Week 17: English for Americans
July 27, 2012
24 February 2012
My first professional theatre audition was at the Royal Court in 2009. I did the audition in my native Californian accent, and afterward the director said, 'I assume you could do this in RP.' I nodded, slightly too effusively.
'Thou liest, most ignorant monster.' (The Tempest. III. ii. 25.)
I had absolutely no idea that RP stood for 'received pronunciation,' much less what received pronunciation is.
'In [this city] I am but two hours old,
As strange unto your town as to your talk,
Who, with every word by all my wit being scann'd,
Wants wit in all one word to understand.'
(The Comedy of Errors. II. ii. 148-151.)
I didn't get the Royal Court job, and resolved to master the English accent. I listened carefully to television and radio news, I mimicked people on London buses (and received a lot of strange looks in the process), and I used reference books, one of them being How to Do Accents by Edda Sharpe and Jan Haydn Rowles.
When it turned out that the name on my bookshelf, Edda Sharpe, was the accent coach for our company, I jumped at the opportunities to have one-on-one sessions with her.
Edda explained to me that there are six mistakes that American actors make that give their accent away. Correcting these errors is essential to mastering RP.
The first is the 'th' sound at the end of 'with.' Americans aspirate the sound, whereas it is heard in the English version.
The second has to do with a pair of 'plosions.' Americans pronounce words like 'mortal,' 'little,' and 'gentle' by placing an 'uh' sound between the 't' and the 'l' sounds. RP merges the sounds together. To accomplish this, you place the tongue on the upper palate, much like you would to scratch a hayfever itch in your throat, and pronounce the sounds in one go. This is called 'lateral plosion.' A nasal plosion requires similar merging of the 't' and 'n' sounds in words like 'button.'
Third, Americans are used to thinking (correctly) that the English drop the 'r' at the end of words like 'here' and 'car.' However, when the 'r' is followed by a vowel sound, it must reappear. Edda's examples: 'here I go,' (heeraye go) and 'car alarm' (caralarm).
The last three rules have to do with vowel sounds.
There are two rules that deal with the vowel 'a.' Americans make the 'a' sound in words like 'hat,' 'hand,' and 'Harry' differently depending on the consonant that follows. However in an English accent these three words use the same vowel sound.
Furthermore, the 'a' in the words like 'trap' and 'bath' sound similar in an American accent, whereas 'bath' sounds like 'start' in an English accent, with 'trap' being a different sound.
Finally, in most English accents, 'lot' and 'thought' have different vowel sounds, whereas we Americans pronounce the vowel sounds in these words identically. A tricky challenge for me is to make 'cot' and 'caught' sound like different words.
Learning to replicate an accent is almost like learning a new language; though you recognise the words on the page, you have to override you natural inclinations for how to pronounce them.
'By the very fangs of malice, I swear—I am not that I play.' (Twelfth Night. I. v. 178-179).
by Ankur Bahl
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