Introduction to IPA and Regional Accents

This video is a short introduction to the International Phonetic Alphabet, and to regional accents in general.

[@nomadicmonkey3186]

I've always meant to learn at least the basics of IPA but have always ended up choosing to drink one instead.

[@williamlee3520]

Nomadicmonkey my thoughts exactly

[@faded_7027]

I learned IPA from American trans-Atlantic, lol

[@georgeptolemy7260]

Booooooh

[@MichaelAndersxq28guy]

I like those naughty beverages.

[@MauriatOttolink]

Only one?

[@Ross-nd6xi]

Mate, I am a random lad from the arse end of nowhere in Ireland. I suppose my accent is quite rural, with some influence from the north side dublin accent. I have never studied linguistics but your videos are some of the most interesting videos I have ever encountered on the internet. you are a great educator , keep on making excellent content and thank you.

[@sikViduser]

I read this in an Irish accent in my head.

[@BoerChris]

I'll second that, Ross.

[@davecrupel2817]

Im from America. Being 90% Irish blood, it is fitting i make Ireland the first country i visit. And im going to visit your type of areas. I have little interest in the cities. The great green plains and beautiful coastlines are my allure for the old country.

[@RealUlrichLeland]

It's so odd how different north and south Dublin accents are, north Dublin sounds almost scouse to me

[@cigh7445]

@@RealUlrichLeland I agree! It's like there's a dialect continuum from England to Dublin. I can't tell some of the south Dublin accents from English ones.

[@taterbase]

I love how chill the vibe is in your videos. I would love more videos of you walking the country side and just talking about your thoughts, much like the video about anger.

[@lucieni]

I love at the beginning of your vid you explain you’re wearing a coat to protect you from the rain.... you’re in your bedroom! Just how rainy is your bedroom Simon?!!!!

[@adamclark1972uk]

I think he's just a bit worried in case the weather manages to get in somehow. If it does, he's ready for it.

[@seyyednaqvi5163]

This was a classic introduction .

[@lydiacarbone7698]

You awaken interests in things I never imagined I would have. You are very gifted with explaining things clearly and in an interesting way. Love your work :)

[@4307kettwig]

Thanks a ton for including German reference examples from my area, the Ruhr area. I am baffled that you have found a seemingly young speaker of Low Saxon, in this case some sort of Westphalian I guess. That is seldom around here, as the shift towards a more Standard German oriented regiolect (Ruhr German) has already begun some 150 years ago due to industrialization and migration. There are not many people of an age below 70 around anymore, that speak or at least understand the Low Saxon and Low Franconian varieties that were the common language of the Ruhr not that long ago. I am afraid such appreciation and more scientific approaches to explain the regional differences are not in the public eye of Germany as much as in the English-speaking world. So I naturally was surprised to see both regiolect and local language showcased in your video. Keep up your wonderful work, I really enjoy your choice of topics. Best regards, Marc from Essen on the Ruhr

[@charlisparkles]

Ruhr German is what my German family speak - I'd always been told it's different to 'regular' German. When Simon read both versions, it was the Ruhr that I understood 😂 i like that I speak an unusual German (my branch of the family is from the UK)

[@hansfranz8795]

Hey there, I'm the guy who provided those examples - the reason I speak Low German is that I grew up a little further north (Südoldenburg). My hometown is right at the border of Westphalian and North Low Saxon, my dialect indeed belonging to the Westphalian variant. I think the furthest south you can go while still finding young Platt speakers is the Münsterland. I moved to the Ruhr Area a few years ago, but the High German dialect spoken in my hometown is very similar to Ruhrdeutsch, so it didn't take long for my speech to adjust to the Pott. :D

[@4307kettwig]

@@hansfranz8795 How kind of you to reply, thanks a lot! Now everything makes perfect sense. I am a East Bergish speaker myself and find our local variety in a similar position as yours because my part of the Ruhr borders the Low Franconian area to the South and the Westphalian one to the North. My local translation would be rather: "Nu säch doch mol, wat göwt dat Nöüet to vertellen, Johann?" and does not sound too different from your pronunciation. And even the local intonation of German might be pretty similar to "our" Ruhr German regiolect. And indeed, there are not many dialect speakers left around here, but speaking for my district of Werden and Kettwig (both parts of Essen), we are trying to change that a bit through a dialect class. "Dank di van Hatten, bliew gesound on alltied god gohn!"

[@hansfranz8795]

@@4307kettwig Dialect classes are super important if we want to preserve our beautifully diverse languages and dialects! I'm super delighted to see that more and more people who don't speak Low German anymore show an interest in learning it these days. That's a drastic shift from the mentality I experienced growing up. One of those things I'd love to try to establish in my hometown and the surrounding area is to have shops that have Platt speakers as employees to put signs or stickers at their doors that say "Wi küert Platt" - because the way it is now, you could have a room full of Platt speakers all speaking High German because they're unaware the others speak Low German, too ...

[@hansfranz8795]

@Hrǣdiȝbrǣcc The Gruelmaker "Ik hebb een Fall in miene Familie. Mutt ik auk maol vertellen. Miene Dochter: Echt plattdüütsch. Mien Schwiegersöhn: Echt plattdüütsch. Blots de beiden to husen, dei schnackt Hoochdüütsch." And that, in my opinion, perfectly sums up why our beautiful language is dying out right now. There's millions of speakers left, but for most people, High German is simply the default. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z2SXf3WDibt6i9k /Thing is, my parents' generation got beaten by their teachers in school when they spoke their mother tongue. They literally learnt High German as a foreign language in school. But because of all of their negative experiences and all that very real discrimination they faced, they were afraid of talking to their children in Platt, worried they might face the same kind of discrimination they did ...

[@malcolmbryant]

Your videos on accent have clearly struck a chord with many people who has never previously given it any thought. the same happened to me as a youngster when newly among a variety of people in the forces, I slowly began to differentiate my fellows' pronunciation with geography. The lightbulb moment came when I opened a book which showed a map of the ancient (over a thousand years ago) kingdoms of England (Northumbrian, Mercian and Saxon) and my shock at how these mapped so well onto the broad divisions of of northern, midland and southern accents. Interesting too that the northern and midland accents share the 'northern U' sound and both were peopled by the Angles yet the south (Saxon) doesn't have this feature.

[@tonymaries1652]

I come from Leicester and although I have not lived there for forty years I immediately recognised the single sentence from your example as someone from Leicester. East Midlands accents in general are extremely difficult if not impossible to imitate. Three good examples of Leicester and Nottingham fails Adrian Mole - In the stage adaptation Julie Walters, an intelligent and extremely adaptable actress sounds more West Midlands and almost Brummie at times. I have just looked her up and find that she grew up in Edgbaston so that is not altogether surprising. In Love Nina, Nina Stibbe grew up in the next village to where I lived before I moved away. The real Nina Stibbe is about the same age as I am and has lived away from the county for almost as long does speak 'Lestah'. The actress in the screen adaptation is from Middlesbrough and made little or no attempt to speak with an East Midlands accent. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning - Albert Finney sounds more like he is from Yorkshire. Melancholiac talks about the mapping of different regional accents. To this day the A5, an old Roman road remains a linguistic boundary between East and West Midlands with distinct differences in speech within a short distance of the road.

[@SkylersRants]

When I was a kid I read in a forward to a very large dictionary my family owned a discourse on pronunciation. Whoever wrote it mentioned that there were even some accents that pronounce "cot" and "caught" the same. That has fascinated me ever since because I can't imagine how they can be pronounced differently. I was reminded of this when you tried to demonstrate the different pronunciations of "stop." I played that over and over, but I still can't hear a difference.

[@brucewilliams8714]

Many decades ago I taught in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It intrigued me to hear the 'or' sound spoken as 'o'. Example: the tennis 'cot'. And there were many other differences. I had to alter my Australian accent simply to be understood in the classroom. Once, when conversing with an Australian visitor, a listener asked if we were speaking English!

[@Banom7a]

@@brucewilliams8714 I speak Malaysian English and it usually have lack or minimal stress accent compared to english, so that 'or' sound is a lot shorter than english, too. Famous example is the nonstandard question: "can or not?"

[@SolarLingua]

6:14 - I am REALLY glad that you talk about this!! I am getting so fed up by people using the IPA as a system with neat little boxes and categories. But I can hear so many differences (in vowels and consonants), although in IPA they are written the same. Good examples are the different realizations of [i] in German, French and Swedish or the [x] and [χ] phenomenon. THANK YOU for making a video about this. :)

[@leahbayah98]

It's really nice to be able to open up my youtube and watch something equally as educational as it is captivating and fascinating. I'm looking forward to more videos that touch upon various US accents, as I speak one myself and would love to be more aware of its origins. Thank you for making these videos, I can't get enough of them!

[@cigh7445]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/injNi2prit-mgac 2:00 minutes in. Its a recording of an English accent from many years ago. Fascinating if you're interested in the origins of the United States accents!

[@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles]

Ah yes, IPA, the naughtiest beverage.

[@lohphat]

I thought that was GHB not IPA...

[@QoraxAudio]

@@lohphat I think he meant IPA, the Isopropyl alcohol 😜

[@Crispvs1]

What - Indian Pale Ale?

[@bobthabuilda1525]

@doubleheadergr Anything is a beverage if you're brave enough

[@loneraven1311]

I love your pfp!

[@sammyanne1985]

Cannot stop watching your channel. I'm telling EVERYONE about you. I've learnt so much. Tremendous work, Simon. Thank you!

[@Foogayzee]

Simon could make an hour long video calmly explaining a bout of food poisoning in vivid detail and I'd still watch.

[@TheMaru666]

He has a great voice and a calm delivery .

[@EmoEmu]

Unrelated comment: I really appreciate that you don't just read from a script like so many others on youtube do. It makes listeting to your videos so much more enjoyable.

[@EmoEmu]

By the way what are your thoughts on the growing trend of pronouncing the letter "H" as haytch rather than aytch? Or that some are now pronouncing "says" as saiez rather that sez?

[@livrasyt166]

This channel right here sir is gold and has so much potential. Thank you for this interesting introduction to IPA! Looking forward for the next vid. Keep up the great work m8!

[@redoktopus3047]

Can you do something on the wonderfully unique australian vowels? the way they say "no" is just amazing to listen to. It sounds like there's an r in there!

[@yousseftamer4506]

An r !!

[@holofernez]

Red Oktopus you mean nah?

[@Ynysmydwr]

@@holofernez I think Red may be talking about that pronunciation of "no" that you hear emerging, in particular, from the mouths of the younger and teenage characters in soaps like "Neighbours" and "Home and Away". Using IPA symbols, this is /nɔy/ -- made using the /ɔ/ that is the vowel of English RP "thOUGHt" or "nORth", swiftly followed by the /y/ to be heard in the French word "tU". I've read that this pronunciation had its origins in South Australia but is now spreading rapidly. The older Australian pronunciation of "no" -- as /əʉ/ -- has /ə/, the second vowel of "Tina" /ti:nə/, followed by the /ʉ/ which you will hear in the Cockney pronunciation of "good" /gʉd/.

[@claires9100]

I recently discovered your channel. Majored in linguistics at the university of Alberta, in western Canada. But moved to Baton Rouge Louisiana some 25 years ago. Linguistic differences are so much fun. Love your channel and the IPA. Thank you for your video.

[@hakneyj]

Fascinating, as I am from Bradford! I would have said the phrase exactly as your friend said it.

[@letozabalmaty]

great video! The accents of the UK is a very cool thing. I was chatting with a person from southern England, so she had a strange pronunciation of the word "Four" it was like fjauwr or Fyouer, I thought that it was an old fashioned way of pronunciation from Old English Feower, then I realized that in the Frisian language we have Fjouer. It blowed my mind!

[@mikebrown279]

OLуХПК “blew” my mind : )

[@egparis18]

Most enjoyable. Your coat's doing a grand job.

[@heidikindon5182]

This has been fascinating lately, to watch your videos. Thanks for doing these.

[@h0lezee]

I couldn't for the life of me tell the difference between your "stops."

[@ErikvanB]

You are the perfect example of an old soul in a young body. I don't mean that as an insult, it feels as if you're a very knowledgable wise old wizard.

[@herrfister1477]

Always look forward to a new video Simon, thank you!

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Good to see 'good' phonetics being done. Love it!

[@psychoprosthetic]

This is wonderful stuff. A layman's guide to a slightly esoteric subject: and that's a hard thing to come by in the public domain.

[@snowyyyyyyyyyyyyy]

there's a whole bunch of good linguistics videos by jan misali if you're interested

[@DerVagabundli]

Thanks for the great videos, especially the old English ones. I have to learn this stuff for my state exam, so it's great to be able to have someone casually explain it while I'm cooking. The way you explain things is quite pleasant!

[@taniahuang-taylor5076]

Just started watching your videos and feel inspired to learn other languages. I’m 71 so better get going!

[@estherz18]

This is such a nice and cozy video, love the rain in the background! SO WHOLESOME

[@jerryumfress9030]

I'm from Tennessee and I enjoy your videos, especially the video where you talked about the south here in the USA

[@qean3303]

God, I love English, just how beautiful it is, daamn

[@colin6722]

Also, I would be very interested to hear your take on the widespread shift towards the General American Accent in the U.S, as well as the shift towards the received pronunciation across England.

[@jonwhite9069]

This is really useful and interesting, thank you

[@mountainlinx]

This is both so instructive and highly entertaining!

[@professorpanhas7348]

Came here for the naughty beverage... stayed for learning ye good olde langwich

[@eyemotif]

i love your channel sm. please keep making videos

[@princessyeldah]

Fascinating. No content creator do I admire and genuinely like as much as you. Keep making videos! x

[@simonroper9218]

That's really sweet of you, thank you very much :)

[@Htrac]

I wish I could learn IPA. It's always been like looking at hieroglyphics to me.

[@aleksanderk6765]

very nice video. really liked the visuals as well!

[@kmittens1528]

These videos are super interesting!

[@apodis4900]

Great videos mate. All very new to me but fascinating stuff. Cheers.

[@arrangrant4614]

Hi Simon another excellent video it has always fascinated how accents change even going a few miles from county to county although I must say that the Hampshire Dorset accent around here in the New Forest area has somewhat died out with being replaced with a general south of England accent much like your own which is is a shame as the Hampshire accent was quite broad from what I can remember as a boy listening to the older generation I guess this is partly due to the influence of tv and radio.On a bit of another subject the very excellent Michael Wood’s King Alfred and the Anglo Saxons series from 2013 is being shown on Tuesday evenings on BBC Four

[@Moses_Caesar_Augustus]

I already know IPA but that won't stop me from watching this.

[@Broan13]

I would waste a good deal of time talking to you if I ran into at a pub. I couldn't quite here all of the subtleties you identified when replaying some of the videos, but some I could with replaying. Thanks for putting in the time to produce these videos.

[@GotPotatoes24]

I'm from Connecticut in the U.S., and just within my family, all of whom have been raised in the same town, it's incredible to see the variations in our accents. The oldest members (including my grandpa, age 89) have an accent that used to be typical of New England, which greatly resembles the Boston accent (apart from Boston's rather nasally vowels), while myself and my brothers (born between 2001-2004) speak in a manner mostly indistinguishable from General American, except for t-glottalization and deletion of vowels before "n" sounds (captain becoming "cap'n", mountain "moun'n", etc.). In the middle generations, there seems to be a transitional form between the two extremes, and even my brother and I pronounce the vowel in "roof" and "room" differently from one another!

[@danvvl1793]

Have you ever seen someone briefly forget the word ‘coat’ ?

[@darnstewart]

I thought he was going to say anorak, then thought better of it.

[@yerdasellsavon9232]

I thought it was spelt coet

[@Thomaas551]

I've seen someone forget the word "apartment"

[@Smitology]

[kʰəʊt]

[@samapriyabasu7887]

US isn't retroflex technically, at least, in most dialects, though Irish probably does have a retroflex. The US (and Canadian) is bunched with the body of the tongue raised at the pre-velar region, so, technically somewhat like a /w/ but with a lower third formant. A true retroflex would have the tip of the tongue curled backward (as opposed to the body raised) which happens in, e.g., most South Asian languages, Swedish and Norwegian, most Australian languages, Javanese, some southern Italian languages etc.

[@markonline2166]

Very interesting, Simon. It seems you actually have a fairly similar accent to mine (with some subtle differences), even though I'm from Warwickshire. If you do another regional accent video, I'd love to participate. I'll be doing a post-grad in Applied Linguistics soon so I'll probably be returning to your videos a lot!

[@sean3533]

9:00 when you’re talking about plosives and glottal stops, I examined my American accent and with many plosives at the end of the word the glottal stop precedes the closing of the plosives. Also in the middle of a word if the plosive is followed by another consonant.

[@lubie_ogorky]

Hi!!! I love your videos and this one is especially interesting and helpful to me cos I study Applied Linguistics and we work with phonology and phonetics a looot. I'm dying to devour more content from you, cheers from Poland 😂😂

[@yousseftamer4506]

Do you study applied linguistics in Poland ?

[@lubie_ogorky]

@@yousseftamer4506 yup

[@sanchoodell6789]

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" I also like to use the line "The water in Majorca don't taste quite like what it ought to" to compare regional accents!

[@subplantant]

Brilliant stuff again!

[@johngavin1175]

Lots of interesting sounds in the IPA chart. There is one that is sometimes represented by a "LL" like in some Welsh words. It supposedly is the same position as the "L" sound (but not an approximate consonant,as in lame or lord)),but sounds like a cross between a "hl" sound and the "sh" sound like in ship. Good video dude, very interesting.

[@brucemoore1339]

More than a keen interest my friend. English spelling has always confounded me, and English spelling rules seemed oxymoronic, and I only speak English. Being from the east coast of Canada I grew up with mostly Scottish, Irish and English accents but the inconsistent spellings annoyed me. Why can't fight and light be spelled like bite and kite? Now I know they're originally Germanic words that retained thier original markers but I think for continuity they shouldn't. My Russian friend would pronounce the "b" in subtle because it's there, but "suttle" makes more sense. Now I always pronounce the b in subtle lol. He once said that something was a WESS um, Not knowing what he meant, I had him spell it........awesome.

[@the_neutral_container]

The Low German / Dutch /English connection fascinates me every time.

[@xaverlustig3581]

There's a legend about a group of pirates in the middle ages called the "Likedeeler" in Low German. The English cognates are "alike dealers", a good translation to modern English could be "equal sharers". Standard German synonym and cognate is "Gleichteiler". Good example of how Low German is in a sense closer to English than to German. (They were called that because according to legend they used to share their booty in equal parts. It's a sort of German equivalent to the Robin Hood legend.)

[@keighlancoe5933]

Us English are just Island Dutch people with some Scandinavian and Celt thrown in

[@weirdlanguageguy]

@@keighlancoe5933us English speakers are more like french frisians than anything, I'd say

[@chrisneedham5803]

I enjoyed that very much. I've got a North Derbyshire accent ( just for the record)👍

[@Symphing12]

Retroflex is best described as a sound made with the point of articulation being the hard palate, and the tongue being nearly upright in the mouth. There are all types of retroflex sounds, but the only one in English is the retroflex rhotic sound in certain dialects.

[@simonroper9218]

Thanks for the explanation, I've never really understood the distribution of the retroflex 'r.' There are actually retroflex allophones of /t/ and /d/ in certain northern English and Scottish dialects that occur after an /r/ that is no longer pronounced!

[@johnelsworth2556]

Thank you for your clear explanation. Perhaps it will help in my quest to acquire a good Portuguese pronunciation.

[@Nosirrbro]

R colored vowels are indeed quite interesting, though as an American it seems funny to me that they would be considered particularly hard to learn to pronounce, which I guess would explain why it’s such a rare phoneme.

[@bilbohob7179]

Spanishs and italians do not understad the difficult of English and specially French speakers with this sound... English phonetic is a nightmare for us but we have a lot of funny in reverse when english try our double R. A simple sound but imposible for them, and they hardly try it...

[@loolfactorie]

Would be good to see you do a vid on the South West UK accents, which is believed to be more related to the historical southern accent, and where the US gets their accents from.

[@sazji]

The retroflex d and t is very common in American accents. Mine is from the Midwest but it's hardly unique. It shows up in words like "birdie" and "dirty." The tongue comes back for the "r" and then articulates the t/d flap on the underside of the tip of the tongue.

[@danielthompson6207]

Glad to see you appreciate some American accents. I grew up in western Tennessee and still have the accent, wouldn't trade it for anything despite the negative implications of having a Southern accent here.

[@ciarfah]

Was just trying to explain this a few days ago, nice

[@robertevans4947]

this is very interesting , I've wondered before why we have a dipthong in "over" in modern manchester accents but a monothong in the nearby smaller areas e.g. wigan

[@malcolmbryant]

Manchester has been influenced (immigrated) by midland accents, as has Liverpool. Move a little northward to places like Rochdale, Wigan and St Helens and the Lancashire (non-diphthong) accent reasserts itself. Places like Manchester and Sheffield are like transition areas in this respect.

[@gerardvila4685]

Fascinating video. Pity you used such a small font in the examples - on my tablet the letters are a blur! (Galaxy S4, has a good screen)... The thing I find most striking about spelling is how different european languages use the Latin alphabet in different ways, in particular for sounds that weren't there in Latin in the first place, like the letters "ch" which are pronounced "tch" in English, "sh" in French and "kh" in German. (Czech is different again.)One thing that only dawned on me a couple years ago - and I am old enough to have watched "My Fair Lady" when it came out in the 60s - is that the Cockney accent (and Australian) are CLOSER to the spelling than Received Pronounciation. When Cockney Eliza said "rain", the usual way to represent it is "rine". But in fact, she was saying "ra" followed by "in" - as in the written word "rain" - while in RP it is pronounced the same as "rein" (on a horse). So the Cockneys must be pronouncing it the way they did in 1400 or thereabouts, when English spelling was being invented. Am I right?

[@MarkSiosal]

If you ever need an example of Scottish Borders accent or dialect (south east Scotland...10 miles from the border) i'd be happy to help. Our accents change quite dramatically over a few miles. Fascinated by your videos.

[@bradmckinney4659]

Good video, enjoyed it

[@user-wd8wx5md5z]

I just realize in this video that the actual prononciation of "jumps" does not end with "s" but with "t"... I always try to be grammatically correct by saying "s" ... and finally I am really shocked that I should say "t" instead. Now I understand that, in the word "jumps" the "p" is a plosive that tends to modify the subsequent "s" sound by making it a plosive too. Since "s" is alveolar, it is then changed for an alveolar plosive, which is exactly "t". Yeah it makes sense finally with these euphonic considerations.

[@snowyyyyyyyyyyyyy]

i think it depends on the accent bc in my us accent i say jumps

[@happyjeef]

Yes, well done. Please do a series of videos about American accents. I think these would be interesting to say the least. I find myself listening very closely to phonetics now rather than the contents of what people are saying.

[@brentjorgenson8593]

Great stuff, my friend! Not a linguist by any stretch, but would be happy to discuss American accents any time.

[@kildasaints4014]

Simon, it would be great if you could do a show on the Australian accent- I find it is even less rhotic than even Southern English from where it is derived -Cheers

[@keighlancoe5933]

I'm from the West Country, and to me some Australian accents sound so close to certain places in England it almost feels like they're regional accents. It's weird...it's different, but it's also strangely similar. Aussie to me sounds less 'foreign' than some Scottish accents. Some of them almost sound cockney to me, they have a similar twang and others a bit like East Anglian. And then there are some that are just very uniquely Australian

[@cigh7445]

@@keighlancoe5933 Yes! I was watching a show recently called 'The Boys' and one of the main characters is a guy named Billy Butcher. I couldn't tell if he was cockney/London or Australian

[@PiousMoltar]

Always love content about accents

[@persallnas5408]

excellent as usual

[@darrenmichie4939]

Love your videos, very good. Iam from central Scotland, where the majority of the people I speak too, myself included, speak "Scots" would I be correct in saying this was actually Northern English, Northumberlan? My home town near me is called Clackmannan, from Mannu, the celtic Sea god. There seems to be a lot of names round hear, streets like Lydgate, Marshill, and shilling Hill streets, which all sound old names. Love your channel thank you.

[@Ivan_Saul]

Precisamente yo hablo Español y pasa que me gusta la Fonética y Fonología, por lo que puedo secundar lo que Simon está diciendo en este vídeo. Edit: ¡Muy interesante el vídeo!

[@skeletalbassman1028]

Places to check for great US accents and micro variation across the locale: 1. New England, obvi. Everyone knows Boston, but there's at least 4 distinct accents and maybe more in Western Mass. 2. Appalachia. It's not a southern accent. Actually just covering the differences between Deep South, Appalachia, the Caroline accent, Kentucky, and Texas would be really cool too. 3. Mid 20th century California had great accents that are mostly dead now.

[@samapriyabasu7887]

As a foreigner living in NC, I love the Appalachian accent!! That's part of the reason I like the western NC mountain countryside.

[@annanannee2156]

Both my Grandfathers speak low german and I wish they could have tought my parents or my sister and me how to speak it, when we were young!

[@hansfranz8795]

You can still learn it! There's quite a bit of learning materials and courses available for all different Low German dialects. Us Low German speakers need you guys who don't speak it anymore to learn it so together we can keep the language alive! :) I'll gladly post some links if you tell me which dialect of Low German you want to learn

[@Grombulisian]

Hey look up different Texas accents. They are good examples of that retroflex rhotic consonant you mentioned.

[@yihanshi3398]

厲害！！！

[@malenky4057]

I'm from Liverpool, my accent is quite mild, but I'm able to say this sentence in a much broader scouse accent. I notice that in the broad scouse accent, the 'r' in brown is actually pronounced the same as the Glaswegian accent. Another fun thing is the 'd' sounding moving much more towards a 't' sound.

[@alejandromartinezmontes6700]

What I find interesting about the few non-rhotic US accents (New York, Boston, some AAVE, for example) is that they still preserve the rhotic sound in the Bird lexical set. What's more, there's a very old school, almost cartoonish, New York accent that is totally non-rhotic BUT instead of just deleting /r/, the vowel shifts completely to a dipthong very close to that in the Choice lexical set. I'm not sure if they merge completely, making board and Boyd homophones, though. More in general regarding US accents, I grew up in Chicago and it's quite funny that almost no one in Chicago has retained the classic Chicago accent, for Native speakers, it's almost all either Inland Northern American accent or the Chicago variety of AAVE, often a spectrum between the two for the latter group. It's a pattern I see in many places and even outside of English, similar to Cockney no longer being the accent of modern day working class London. A move towards Regional accents over city accents. Perhaps related to mass migration from outskirts towards city centers and increased immigration. My own family immigrated from Venezuela and my main input growing up was TV, which was in a more General American accent. In Spanish, my father has a strong Caracas accent, but my mother, who moved there from Colombia at a young age, has a much less pronounced accent, similar to my wife, who moved from the country to Caracas. There's a sort of very neutralized version of the Caracas accent often picked up by newcomers to the city and their kids.

[@sciencerscientifico310]

Yeah, almost all non-rhotic American accents have the r pronounced in the "NURSE" set of words even though the "LETTER" "NORTH" "SQUARE" "NEAR" "START" and "FORCE" sets of words have the r dropped. Also notable is that in some accents of aave, Cajun and south Louisiana, the "FORCE" set of words is pronounced with the same vowel sound as the "GOAT" set. Such that "floor" gets pronounced as "flow", " more" like "moe", " board " as " bode " " court " as " coat " etc.

[@jackgalloway1265]

Loved this

[@diond1333]

Ahh, Storm Dennis. I remember the 'good' old days.......

[@anonanon2624]

What was up with that? We had storms every week around that time Storm Dennis, storm Kira, etc

[@patrickaalfs9584]

Hey Simon. I have always been interested in when, why and how the standard American vernacular was developed out of our eastern seaboard vernacular.

[@NovaQueenZoe]

More than happy to donate my Pacific Northwest accent if you do a video on American accents

[@receivedSE]

Standard Indonesian's spelling is Germanic. It was made based on the concept of Dutch spelling as Indonesia had been colonized by The Netherlands for about 350 years. After several revisions, however, Standard Indonesian spelling is now simpler than Dutch, German and Italian. It is the world's-simplest spelling and almost phonetic. Therefore, we cannot see IPA symbols in Indonesian dictionaries. Thus, phonetic symbols are new to most Indonesians. When learning English by opening English dictionaries with pronunciation guide, some Indonesians understand the phonetic symbols instantly without having to learn them very hard.

[@PH4RX]

The Ruhr German one doesn't drop the ending of 'neues' but it is the same missing consonant shift that leaves it as 'neuet' where the second 'e' is swallowed and it ends up as 'neujt' or even 'neut'. That the next word is 'zu' doesn't help as the 't' and 'ts' melt together. It would be clearer had your friend said 'was gibt es neues?' - 'wat gibbet neujt?'.

[@paulclark-wright185]

Id love to hear your thoughts on UK accents. Liverpool, Birmingham, Welsh as the main ones Very unique accents

[@bujin1977]

I wouldn't say Welsh is an accent in itself. It is an entire range of accents. The people where I live in north east Wales sound very different to the people in south east, south west and north west Wales. And all places in between. Hell, the people in my village sound different to the people in the nearest town, only four miles away! I suppose that's the same even in places like Liverpool and Birmingham - not everyone in those cities sound the same. But Wales is a country with a long history of distinct regions that only came together into a single shared identity within the last couple of hundred years, so there isn't a "Welsh accent" any more than there is an "English accent".

[@keighlancoe5933]

@@bujin1977 my mum's first language is Welsh (and ironically she's English) she grew up in rural Wales in the 60's in a village where most people couldn't actually speak any English other than hello and thank you. Anyway, according to her, the people in northern Wales sound like they're trying to speak through their noses apparently xD

[@thepuredrop79]

Being from Leicestershire myself sometimes we pronounce y as ee or as eh. But it's our pronunciation of i which is noticeable, it's often pronounced as r when it follows an o, so toilet becomes torlet.

[@xader9109]

Could someone link me to similiar channels which cover such topics (IPA, phonetics, accents, Old English) and do that as good Simon, I mean I absolutely love it, going to watch every single video of yours. Great job

[@IanZainea1990]

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog... works in writing/fonts because it contains all 26 letters in the English Latin alphabet... not sure it has the same impact when reading (even if it is just a quick short hand for you). But I bet there is a sentence out there that would be good for such a thing...makes all/most of the sounds in English.

[@niku..]

Oh that Low Saxon bit was almost the same as I'd say it, though I'd say maal with a monophthong as I merge "old" (from Old Saxon long vowel) and "new" (lengthened during the Middle Low German period) a-sounds into [ɒː].

[@trickysam04]

I would love you to do an analysis of the Norfolk accent/dialect as compared to the Norwich accent. Also both compared to the West country accent/dialect. A thing that many actors would do well to study instead of adopting the usual "mummerset" joke yokel accent!

[@SadaraDharmacari]

Thanks, Simon. A small point: if you want to capture all 26 of the standard English letters, you need '... fox jumps over ...' rather than '... jumped over ...'.

[@goosegirl941]

I personally love a good crisp IPA

[@paulmessis1094]

You should investigate the now long lost west sussex accent, I met an old guy in his 90s who'd lived in the same village his whole life, a wonderful rural and lost accent.

[@ArturoStojanoff]

I would very confidently say that the "gib" in the Ruhr German example had a bilabial aproximant. It really sounded distinct to me as a native Spanish speaker. I got good at hearing it to avoid doing it when speaking other languages (like English), because in Spanish, it is actually the most common allophonic realization of the /b/ phoneme, so normally it would be hard to distinguish.

[@philroberts7238]

Simon. Is there a way that the tones in a person's speech are represented, either by the IPA or by some other means? I'm not referring here to specific tonal languages such as Chinese, but rather to the musicality of entire passages of speech in any language. In English at least the musical pattern of a sentence can often be more of a marker of different regional accents than the precise pronunciation of specific words. It's certainly something that actors need to be aware of when attempting to imitate a particular accent. How do linguists make these distinctions clear when transcribing them?

[@simonroper9218]

I was discussing this with a linguistics lecturer a few days ago, I'd never thought about it before then. I don't think there's any way of doing it with IPA, but tones (even in non-tonal languages) do clearly convey meaning. I think it's very under-researched, unfortunately.

[@Ynysmydwr]

@@simonroper9218 INTSINT (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTSINT) is one approach -- which would have to be used, as far as I can tell, in parallel to IPA. It's worth noting that the word "tones" here covers * lexical tones (as in Chinese), * lexical accents (as in Japanese or Swedish), and * intonational tones (as in English or German), as well as * boundary tones (not too sure what those are!).

[@skipinkoreaable]

@@simonroper9218 I don't claim to be an expert but I did a course on phonetics and phonology as part of a masters degree in applied linguistics. One part of that was about mapping the various tonal patterns at sentence level. There was a whole transcription system for drawing the patterns but I would have to review my notes and resources to talk about it. If you want to know where to look to find out more about that I could easily dig it up. From memory the more detailed resources about this came from American researchers. My own experience was that when you want to consciously map these patterns it's quite a mind trip to consciously map the tone patterns. We use these patterns intuitively but it is by no means intuitive to start mapping them in a conscious manner. Thanks for the awesome videos. I just discovered this channel. It's very interesting and very informative.

[@samapriyabasu7887]

Yep, tonal patterns at a sentential level can be represented with the IPA, by a combination of diacritics and stick-like graphemes, but I've never seen it consistently applied simply because it will make transcriptions very cumbersome to read. If tones exist at a phonemic level (like in Serbo-Croatian or Chinese), then they have to be transcribed of course.

[@skipinkoreaable]

If you look up ToBI you can find out more about it. I believe that's the system we studied for our course. You could peruse Wikipedia for a general overview but if you actually want to be proficient at it you will probably have to invest some time.

[@TypicalRussianGuy]

Spanish is actually almost perfect in the way it shows the pronunciation of words in texts. You can see a word you've never heard and in like 99.9% of cases you will know how it is pronounced and. On the other hand, if you've never seen a word and only heard it, Spanish might not have the best system of spelling because some letters can have several ways of being pronounced. By the way, I've noticed that in French the spelling is (surprisingly) almost good as in Spanish in terms of giving them information about sounds. Now, maybe in the case of French, your guessing chances might not be 99.9%, but I would say you can predict the pronunciation of words with 95% accuracy because even though a lot of letters are not pronounced, there are actually rules you can encounter if you read\listen a lot. On the other hand, (surprisingly) Italian is worse than French in this regard. While in Spanish you can guess the pronunciation of a word just by looking on it 99% of the time, in French - 95%, in Italian I would say it would be around 70%, because of the word stress not being indicated (unlike in Spanish where the stress is always indicated). In any case, Esperanto is the best language in this regard, since the sounds correspond with the letters in 100% of cases, and, unlike Spanish, Esperanto doesn't have letters which have several ways of pronouncing them. The only thing I don't like about Esperanto is that it uses the letter ''k'' a lot. I wish there was a way to replace it with ''c'', like in Classical Latin, so that there would be fewer ''jumpings'' in the text.

[@joncarlson6266]

As an English speaker who is learning Spanish in school, I've definitely noticed that I can with nearly 100% certainty, pronounce any word that I see written down. Conversely, if I hear it spoken, I struggle to transcribe it. It's nearly impossible for me to isolate any diacritics, and it caused a lot of frustration when I was still a basic speaker. Coming from an English perspective, specifically American English, I was not familiar with what to look for regarding diacritics. Even though stressed vowels are present in my dialect, it is generally not written down except for a few isolated cases, which are mostly loanwords from French (résumé, café). You sort of have to know when words have accent marks by just remembering how they're spelled, at least that's how I got around that hurdle. I still get marked off for writing "tambien" though haha

[@newenglandgreenman]

The vowels in “fox” and “dog” also have different qualities in your northern samples than in your Surrey samples. This vowel in the Surrey examples sounds alien to my American ears, but this vowel in the northern accents sounds closer to the quality it would have in my American accent. I think the vowels in the northern samples are either less rounded or more open or both.