves

you yes yes yes yes she does. A little example there of the difference between American English

and British English. We sound slightly more formal and a little silly to be honest if

you put it into a song like that she loves you yes yes yes, doesn't quite sound so good.

Wow! That could not be more sort of slang British English than the bog. The bog means

the toilet, I haven't used that word since I was like twelve. It's quite an old fashioned

term for the toilet, not particularly polite but anyway yeah it's just a word. But yeah

look how he, look at when he's back home in Liverpool he's using these kinds of words. The bog.

I love this bit, this is brilliant because this is Paul McCartney showing his

awareness of what a strong scouse accent is. Come in love, do you want a cup of tea? That

intonation, come in love. The word love a word used commonly in the north of England

and particularly in Liverpool. Come in love. Do you want a cup of tea? Sorry my accent

is bad I know, it's not a very good scouse accent but I'm just trying to show you the

difference and his transition between his accent. The very soft scouse accent or almost

RP accent and what his Dad had which was a strong scouse accent.

I like this bit here,

not do that. We talked about that earlier the /t/ at the end of a word just kind of

gets dropped off, gets cut off he does it perfectly just there. Not do that.

Alright so, to conclude Paul McCartney has a very distinctive voice and it's a voice I've listened

to for years all my childhood so you get used to it and you kind of just accept it for what

it is and then when you analyse it like this you actually think well you know it's not

very strong. It was never particularly strong. I've watched old interviews with him as a

young man and it's the same thing he speaks slightly differently but the accent is, it's

not a string scouse accent. What I like is he still has features of it so even though

he's travelled the world, he's lived in America, he lives in London and he's taken aspects

of those accents and put them into his own accent. He still retains some features of

a scouse accent so that or the intonation or using some of the vocabulary like love

and sweetheart and all that kind of stuff. Ok guys thank you so much for watching this

video I hope you have enjoyed it. Let me know in the comments below if you have. Give it

a big thumbs up and tell me who should I do next? Which famous person would you like me

to look at their accent next? It could be any British person that you want. Alright

guys thank you so much for hanging out with me. Remember to join my YouTube membership

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as well. Until next time, this is Tom, the Chief Dreamer, saying goodbye.