All About Accents

Dani’s been very busy putting her linguistic training to good use by researching different types of R sounds used by Scottish English speakers writing it all up in an article that was recently published in the Voice and Speech Review. Join Lucas and Dani as they discuss Dani’s article and to find out what types of Rs you should focus on when learning how to speak with a Scottish accent!

Mentioned on this episode:

• Dani’s full article: Variants of /r/ Used in Contemporary Scottish English: An Exploratory Study
• Voice and Speech Review journal
• Our All About Accents podcast episode about rhoticity/non-rhoticity: R is for Rhoticity
• https://www.dialectsarchive.com/ - huge online database of lots of different accent recordings

Arrrrrr, here be treasure! In this episode Lucas and Dani chat about where the stereotypical “pirate” accent comes from. They discuss which real-life accent inspired the “pirate” accent, as well as what accents the characters in famous shows like Pirates of the Caribbean or Our Flag Means Death speak with.

Mentioned on this episode and useful resources:

- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

- Treasure Island (1950)

- Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)

- Our Flag Means Death (2022-2023)

SPOOOOOOKY SEASON – In this episode, Lucas and Dani chat about where the stereotypical “vampire” accent might come from by taking a closer look at some of the most famous depictions of Count Dracula on film.

Mentioned on this episode:

This episode is all about RHOTICITY and NON-RHOTICITY, or in other words: How some English accents pronounce every single R that exists in the spelling of words, while other accents skip some of those Rs. We discuss the historical journey of Rs in English and learn the rules of when to drop Rs in non-rhotic accents like RP.

In this episode, Dani and Lucas share their thoughts on the many accents, voices and languages used in Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two”, including discussing Austin Butler’s amazing performance in this film as well as the nature of conlangs (= constructed languages) and the impact of using multiple languages with subtitles.

In this episode, Dani and Lucas discuss Christopher Nolan’s latest work “Oppenheimer” by taking a closer look at the dialect and accent choices available when creating shows set in the past. They consider the trade-offs of historically accurate accents compared to modern-day accents, and apply this analysis to the accent work in "Oppenheimer", among other examples.

This episode is about how we produce vowels sounds with our speech muscles. Dani and Lucas make some more silly sounds trying to understand what our speech muscles are doing to produce vowel sounds for speech. We encourage everyone who’s listening to join us in this exercise and think about how YOU pronounce certain sounds. This exercise can be quite difficult, especially if (like most people) you’ve never thought about what your facial muscles are actually doing when you speak, so don’t worry if you’re finding it hard!

Mentioned on this episode and useful resources:

-       Simplified drawing⁠ of a person's face showing all important articulators

- KIT list aka Lexical Sets

In this episode we focus on how we produce consonant sounds with our speech articulators. Lucas and Dani make lots of silly sounds trying tounderstand what our speech muscles are doing to produce consonant sounds for speech. We encourage everyone who’s listening to join us in this exercise and think about how YOU pronounce certain sounds. This exercise can be quite difficult, especially if (like most people) you’ve never thought about what your facial muscles are actually doing when you speak, so don’t worry if you’re finding it hard!

Mentioned on this episode and useful resources:

• Simplified drawing of a person's face showing all important articulators

In this episode, Dani and Lucas discuss how to approach new pronunciations of words when learning a new accent. They take a look at the sound inventories of different accents and highlight what tools you can use to change how you pronounce specific vowels and consonants, including the famous IPA (not the beer, sorry) and the super useful KIT list.

Mentioned on this episode (plus other useful resources):

• The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
• Lexical Sets - original source: Wells, J. C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• The IPA chart with sounds

Dani and Lucas talk about the music of accents and how different accent speakers use their voice in a wide range of different ways. They talk about how the music, rhythm and intonation vary between major accents, and they touch on what vocal fry is (and how it’s not just a feature of Valley Girl Talk). They also discuss what makes French such a great language for rap music.

Mentioned on this episode:

- Johnny Lee Miller in Trainspotting