English Phonetics Diary #6

    For my sixth phonetics diary entry I decided to watch a video recommended to us on the Kampus platform. It is from the WIRED YouTube channel and it is called "Movie Accent Expert Breaks Down 32 Actors' Accents". In this video Erik Singer, a dialect coach, looks at clips from different movies to exemplify various accents and dialects. I thought this would be an opportunity to explore a different side of phonetics I have not inspected in any of my diary entries yet. In this post I wanted to share some of my favorite findings from the video and reflect on how pronunciation can be taught or presented in many different forms. 

    My favorite aspect of this video was going through different accents and hearing about how they're formed from the viewpoint of phonetics. The one that was discussed the most was the southern accent. Singer spoke about a couple characteristic features of this dialect and how it forms. The first one was called the 'goose fronting', which is when the vowel sound in words like 'goose', 'humanity', or 'cruel' is "fronter" in the mouth. Another feature was the 'vowel breaking' in words like 'creep' and 'freak', which creates a 'wiggle-esque' way of pronouncing the words. It was fascinating to hear about these technical aspects of how a southern accent is formed. We often hear these dialects aurally and the easiest way to try to emulate them is through mimicking them, which is why I loved this video so much. For the first time I got to hear how these accents are formed in terms of particular ways of using the voice and the mouth to create unique sounds. Other dialects that I loved hearing about were the Nigerian accent, where the 'th' sounds are dentalized, and the French accent, where the 'th' sounds are difficult to voice properly and where the French 'r' that comes from the back of the mouth (/ʁ/) is utilized. I also found the talk about the Polish accent, as a Polish person, fascinating. Here it was characterized as one, where the mouth is relatively closed in order to achieve accurate sounds. This was where I became a little skeptical of the video, but I had to realize that it was made for the purpose of assessing movies and how accents should be incorporated in them. Maybe these tips are not perfect for someone, who wants to learn the depths of the topic of accent formation, but it is a fun way to get started and realize some new things about dialects. 

    To conclude, I had a lot of fun looking at phonetics in a completely new way - in one that is much more light-hearted. Accents have always been something I've stayed away from and didn't want to try emulating, but hearing about how they're formed in a slightly more technical manner was truly fascinating. While I wouldn't say this was the most useful resource out of the ones I've explored, it was certainly a lot of fun and allowed me to realize how broad the area of phonetics is. I would recommend this video to everyone, who wants to broaden their horizons and realize how fun pronunciation can be in different contexts.