Exercise October 11th

By midnight October 14th, enter your name and the link to the blog page you have created for this exercise into this google form. If you complete the exercise before midnight October 13th, I may end up showing one of your examples in class Tuesday. In any case, please indicate on the google form whether that’s OK.

On your blog page, provide links to web-hosted videos (e.g. YouTube) that illustrate at least two examples of British English pronunciation that diverge from Mainstream American English. One example should concern vowel pronunciation, and another consonant pronunciation. The examples can be from any variety of English spoken on the British Isles, and the examples do not have to come from the same variety. We will be particularly impressed if you also illustrate a consonantal or vocalic difference between UK  varieties.

For each one, provide a link to each video (or embed them in your blog page – see the “Media” link), the time in minutes and seconds when the relevant word occurs, and phonetic transcriptions of both the consonant or vowel sound that is heard in the British English example, and what you would have expected in American English.

This exercise will count as one of the classroom exercises we “collect”.

Update 10/15  Great work everyone! Here are some examples that I found were particularly relevant to things we are talking about in class.

From Rachel Mallard: [l]-vocalization in “bloody hell” at 0:23 of this clip from Harry Potter.

From Nicole Power: class with [?] at 0:03 of this clip (called “vowel backing” in the slides for today), along with nice David Beckham and Mick Jagger examples of changes in opposite directions on the “poshness” scale.

From Fiona Mieles: an interesting, and kind of puzzling, instance in Scottish English: hill with [e].

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *