What British accent is it?

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Viktor77
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What British accent is it?

Post by Viktor77 »

James Corden, who's the US's new British celebrity obsession yadda yadda yadda has a particular accent that struck me as an American. Perhaps it's a very normal accent across the pond, I don't know. Can you tell me what accent he has? (And believe or not I could not find it on Google, just screeching that he has an Americanized accent now).

Here's a video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE_ge9kr3IQ

I ask because this guy struck me as having the same accent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyDaK6KxOzg

Can you identify the accent? For James Corden, at least, he was born in Hillingdon, grew up in Hazlemere.

I can't identify it exactly and I don't study phonetics, but there's something uniting this accent. It seems not just to do with vowel qualities but also with consonant qualities. Without sounding like a critic, the quality has something to do with sounding like they are unable to properly enunciate. Maybe something like /T/ > /f/? Unless I'm just completely wrong.

Also they look oddly related.
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Re: What British accent is it?

Post by Sumelic »

I’m also American and have never studied phonetics formally, so unfortunately most of what I hear is just general features of British English.

James Corden pronunciation what I hear:
Vowels:
-[a] or even [ä] for /æ/ (first syllable of “lap dancing”)
-[ɑɪ] or thereabouts for /aɪ/
-[ʉ] or at least a somewhat centralized vowel for /u/ (“do”)
-/ʊ/ is also centralized, I believe
-[ɛ] or maybe even [ɛ̞] or [æ̝] for /ɛ/ (“Yes”)
Consonants:
-glottalization of word-final /t/ -- it sounds like complete replacement with a glottal stop to me
-affrication of /t/ before /ju/ (9:19 “Tuesday”)
-I’m not sure, but I think I might hear a little coarticulation of the /s/ with the /r/ in initial /str/ clusters (14:50 “strict policy”)
-It’s not as extreme as in some American dialects, where it would be a full-blown “shtrict”
- /θ/: is it realized as /f/ ? I don’t hear that.

So overall, all I noticed was general features of Estuary English, sorry.

Zack Elliot pronunciation what I hear:
Vowels: I didn’t notice anything special really
-something about his pronunciation of /ʌ/ stood out to me, but I’m not sure what. It might be lower and fronter than usual, like [ä] or something instead of [ʌ] or [ɐ].
Consonants:
-Something about his realization of /s/ maybe? Maybe also /t/. This doesn't seem to be in common with Corden to me.
-I don’t hear /f/ for /θ/ in his speech either

I get what you mean about it sounding a little like he’s slurring sounds, but I’m not sure exactly what this consists of phonetically.
Last edited by Sumelic on Wed May 13, 2015 4:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: What British accent is it?

Post by Yng »

If you mean James Corden and Zack Elliot - yeah, they both have pretty generic, solidly un-American Estuary accents.
كان يا ما كان / يا صمت العشية / قمري هاجر في الصبح بعيدا / في العيون العسلية

tà yi póbo tsùtsùr ciivà dè!

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Viktor77
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Re: What British accent is it?

Post by Viktor77 »

Yng wrote:If you mean James Corden and Zack Elliot - yeah, they both have pretty generic, solidly un-American Estuary accents.
Thank you Yng and Sumelic, that was exactly what I was looking for. If I had known enough about British accents I probably would've realized this right away. The yod-coalescence seems to be what always struck me most with Corden.
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Re: What British accent is it?

Post by Salmoneus »

Coalescence is the norm here. Older dialects, like Cockney, used to drop instead, and I think some parts of the midlands and east anglia, maybe even essex, still do. But that's quite stigmatised. So coalescence is the norm. [strains of SSBE closer to RP retain more yods, but only ultra-conservative forms of it keep them all. Even I, who have a very RP-ish dialect, often find myself on the cusp - coalescing in normal speech, or for common words, but retaining in other words, or when disambiguating. I used to coalesce a lot more than I do now (eg I usen't to be able to disambiguate 'deuce' and 'juice'). This is after alveolars, of course - elsewhere, it's common for coalescers to retain their yods].
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Re: What British accent is it?

Post by Sumelic »

But the standard dialect has yod-dropping after /tʃ d ʒ ʃ ʒ r/ right? What's the current state of yod-dropping after /l/? The third edition of Fowler's basically says that it's dropped in /Clju/ clusters (as in "blue", "clue", "flew"), retained, as in American English, when the /l/ and /j/ fall into distinct syllables (as in "volume", "celluloid", "salutation"), and variable for most words with a /lju/ cluster in a single syllable (as in "lute", "salute", "luminous"). Also, what happens to /s/ and /z/ -- I think I remember hearing somewhere that yod-dropping was somewhat common in words like "suit" and "Susan", but for some reason it seems unlikely to me in words like "Zeus". But I've also never heard of coalescence for these sounds ("suit" = "shoot", Susan" ="Shoosan", "Zeus"="Zhoose"). Do these simply remain clusters for most speakers, even those that coalescence plosive + yod to an affricate?

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Re: What British accent is it?

Post by Yng »

It's difficult to know for certain with this sort of thing, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone with a yod in Susan or suit. Zeus is different. But I have no yods in any of these words.
كان يا ما كان / يا صمت العشية / قمري هاجر في الصبح بعيدا / في العيون العسلية

tà yi póbo tsùtsùr ciivà dè!

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Re: What British accent is it?

Post by Salmoneus »

Sumelic wrote:But the standard dialect has yod-dropping after /tʃ d ʒ ʃ ʒ r/ right?
Assuming you meant that as a voiced affricate (without the space), then yes. So far as I know ALL British dialects have this, except maybe some Celts. I'm not even able to say /rj/.

Wait, hang on, no! /ʒj/ still exists. "Usual", "casual" etc. I would probably say /juZu.Ul/ (sometimes /uwU/), and so would most people, but you do hear /juZjul/ or /juZju@l/ from older or more conservative speakers. It's not weird for me. /Sj/ is weird for me (/kQntr@v3Sj@l/), but I know I've heard in on TV from older RP speakers sometimes.
What's the current state of yod-dropping after /l/? The third edition of Fowler's basically says that it's dropped in /Clju/ clusters (as in "blue", "clue", "flew"), retained, as in American English, when the /l/ and /j/ fall into distinct syllables (as in "volume", "celluloid", "salutation"), and variable for most words with a /lju/ cluster in a single syllable (as in "lute", "salute", "luminous").
Speaking only as a native speaker, not as a linguist, my impression is:
- nobody has /j/ after a Cl cluster - I can't even pronounce that. I think that, along with /j/ after /r/, were dropped very early on
- I can pronounce /j/ after initial /l/, and i think probably some ultra-RP people, and maybe some celts, may do so. I think I've probably heard some old guy on TV say /ljut/ at some point. But i'm not sure I've heard /ljumInUs/ - are you sure it's meant to have /j/ at all? In any case, I don't think I would ever have /lju/ in one syllable. /ljU@/ is probably on the edge of what I might say - I could imagine myself saying that (for 'lure'), I think some others do, but it's still not something I probably do say, and it's not the norm. Maybe less ultra-RP than outright /lju/, but still pretty ultra.
Across syllables, however, there's no problem with this cluster.
Also, what happens to /s/ and /z/ -- I think I remember hearing somewhere that yod-dropping was somewhat common in words like "suit" and "Susan", but for some reason it seems unlikely to me in words like "Zeus". But I've also never heard of coalescence for these sounds ("suit" = "shoot", Susan" ="Shoosan", "Zeus"="Zhoose"). Do these simply remain clusters for most speakers, even those that coalescence plosive + yod to an affricate?
They don't coalesce, so the yod either drops or stays.
These days, the "standard" is almost certainly for dropping in these circumstances. But the retained versions are still common, much more common than the cases you ask about above. Personally, I'm on the cusp, and it's probably on a word-by-word basis for me. so for instance I say /sut/ when I'm talking about the clothes, but I mostly say /sjut/ when i'm talking about a legal case, and I could use either for a pack of cards (in that case I think of /sjut/ as 'correct', but I probably say /sut/ more often). I started out regularly dropping all of these, but regained a lot of the yods due to influence from my peers. I say /zjus/, but /sU@/, but /p@sjU@/. Come to think of it, I think 'pursuer' is much more common to have the yod than words like 'suit' are - not sure why exactly, it's not over a syllable boundary.

Anyway, i've never heard /sjuzn/ - I don't think that's 'meant' to have a /j/ in. Loanwords often don't.
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Re: What British accent is it?

Post by Yiuel Raumbesrairc »

Linguistics apart (totally British), I was laughing my ass out by going through the whole video.
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Re: What British accent is it?

Post by Io »

These guys sound profoundly British to me, on the other hand when I watched Robbie Rogers on HARDtalk I found him very non-American sounding, how would you describe his accent? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5nYN8HNxCM

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Re: What British accent is it?

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Io wrote:These guys sound profoundly British to me, on the other hand when I watched Robbie Rogers on HARDtalk I found him very non-American sounding, how would you describe his accent? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5nYN8HNxCM
Honestly, it sounds like he is making a conscious effort to play up an accent that is similar to an English accent (the 'and's as /and/ is not typical in any American English variety that I know). I watched another one of him on HuffPost Live in America and he sounded perfectly American to me, I sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Then I watched another one of him in Seattle and he had this funky played up accent going on again to a bit lesser extent. I would think he's just trying to sound posh really. It's not unusual for gay men, effeminate ones especially, to like to play with language to convey some sort of poshness or whatever.
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Re: What British accent is it?

Post by Yng »

He doesn't sound British to me, he sounds American but with weird hints of Northern Irish. I think these hints are probably the result of affectations in his speech to imitate BrE or something though.
كان يا ما كان / يا صمت العشية / قمري هاجر في الصبح بعيدا / في العيون العسلية

tà yi póbo tsùtsùr ciivà dè!

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