Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Eric Singer. I'm a dialect coach. You may have seen me here before talking about accent performances in movies. What do Texas accents and South Asian accents have in common? The answer is retroflection. So today I'm gonna offer you some quick and easy ways to tell one accent apart from another when those two accents are pretty similar in a lot of ways. Can you ask somebody to say a simple phrase to try to tell whether they're from, say, Australia or New Zealand?

Speaker 2: I'm originally from Sydney, Australia. From Philly, PA. Yorkshire. New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Speaker 1: Number one, how to tell an Australian from a New Zealander. We can use the kit vowel. In Australia, there's a realization that is not too far off from my own American accent. For instance, something like an ih sound. An Australian might say that something like this. Myth, myth, myth. New Zealanders tend to centralize this sound. So instead of the tongue being arched up a little bit towards the front of the mouth, it's relaxed down a little bit towards the middle of the mouth. And you get something closer to a schwa. Uh, kut. You can hear that here. Myth, myth, myth.

Speaker 3: Myth.

Speaker 1: Myth. Myth. So there's one actually very famous phrase that you can use that you could ask somebody at a cocktail party, say, to pronounce to try to tell whether they're an Australian or a New Zealander if you're not sure. And that phrase would be fish and chips. An Australian might say that something like this.

Speaker 4: Fish and chips.

Speaker 1: Fish and chips. Fish and chips. Whereas the New Zealand version might sound more like this.

Speaker 3: Fish and chips.

Speaker 1: Number two, how to tell somebody from the north of England from somebody from the south of England. Many accents in both places, of course. But the cool thing is you can draw a line straight across England. And to the north of that line, strut words, words like cup, under, mother, love, son, are gonna have a vowel sound something like ooh, very similar to the vowel sound in foot words like wood, butcher, woman, look. Here is a northern English person and you can hear their strut vowel. Cop, cop, cop. In the south, there are gonna be two different vowels. One is strut and one is foot and they won't sound the same. Here's a speaker from the south. Cop, cop, cop. From the north.

Speaker 3: Mother, mother, mother, son, son, son.

Speaker 1: From the south. Fun, fun, fun, son, fun, son, fun. So if you meet somebody and you're pretty sure that their accent is from somewhere in England, but you wanna know whether it's from the north or from the south, you could ask them to say the following phrase. Did you cut your foot? From the north.

Speaker 5: Cut your foot, cut your foot, cut your foot.

Speaker 1: From the south. Cut your foot, cut your foot, cut your foot.

Speaker 5: Cut your foot.

Speaker 1: So of course there are many different northern English accents. Two famous ones are Geordie from Newcastle and Brummie from Birmingham. One way that you could potentially tell a Geordie accent from a Brummie accent would be to take the face vowel. A Brummie is gonna have a sound that's kind of similar to a London sound. It's a diphthong, it's a vowel sound that starts ah and ends up ee, moves from aye, it takes a journey. So if you hear something like this.

Speaker 4: Great cakes, great, great, great.

Speaker 1: You're dealing with a Brummie. If you hear something that's much more monophthongal, eh, something like this. Great cakes, great, great, great. Then you're dealing with a Geordie. A phrase could be David bakes great cakes. You can hear that here. David bakes great cakes.

Speaker 4: David bakes great cakes.

Speaker 1: Bakes great cakes. Bakes great cakes. Bakes great cakes. Next up, New York and Boston. Now this one's probably easier to hear and place if you're American, probably less so if you're not an American. The lot vowel is going to be very open, fronted, no lip rounding in a New York accent. Lot, hot, not, God. Here's a New York speaker.

Speaker 6: Not, not, not.

Speaker 1: It's gonna be a little bit lip rounded in a Boston accent. So more like lot, God. Here's a Boston speaker.

Speaker 6: Not, not, not. Not. Not. Not.

Speaker 1: So here's a phrase you could ask somebody to say. That's not a lot of pots. If they say it with an ah, that's not a lot of pots. They're probably from New York.

Speaker 7: That's not a lot of pots. That's not a lot of pots.

Speaker 1: If they say it with an ah, that's not a lot of pots. That's Boston.

Speaker 2: That's not a lot of pot. That's not a lot of pot. That's not a lot of pots. That's not a lot of pot. That's not a lot of pots. That's not a lot of pot.

Speaker 1: Next up, New York City and Philadelphia. So both New York City and Philadelphia raise the trap vowel in certain circumstances. So you'll get air instead of ah. They do it in different places. In a New York accent, you get trash and traffic. You also get sad and bad. Here's a New York speaker. Trash, trash, trash. Whereas in Philadelphia, those are not some of those trap words that are gonna get raised. We're gonna get other ones like man and hand. So you'll get something more open like my own ah, traffic, trash, sad, bad. Here's a Philadelphia speaker on similar words with a different sound.

Speaker 8: Traffic, traffic, traffic.

Speaker 1: So if you want a quick cocktail party test, you could have somebody say trash or traffic. Trash, trash.

Speaker 8: Traffic, traffic. Trash. Traffic. Trash.

Speaker 1: Traffic. That's it for accent party tricks. I'm Eric Singer.