The globalisation marathon has not only enabled a developing country like India to grow, but has also opened up numerous doors to success and career development. As the BPO industry evolves, training and development stands out as a domain to identify, polish, groom and promote talent through people management skills. A large chunk of training resources in any BPO is constituted by voice and accent trainers.
Tips to improve your accent
- Many places have different mannerisms and word usages. Look up a British dictionary online for more British terms. Bear in mind that beyond the obvious tap/faucet, pavement/sidewalk distinctions, locals would find you at best an endearing source of amusement and at worst patronizing if you tried to adopt their local words and mannerisms yourself.
- There are hundreds of different accents within the United Kingdom, so categorizing them all as a British accent is rather incorrect; wherever you go, you will find an unbelievable variety of different pronunciations.
- It is easier to learn accents by listening to people. A formal British accent can be heard on BBC news, where it can frequently be heard. Formal British speech is more deliberate and articulated than American, but as with newscasters everywhere, this effect is deliberately exaggerated for TV and radio broadcast.
- As with any accent, listening to and imitating a native speaker is the best and fastest way to learn. Remember that when you were young you learned a language by listening and then repeating the words while imitating the accent.
- If you're visiting England, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge are some of the last strongholds of the traditional RP and "Queen's English" accent. However, more and more students there now speak with accents from around Britain and the world, and the natives of the cities and surrounding areas speak with their own (often very distinctive) local accents. They'd probably be offended if you assumed they spoke with a "stereotypical British accent"; don't fall into the common trap of thinking an Oxfordshire or Cambridgeshire accent is the same as an RP accent.
- Be creative. Have fun with it. Take your new knowledge and explore. Test your British accent on your friends! They'll tell you if it's good or not!
- As well as accent, watch out for slang words, such as lads or blokes for boys and men, birds or lasses (in the north of England and in Scotland) for women. Loo for the toilet, but bathroom for a room you clean yourself in.
- Don't learn more than one accent at a time. Since Estuary English sounds very different from a "Geordie" accent, you'll get confused very easily.
- RP is not called Queen's English for nothing, hear for yourself how HM Queen Elizabeth II speaks. A good thing would be to hear her at the State Opening of Parliament where she always delivers a very long speech, the perfect time to observe the way she speaks.
- Another way to practice an English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish accent would be to watch and follow a specific news spokesman on any British news channel and repeat their speech. Watching half an hour a day would greatly improve your speech patterns in just a couple weeks.
- Always use British English words if they are different to US English. The British tend to be protective about the differences. In particular, use "rubbish" and "tap", not "trash" and "faucet". Also, it's good (but not essential) to say "schedule" with "sh_", not "sk_" but you must learn how to say "specialty" with 5 syllables, not three as it is spelled differently in Britain (spe-ci-al-i-ty).
- When you say "at all" pronounce it like "a tall" but with a British accent.
- Take a trip to the United Kingdom and really listen to how they speak.
- Pronounce everything clearly and articulate every word properly, making sure there are spaces between your words.
- When you know someone British ask them to say phrases for you so you can listen and try to learn.
- Think about your audience. If you wish to genuinely fool people into thinking you're British, you want to think about regions, and work much harder than if you want to get a general picture across for a school play.
- If you want to hear a more up-to-date version of this accent, watch some episodes of the TV series Eastenders and Only Fools and Horses. People do still speak like this, especially working-class people in east London and parts of Essex and Kent, although it's much more noticeable with older people.
- As a child, your ability for the ear to process different frequencies of sound is greater, enabling you to distinguish and reproduce the sounds of the languages that surround you. To effectively learn a new accent, you must expand the ability of your ear by listening over and over to examples of the accent.
- There is lots of English accents, like London, Cornwall, "Queens English", Yorkshire, Birmingham and West Bromwich (Mine!), and Lancashire.
- Once you learn the techniques and listen to Brit speakers, try reading parts of books while reading in the dialect. It's fun and makes for good practice.
- As you expand the ability of the ear, speaking becomes an automatism. When the ear can "hear" a sound, the mouth has a better chance of producing it.
- Remember: The accents of Julie Andrews or Emma Watson (Hermione from Harry Potter), who speak RP, are quite different from those of Jamie Oliver and Simon Cowell (Estuary English—probably the most widespread everyday accent in Southern England, somewhere between Cockney and RP) or Billy Connolly (Glasgow).
- You may have heard a Cockney accent (east end of London). This accent is increasingly more unusual in the 21st century but if you were try to imitate one, notice that they almost sing words and they almost replace vowels and remove letters, e.g. the a in "change", would be an "i" sound. Films based on books by Dickens as well as ones such as "My Fair Lady" may have examples of this accent.
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