How many accents can you do

For example, have you ever seen a period piece set in the ancient world? Note how they usually speak with British accents, even if they are in a land where English is not spoken.

We identify the British accent with classicism and theater thank you, Bill Shakespeare! In Boston, for example, the influence of Irish settlers has led to a very distinct Bostonian accent, though the modern accent sounds nothing like the Irish one.

In Hong Kong, exposure to Chinese and British culture resulted in an accent that sounds much like British, though differing slightly. Similarly, Australians and New Zealanders have a distinct accent from other English lands, and even from one another.

Of course, we all have preferred accents. Those speaking English with Spanish accents are often portrayed as sexier. In America alone, the variations are many. Sound patterns also differ from language to language. For instance, an English syllable may begin or end with a cluster of consonants, as with the str and ngths of the word strengths. In Japanese, on the other hand, a syllable contains only one consonant followed by one vowel - as in ma or ki.

The one exception is that a syllable may also end with an n , as in san. For this reason, pronouncing English consonant clusters is hard for Japanese speakers, and they may produce a vowel sound between the consonants in a cluster. Finally, sentence structure differs from language to language as well. In Russian, for example, it's not necessary to have a connecting word like is in the sentence The house is very large. For that matter, no word corresponding to English the would appear in the Russian version of this sentence either.

But a native Russian speaker learning English who says only House very large will sound distinctly foreign. Sometimes two languages will allow the same sentence form, but in different situations.

English, for example, allows a word or phrase to be moved to the front of the sentence in certain contexts: l Spaghetti I like but lasagna I hate. This same word order is allowed in Yiddish; the difference is that Yiddish allows it to be used in a much broader range of contexts.

So a native speaker of Yiddish, seeing that English has the same word-order possibility, might say something like: 2 My brother has no idea how to save money. A house he's buying now. Here, He's buying a house now becomes A house he's buying now , just as in l I like spaghetti becomes Spaghetti I like.

Both l and 2 would sound fine in Yiddish, but only l sounds normal in English; in 2 the speaker seems to have an accent. It depends on whether we're talking about first- or second-language learning. Native speakers of a language do tend to master some of its sounds before others. In English, p, m, n, h, and w are among the first consonants acquired by children, while z, j, v, and the two th sounds as in think and this are among the last to be mastered.

But all of the sounds of a language are generally acquired before puberty by a native speaker. Typically, it's only non-native learners that have long-term difficulty with a sound.

When you learn a second language, you may have difficulty with sounds that don't occur in your native language; for example, some languages have trilled r 's, 'clicks' made with the tongue as air is taken in, or sounds made much farther back in the throat than English sounds. Surprisingly, though, the hardest sounds to learn may be those that are similar to, but just a bit different from, sounds in your native language.

It seems to be very difficult to overcome the tendency to keep using the familiar sounds from your native language. In this sense, your native language causes 'interference' in your efforts to pick up the new language. Again, it depends on whether we're talking about a first or second language. Children acquire their native language effortlessly, regardless of the language.

Ewan McGregor is interviewed by an American journalist. In another part of the United Kingdom, Scotland, the locals have a number of diverse accents. Scottish speakers also borrow many words from the Scots language, which further complicates this dialect. Some Scotsmen even blend the two languages together, making for a peculiar hodgepodge of language fun.

Watch Justin Trudeau looking at memes of himself on the internet. Jumping back across the pond, the Canadian English accent shares a lot in common with the American accent. Many Americans have trouble recognising the Canadian accent, particularly because it sounds very similar to the accent of those who live in northern parts of the United States.

You can often hear the difference in vowel sounds, such as the in the word sorry. Listen to the interesting sound of Welsh English! Wales is another small country in the United Kingdom, but its accent varies quite a lot from British English.

In the video above, you can listen to a Welsh teenager talk about a body oddity: his large feet! While his feet may be uncommonly large, his accent is pretty standard for those who live in Wales. English in Wales is also impacted by the presence of the Welsh language, which loans certain words to the local English dialect.

Listen to the video above and see if you can decipher what the young man speaking is saying. Many native English speakers would find his accent a bit tricky, too. Nicole Kidman Chats with Ellen!

The chief differences between Australian English and British English are the vowel sounds and the cadence of the language itself. What do you notice most about the way the two ladies speak with one another?

You may notice that some New Zealanders speak with a rising intonation, meaning general statements can sound somewhat like a question. What a difference, huh?