How To Speak English Like Harry Styles

What's up everyone?

I'm Andrea your RealLife English fluency coach

and in today's lesson we're going to be taking an in-depth look at the accent of Harry Styles.

So in case you didn't know Harry Styles is in fact British

he is one of the members of a huge band, One Direction

and he's also most recently forged a very successful solo career.

Now Harry Styles was in fact born in Birmingham

which we say is in the midlands because it's found in the middle of England but

when he was very young his family did move up to the North West

of England very close to Manchester in a place

called Cheshire, so his accent is quite

interesting because you will hear some variations

from the Birmingham accent and the Manchester accent

and also more recently just because he's lived in London

and also America he does have some other variances

to his accent as well it's also really interesting to know that in the UK alone

there are more than 30 different accents and dialects

so while you might not be that familiar with many

because generally in media you maybe hear

the RP the Received Pronunciation accent or a cockney London accent, there

are actually many many more so we're going to be taking

a look at this today and a real in-depth look at Harry Styles

accent in particular.

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Okay so the first aspect of Harry's accent that we're going to take a look

at is the way that he reduces the H sound.

at the start of words.

So this is very typical of

Northern English accents but also in other parts of Britain too it's also

synonymous with the cockney accent which is the

East side of London but you definitely won't hear this with

a received pronunciation accent.

So what Harry does is at the start of

words he tends to omit so he doesn't say that first h

sound so rather than saying "he's lovely isn't he?" he says

[e's lovely isn't e]

so let's take a look at how that sounds when he says it.

So there are quite a lot of examples of

when Harry does this for example instead of saying "I met him"

he would probably say [I meh-im]

and this is what natives tend to do to speak

faster and more naturally so sometimes we reduce words

so that it just becomes more fluent and more natural and more

quick to speak.

In the same interview we can find some other things that he

tends to do with the way that he speaks as well for

example another aspect of his accent that is

very Northern English is the way that he says

the U sound in words it's been it's been fun to kind of like

watch over it all so for example when I say

lucky the u has an uh sound and when I say us

again it has an uh sound but with Harry's accent and very typically

in Northern England you will hear more of an uh sound

so it's a short uh sound so he will say lucky and us and

much, so let's take a look and see how that sounds.

So the further North you travel

you will hear this sound whether you are in

Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and even going all the way up to

Scotland they don't say this sound like I would, i'm from London

and we tend not to have this sound when we speak

English but certainly in Northern England

and the further up you go all the way to Scotland they do tend to have this

uh sound sound more like an uh sound you will also hear it in words such as

us, fun and stuff so let's take a look at

how Harry says it because he does say it very differently to me.

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You might have noticed also that in British English we tend to omit

the T sound in words and this is called a Glottal T

so with a Glottal T what happens is there is still a sound there but you

don't hear the t sound what happens is the flow of air is

stopped and then released so it does make a sound but you won't

hear that t sound so for example in words like better some

people might say better so there is still a sound there

if you can notice it better better all it is is the stopping

of the flow of air and then the releasing of it

so there is still a sound there that's called the Glottal T.

So this is very common in British English

and Northern England is no exception they also speak with a Glottal T and so

does Harry Styles so in some of these interviews he

doesn't say "a lot of," "a little bit" or

"Italy" instead he says it this way:

If you'd like to learn

more about the British accent and common mistakes

made in particular by Americans in our favorite TV series and movies such as

Friends, then I highly recommend that you check

out this lesson next you can click the link here or in the

description box below to watch it straight after this lesson.

Another characteristic of Harry's accent is the shortening of the A sound

so if you've listened to my accent a lot through watching our lessons

or you listen to more accents where they are from London

we tend to have a longer A sound in words such as last,

so Harry does not say this word like this

he says it like this:

So this is very typical of Northern English accents

they have a shorter a sound in these words

and in received pronunciation in RP and in London in general and maybe some

other parts of England, in the south of England

we tend to elongate this sound so I would say

last, I would also say glass, and I would say answer however

Harry does not say these three words like I would.

So there you can hear that it's a short A sound he says

glass, last, answer and so that's very typical of Harry's

accent and Northern English accents aswell.

Let's take a look at the six best TV series to learn British English.

So the first one is The Office

When you laugh your brain releases endorphins yeah your stress hormones

are reduced and the oxygen supply to your blood

is increased so you feel I try and laugh several times a day just because it makes you feel good.