How to Understand Native English Speakers from the UK!

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. English learners, if you found that  hard to understand, keep watching! Good morning, good afternoon and good evening! 

Welcome to Smashing English! Before we start   this video be sure to subscribe because we make  new videos all the time and I don't want you to   miss any. So with that said let's get on with the  video!

Today we are once again delving into the   wonderful world of UK accents because I get it,  you spend so long learning English and you think   you're pretty good and then you visit the UK or  you watch a TV series based in the UK and you   can't understand anything! So let me make this  a little bit easier for you because if you're   learning a language it's really important to be  able to understand it spoken in different ways,   not everybody in the UK sounds like me, we have  so many different accents and they are beautiful,   it's amazing that in such a small country we  can have such a variety of accents. So let's   talk about how to understand difficult UK accents. 

First of all we're going to play a little game,   I love games, they're great, who doesn't love a  game? I'm going to play you three different clips,   see if you can identify the UK accent because  being able to identify the accent is a great place   to start if you want to understand the accent,  if you're not very good with UK accents don't   worry this is just a bit of fun, so let's listen  to the first clip, where is this person from? This person is from Liverpool,  they have a wonderful Liverpool   accent or Scouse accent as a lot of  people call it.

Okay, next clip! . .

. They were from North Wales, North Wales.  So there is a bit of a difference between   a South Wales accent and a North  Wales accent so the one you just   heard was a North Wales accent.

And  finally, where is this person from? This person was from Cornwall, oh a beautiful  place, Cornwall, if you ever visit the UK go   to Cornwall it's beautiful. So as you can see  from just those three examples we have a lot of   variation in our dialects across the UK so how  on Earth are we supposed to understand all of   them?

Well here comes my first tip, now this might  seem obvious but you've got to listen and immerse   yourself in these dialects it sounds so basic  but it's basic because it works you've just got   to listen as much as you can but make it fun for  yourself so try to explore some different films,   some different TV series, some different podcasts  where the range of dialects are different,   if you only ever watch Downton Abbey and The Crown  you won't get very good at understanding many   different dialects and accents so do some research  and find some really good media, media that's   entertaining, that you want to watch, that shows  you a range of different accents. Tip number two,   pay attention to pronunciation patterns, so let  me give you some features of UK accents that a   lot of English Learners find really difficult to  understand. Now an accent can either be rhotic   or non-rhotic, so very quickly, a rhotic accent  pronounces all of the R's, so think of the USA   think of the California accent they would say my  car is so powerful, car, powerful, they pronounce   all the R's.

A non-rotic accent is an accent  where you only pronounce an R if it comes before   a vowel, so my accent is non-rhotic, I wouldn't  say my car is powerful, I would say my car is   powerful because those R's don't come before  vowels, however if I wanted to say something   like the road is brown, I say those R's so I say  road because there's a vowel after it and I say   brown because there's a vowel after the R. Now not  all UK accents are non-rhotic, we heard Cornwall   before, that's quite a rhotic accent, they say  their R's, Northern Irish is a rhotic accent,   they say their R's as well, but a lot of the time  if you listen to someone who's from Surrey for   example they will have a non-rhotic accent  and that can be quite confusing for English   Learners because a lot of accents around the  world are rhotic, so they're very used to   hearing R's especially if you listen to a lot of  American content, if you watch American TV shows,   American movies, they say all of their R's, so  when an English learner listens to a UK accent   that is non-rhotic this can be quite confusing, so  you've got to be aware that in a lot of UK accents   we're not saying that R, it's just not going  to happen. Another pronunciation feature you   will hear in a lot of UK accents is the dropped  t or the glottal stop so I'm sure you've heard   the stereotype that when someone wants to do a  British accent they say 'a bo-uh of wa-uh' are   instead of a bottle of water and this comes from  some truth, if you listen to someone like Adele   you will notice that she drops a lot of T's so  instead of saying better she would say be-er.

And this is because she's from London and there  are lots of accents in London, don't even get   me started, but a lot of them drop their T's,  even in Liverpool they might drop their T's,   as well so instead of saying what they'll say  wha-, so it's completely changed the word,   it's no longer what it's wha-. There's,  there's no t, so if you really want to   understand some of these accents you  have to change your thinking and you   have to stop expecting to hear T's and  instead expect to hear glottal stops,   so a glottal stop is when you stop the air in  your throat so instead of saying better you say. .

. it's like, it just like clicks out of your throat  in a really weird way, or instead of water it's   wa-er, so there's still some kind of stop there,  we're not just going war, war, we are saying water   but it's just different to water. Now this doesn't  mean that everybody in the UK drops their teas,   a lot of accents keep their T', it's beautiful  but you just might hear a lot of dropped T's and   glottal stops.

Another pronunciation feature that  English learners find really hard to understand,   is the intrusive R, so we're talking about linking  here, we're talking about linking words together   which happens in most languages but obviously if  you're not familiar with the linking it's going to   be really confusing so what a lot of dialects  in the UK do is we take a sentence like this   'Law and Order' now in between 'law' and 'and',  there's no R is there? Do you see an R there? No   but this is where English spelling is really  annoying because the word law is spelled law,   it's spelled with an aw, but we don't say that,  we say law and it almost sounds like door,   like law and door rhyme, so think about  the door spelling, that ends in an R,   this is kind of an R ending word, so to link 'law'  and 'and', we don't look at the W, we don't go   lawand order because that sounds ridiculous, we  go lawRand order, lawRand order, lawRand order so weirdly it sounds like my name, Laura, even  though it doesn't look like that at all, law uh,   Laura, law and order.

This is called an intrusive  R because we are creating an R even though an R   is not written, we're just putting an R in there  so this can be extremely confusing when you're   listening to someone do this because suddenly  you've heard this R sound and you're thinking   'oh whoa whoa okay so it's a word that ends in R'  but not necessarily because law does not end in R,   same with words that end in a schwa sound, a schwa  is a completely neutral sound it goes like this. . .

let's do the schwa dance. . .

So there's no effort, I'm not moving my mouth,   I'm just going uh, so if a word ends  in that like this one: idea, idea,   we'll do the intrusive R to link it to a vowel, so  we'll say this idea is great, this idea is great,   I know it's very confusing. Or the people in  that area are really nice, area are. And it   will take some time, it will feel very alien to  you to begin with, it will feel like the weirdest   thing ever if you've never done it, but if you  want to understand it you've got to at least try   to do it a couple times so you are familiar with  what's actually happening.

Okay tip number three   another reason why you are probably finding it  really difficult to understand some UK regional   dialects is because of slang and because of  idioms. And slang changes all throughout the UK,   if you get in the car and you travel an hour this  way you will meet new slang it just completely   changes everywhere, so the best thing to do here  is choose the accent that you want to focus on,   maybe you are moving to Dorset and you think 'okay  I need to know the Dorset slang' just completely   throw yourself into it, try to listen to a podcast  of someone from Dorset, go, you know, the internet   is amazing, type in slang words from Dorset.  You've got to understand the slang because a lot   of the time you might listen to someone speaking  and they're speaking very clearly but they're   using so many slang words from their region that  it makes it sound like a whole different language,   like if you think about the example I gave at the  beginning the black country voice said this: .

. . Now what on Earth is a cuppa char?

If  you are not from the Black Country,   you don't know what a cuppa char is, I'm from  the black country and a cup of char is a cup   of tea but if you didn't know that, you would  hear that and it would sound completely crazy,   so slang is vital to understand and you can't  learn the slang from everywhere so be specific,   yeah find an accent that you're the most  interested in and learn their slang because it   changes no matter where you go. Okay tip number  four, don't be afraid to ask for clarification,   now this only works if you're actually talking to  someone, it doesn't really work if you're watching   TV or a film but if you're talking to someone  and they say something that you don't understand,   ask them just, just ask them, say 'oh I'm  really sorry, I'm not from here could you just,   what was that you just said? ' There's no shame in  that at all, we need to remove the shame of not   being perfect in an accent because a whole lot  of us in the UK do not speak another language,   not everyone, lots of people can speak more than  one language, but a lot of us, because English   is our native language, we don't learn another  language, so the fact that you're trying and   you can speak English is great, so don't have any  shame about it feel free to ask for clarification.  

Okay final tip, like I said earlier the best way  to understand an accent is to be able to do the   accent even a little bit, now I'm not expecting  you to do the most amazing accent ever just try   to replicate it because if you are trying to make  those sounds in your mouth it will be much easier   to identify them when you hear it because you  remember when you had to make it yourself so my   biggest advice to you is try to do these dialects  if you're really struggling to understand one,   attack that accent learn how to do it, understand  every single vowel sound, every single consonant   sound, how do they link words together? What slang  do they use? If you can do it you will be able to   understand it, if you have no idea how that accent  is made or the sounds that they are making you   won't understand it, that is my challenge to you. 

Thank you so much for watching this video! If you   enjoyed it, please give it a like, if you would  like to follow us on Instagram you can do so there   and if you would like an online one-to-one  English lesson with me or my partner Bez,   the link for that is down below, thank you so much  for watching and we'll see you next time, tata!