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accent of this audiobook
The accent of John Lee is just natural English, There are many different accents in England, eg. London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, Yorkshire, Lancashire. There all English but sound different. I think if you work on your English accent with this audio, you will be speaking very good English.!!
Check this link out, It's about John Lee..
http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/gvpages/a1524.shtml
Hi, I suppose by natural English you mean Received Pronuntiation?
I mean it doesn't sound like a northern accent to me...
Learner.
To me he sounds just English.. [ very well spoken English ] he does not have any special accents like I mentioned above, if he was from Liverpool or Newcastle or Birmingham or a small town called Barnsley In yorkshire I would pinpoint where he lives Staight away.
This part of what he says from the link above :
“I’ve done farm laboring, so I know that narrating audiobooks ain’t as hard as picking fruit. But it is effort. It gets insanely claustrophobic. Not because of the size of the studio, although you do work in tiny rooms, but because you’re concentrating so hard.” He says that his voice--English with an echo of the family’s "IRISH HERITAGE"--will hold out “for a pretty long recording day. Maybe 90 minutes at a stretch for five to six hours.”
I dont notice the hint of Irish, maybe if I listened to all the story some words mite come through with the hint of Irish.
John Lee is very much a specialist in British military history, and yes, he is indeed British - from England of course, as his accent so clearly shows - although with a few puzzling elements to it. By all accounts he is a Southerner, in English terms - born and bred in London, and wholly educated in London, at Birkbeck College, as this link indicates.
I'm just a wee bit mystified why he should pronounce words like "after" and "last" the way he does - it has slight shades of the Trans-Atlantic about it, but I rellay don't think there is any true American influence in the wau he sounds the "a" in both of those words....not in the long, open sound of Southern English English.
Anyway, the bloke is from England, no doubt about that, basically RP more or less, and most Brits would be quite hard pressed to determine his exact home area in England, but even so most would probably say "the South of England or somewhere in the Midlands or East Anglia or perhaos even the West Country" as most educated, professional people in England tend to speak in standard, basic RP anywy, no matter from whence they come. It's just those strange "A's" of his in "after" and "last".....a wee bit of a condundrum there I reckon where a person from London is concerned.
Anway, the bloke is English, and that's that. End of...
http://www.johnandcelialee.org.uk/JohnLee.htm
This was very informative, thanks both of you, I've been listening a little of the audiobook and i think I have a resonable grasp of the main features of Received Pronunciation now, so actually I can say that I can differentiate well if a person is speaking with a Manchester/liverpool accent, a Cockney accent or a RP accent, if I had to guess which accent of the 3 that person is using. THe only accent I'm not so sure is the Estuary accent, which as I understand, is a mix between RP and Cockney. I'm not sure if I would be able to tell apart RP from Estuary English. Do anybody know of any audiobook narrated with Estuary English? That definitely would make my day.
Estuary English - started out life in that area around London and those parts of South East England surrounding the Estuary of the River Thames, the river often referred to as London's River.
You'd be hard pressed to find Estuaryspeak demonstrated in those Audio Books, but this is the closest I could get in this link.....click on the appropriate places and you will get a pretty good insight into the whole "Estuary Accent" thing.
Ben Elton does his bit in here and if anyone is a true native born Estuary Lad then he surely is.....London born and bred, as is, amazingly, the former British Prime Minister - John Major - also born and bred in South London, where Estuaryspeak is virtually the supreme lingua franca of the natives. Even more amazingly, John Major himself says that he has very noticeable traits of Estuary in his accent.
Having become quite used to hearing Estuaryspeak in all its glory I can't quite work out just why John Major thinks he speaks even a modicum of Estuary, but there you go....what do I know, I'm a bloody foreigner in Estuaryland, but I have been down there long enough to pick up a few tips myself on how to go all Estuary when I feel like it.
Anyway, strains of Estuary have even spread as far north as parts of Scotland now.....the next thing we shall hear is that it's taking over Iceland too, and I don't mean the staff at the nationwide chain of frozen food suppliers here in the UK.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/routesofenglish/storysofar/programme3_6.shtml
Damian, you say that it's difficult to find estuary spoken in audiobooks, but do you think this is going to continue? I've read that people say that Estuary is going to replace RP as the main language in England, and even I've read that RP is going to dissapear. So why recording companies do not give more chances to Estuary in audiobooks, if apparently very little people speaks RP actually anyway?
I'll listen to Ben Elton and see what I learn. Thanks for your informative posts.
I can understand your bewilderment, Learner - but in spite of all the evidence of the spread of Estuary type English across much of Southern, Eastern, South Western and Midland areas of England especially - areas away from his original basis of London and the Thames basin - there is very little chance of this form of speech ever replacing basic, standard English English RP in any big way at all.
It's true that Estuary is much more common among the younger elements of English society, and even there it is stronger and more pronounced in some than in others. It also seems that some use Estuary in some circumstantial situations much more than in others - it all depends in what sort of company they are keeping at the time. They lapse into Estuaryspeak when with their mates, but when they are in much more formal situations, such as at work, they revert to a form of speech more acceptable to their surroundings, and to their employers especially.
I've seen that for myself when I have been working down in London and other areas in Southern and South Eastern England. It seemed to me to be particularly noticeable in the Medway towns of Kent - the area around Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester. It's as if they switch to a more "street cred" Estuary when socialising, then back to a more "acceptable" South Eastern England standard RP English - that was my perception anyway, and I saw the same thing in other areas as well when living and working in London.
Tony Blair himself has been known to laspe into Estuary when he was Prime Minister here. He used it as a means of "currying favour" with the groups of younger people he met on a number of occasion, and obviously he was using it in an attempt to "lower himself down to their level" if you get my meaning - as if it was the only way he could get them to understand what he was saying to them, which in all honestly was total crap in my opinion. No way do Estuary speakers have any difficulty at all in the comprehension of standard RP English - it would be ridiculous to suggest that they do. They hear it coming at them loud and clear from the media each and every day.
In my opinion Blair made himself look foolish, as his next engagement after chatting to those kids was to address business leaders, financiers and bankers in the grand surroundings of the Guildhall, in the City of London, in the company of all the members of the Cirporation of the City of London. He most assuredly did not use any kind of Estuaryspeak when delivering his speech there.
It is most unlikely that Estuary will find its way into the British media in any big way at all - you may well hear "shock jocks" on the various independent radio channels, who largely serve the type of people who are most likely to use Estuary anyway, speak a form of of this type of English, but apart from that - no, not at all.
Comic Relief - which happens every year in the UK...raising millions of £s for charity........here is Catherine Tate demonstrating her own brand of Estuary - taking herself down to No 10 Downing Street, London, to serve tea and biscuits to the then Prime Minister, the aforementioned Tony Blair:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfkjvagVsRI
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