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Accent Breakdowns Colorado Shakespeare Festival Production Materials

London/Estuary English

One Man, Two Guv’nors
CSF 2023

For hints on using this resource, please see How to Work on an Accent.

Listening Samples

James Kirtley
(Eastbourne, b. 1975)

James Kirtley

Key Sounds

For each sound, I’ve included audio examples and a dropdown section of practice phrases.

Unless otherwise indicated, practice phrases are excerpted from Lexical Sets for Actors by Eric Armstrong under a creative commons license.

Consonant Sounds

R-Dropping

While R in initial position (e.g. “red roses”) is always pronounced, R is not pronounced when it falls at the end of a word or precedes a consonant sound. Some example word groups are: NURSE, lettER, NEAR, SQUARE, START, and NORTH.

Linking R

R-dropping does not occur when the sound following the R is a vowel sound.

T-Glottalizing

Medial and final T are often pronounced as a glottal stop.

L-Vocalizing

The L sound at the end of a word or preceding a consonant sound will often be pronounced as a vowel-like sound similar to W.

TH-Fronting

Voiceless TH (“THing”)

  • May be pronounced like F: “fing”

Voiced TH (“THis”, “weaTHer”)

  • In initial position may be pronounced somewhat like D: “dis”
  • In medial and final position may be pronounced like V: “wevver”

Vowel Sounds

Words like PRICE

The vowel sound in words like PRICE begins further back in the mouth than in many other varieties of English.

Words like GOAT
Words like FACE
Words like BATH

Southern English accents make a distinction between the vowel sounds in BATH and TRAP. If you’re not sure whether your word is a BATH word or a TRAP word, you can look it up using a British dictionary such as Cambridge, listen at howjsay.com, or ask your dialect coach!

Words like TRAP

Careful not to over-generalize the BATH sound to TRAP words.

In addition to the usual TRAP words, there are a few notable “set jumper” words that are included in the TRAP set in southern English accents: marry, Harry, carry, Carolyn, carriage, Marilyn, Paris, arrow, parapet

Color-Coded TRAP/BATH Script Resource

Please note, the first two highlights are incorrectly reversed.

Words like LOT

Words like LOT and CLOTH are pronounced in the back of the mouth and have some lip rounding associated with them.

Words like THOUGHT

Words like THOUGHT use a smaller, rounder lip opening than LOT words.

Common “Tells”

can/can’t

These words use different vowel sounds in this accent!

“can”
“can’t”
Mary/merry/marry

These words use three different vowel sounds in this accent!

“Mary”
“merry”
“marry”

Speech synthesis via http://ipa-reader.xyz/ and Amazon Polly.