23 October 2020,
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Break 'against' down into sounds: [UH] + [GENST] - say it out loud and exaggerate the sounds until you can consistently produce them. Learn more. An accent is a colouring or flavouring to your speech that influences the sounds and shapes of words and sentences. They become bi-accented. These dictionaries, and the pronunciation keys derived from them, provide reference models of the spoken language. Marc Wathieu, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 and adapted from the original. But this situation is changing (slowly) as more and more sporting heroes and heroines with these accents appear in the broadcast media. However, I still have prejudices that I find difficult to control in relation to one particular accent. But next, confession time. Over the course of my lifetime (60-plus years) I have held and expressed prejudices about other people's accents. I like to think that, over the decades, my studies and my experience of working with people from a wide range of backgrounds have led me to abandon these prejudices. Everyone has an accent, no-one is accent-free. I’ll come back to this point in a moment, with some appeals at the end. Don’t judge your fellow teachers by their accents. Control your own prejudices about accents used in reference models. 'Prejudices about accents are undesirable, but powerful, and very easily learned.' It is the accent that has been held up as ‘the one to learn’ since the early decades of the twentieth century. Fresh perspectives on education and culture from around the world. The trouble for me is that one of the social groups I have the strongest family and emotional ties to are my cousins in the West of Ireland. These models are useful for teaching intelligible speech, but they do not represent ‘the truth’, they do not represent ‘the right way’. The United Kingdom's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities.A registered charity: 209131 (England and Wales) SC037733 (Scotland). Prejudices about accents are undesirable, but powerful, and very easily learned. English language teacher and author Richard Cauldwell examines the prejudices against various English accents and the effect they can have on one's sense of self-worth. We thus treat these dictionaries not just as useful reference tools for teaching, but as a source of ‘right answers’ and ‘the truth’. Listen to the audio pronunciation in English. And those who are said to do so (senior members of the royal family, officers in the Royal Navy) are unlikely to wield influence over my employment prospects. Accents are associated with social groups: regional such as Birmingham, or social such as upper-class. These reactions are the result of prejudice – an unreasoned jumping to judgement. Sky News ran a report recently in which an 18-year-old woman was trying to sound less posh, because she didn’t like ‘random people’ telling her that she must be rich and from a privileged background. seminars for English language professionals, UK accents: it's not what you say, it's how you say it. And to them, my accent sounds ‘posh’, that is, RP-like. This is the pronunciation of against in four English dialects of American, British, Australian, and Welsh. Do not use reference models as an attainment target or attainment model. They persist despite the protestations and efforts of experts and academics. If you deviate from these rules, you are somehow to blame. pronunciation definition: 1. how words are pronounced: 2. how words are pronounced: 3. the way in which a word or letter is…. Find more seminars for English language professionals live-streamed from the UK. Learn more. Richard Cauldwell will be presenting on this topic at a British Council seminar, live-streamed from London on 10 June 2014. I will come back to this later. But the reality is that the wider world, including the teaching profession, likes the idea of simple rules which tell us what is right and wrong. What are the correct rules of English grammar? A reference model is not ‘the truth’ or ‘the right way’ but a reference point around which many flavourings are possible. against pronunciation. Hey ho! And for every accent there exists, there's somewhere a group – or groups of people – who react badly to it. As teachers, we like to be able judge our students (and sometimes our colleagues, and newcomers to the profession) on the basis of these rules. It is the accent that has been held up as ‘the one to learn’ since the early decades of the twentieth century. And some individuals modify their accents to sound more 'refined' when talking to people outside their immediate circle of family and friends. This option is not so easily attainable for non-native teachers of English, who are often made to feel bad about their accents. Many of these prejudices were firmly in place at the end of my formal education (boarding school and Oxford). But I am not alone in my reactions to this accent. Jacob Rees Mogg (Member of Parliament) recalls when he first stood unsuccessfully for election in Fife, Scotland: 'I gradually realised that whatever I happened to be speaking about, the number of voters in my favour dropped as soon as I opened my mouth.'. How to say against. Academics tell us that no accent is linguistically superior to any other. Learn more. Let me end by making some final pleas to teachers of English: Lastly, it's worth being reminded that people can be accented – even highly accented – and still be intelligible and comprehensible. Within the UK, people have prejudices about the inner-city accents of Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool, which place these accents at the bottom of a league table of approvals. The appeal of labelling accents 'right' and 'wrong'. These flavours attach to vowels (in Birmingham you might hear ‘lake’ sounding close to ‘like’ as in ‘Where’s the like?’) and consonants (in Ireland you might here ‘this’ sounding close to ‘diss’ as in ‘Diss is the way’) and word stress (in the USA you might hear ‘MOmenTAry’ instead of ‘MOmentary’). Compilers of pronunciation dictionaries often explain that the pronunciations that they suggest are not the only ones possible. Are some accents better than others? ; Record yourself saying 'against' in full sentences, then watch yourself and listen.You'll be able to mark your mistakes quite easily. As Cruttenden tells us, there is a considerable amount of hostility to it. Recognise a reference model such as RP or General American for what it is: a useful example for teaching and learning intelligible pronunciation. Here are 4 tips that should help you perfect your pronunciation of 'against':. Some examples of prejudiced reactions to accents. Yes, some people would say that my accent is the very one that I have these prejudices about. Listen to the audio pronunciation in the Cambridge English Dictionary. Very few people speak it. No accent is immune from such prejudices, even those we use as reference models for pronunciation such as Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American. Photo. The accent which excites prejudiced reactions in me is the one that has been recently named Conspicuous General British (CGB) – referred to in the past as Refined Received Pronunciation. The accent which excites prejudiced reactions in me is the one that has been recently named Conspicuous General British (CGB) – referred to in the past as Refined Received Pronunciation. Very few people speak it. People may say one of the following (or more likely think it quietly to themselves) upon hearing a particular accent: Everybody has prejudices about accents – I certainly do. How to help your students recognise regional UK accents, Nigerian Pidgin – 20 useful words and phrases, Black Lives Matter Toronto founding member talks about his complex identity, One man's experience of being gay in Nigeria, Joe Hakim: 'Read things out loud as part of the writing process', Current research consultancy opportunities, Contact your local British Council office. They included prejudices about Northern Irish accents (my family background is from the South of Ireland), white South African (in my early/middle adulthood, there were many protests against apartheid) and American accents of any type (sorry, no excuse).

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