紳士貴族: 如何練得一口英式口音

To sound like a Brit, you’ll need a “flexible tongue tip,” and for that you must exercise, says Barbara Berkery, a dialect and voice coach currently tutoring Geoffrey Rush on the Queensland set of the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” film.

口音和發音教練芭芭拉·伯克裏(Barbara Berkery)說，想說一口英音，得有個“靈活的舌尖”，只有通過練習才能實現。目前，她在《加勒比海盜》(Pirates of the Caribbean)第五部的昆士蘭片場指導傑弗裏·拉什(Geoffrey Rush)。

Americans have particularly lazy tongue tips. When Berkery is training an actor in a British accent, she starts with a tongue boot camp of silent flicks and twists. There is a physicality to speech we prattling adults often overlook.

美國人的舌尖特別懶。伯克裏訓練演員說英音時，先集中訓練他們的舌頭無聲地快速移動和扭動。我們喋喋不休的成年人經常忽視說話方式中的身體性層面。

“Babies learn to speak by watching us making shapes at them from their crib,” says Berkery, who advises her clients to similarly study mouths while watching videos of politicians, like David Cameron, who have perfected the British accent that linguists call “Received Pronunciation.”

“嬰兒學說話是從躺在襁褓裏看大人的口型開始的，”伯克裏說。她建議客戶用類似的方法學習口型，比如觀看政客的講話視頻，比如戴維·卡梅倫(David Cameron)的英音就達到了語言學家們所說的“標準發音”。

BBC programs are also good primers. Americans speak with wide, almost grinlike mouths. British speech requires a dropped jaw and vertically open lips. (Imagine you are blowing kisses and then say the word “swan.”) Clearly enunciate consonants. Don’t, for example, say T’s as D’s (it is “butter,” not “budder”). “That’s a very American thing,” Berkery says. You should hear the full T at the end of “cat.”

BBC的節目也是很好的範本。美國人講話時嘴咧得很開。講英音則需要把下巴往下拉，嘴脣豎着張開（想像着你在飛吻，然後念出“swan”這個單詞）。輔音要發得很清楚。比如，不要把“T”發成“D”（不要把“butter”念成“budder”）。“那是典型的美式發音，”伯克裏說。說“cat”的時候，末尾的的“T”要念得很完整。

Practice British consonants and vowels with repetitive ditties, like “Ten tiny typists tripped through the tunnel”; after that, graduate to reading whole chapters of British novels aloud. Don’t run words together as Americans do. Instead, each word needs what Berkery calls an “infinitesimal space” around it, which will make you speak more slowly.

接下來，用繞口令練習英語輔音和元音，比如“Ten tiny typists tripped through the tunnel”；之後大聲朗讀整章英文小說。不要像美國人那樣把單詞連在一起念。而要像伯克裏說的那樣，在每個單詞前後留出“無限短的停頓”，這樣你說話會慢一點。

At a certain point, go undercover. Berkery trained Renée Zellweger to sound British for her role in the movie “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” Before filming started, Zellweger used an alias to get a temp job at a London publishing house where everyone assumed she was British. Order at a restaurant or ask to try on clothes in a department store in your new patois. “Use the accent with strangers, otherwise you’ll never get it,” Berkery says. Practice until nothing can jar you out of it, not even a sex scene or a close call with an oncoming taxi.

到了某個階段，就可以像臥底一樣實戰演習了。蕾妮·齊薇格(Renée Zellweger)拍《BJ單身日記》(Bridget Jones’s Diary)的時候，伯克裏也幫她練過英音。拍攝開始前，齊薇格用化名在倫敦一家出版社做臨時工，那裏的人都以爲她是英國人。用你的新口音在餐館點餐，或者在商場要求試衣。“用這種口音跟陌生人說話，否則你永遠也無法掌握它，”伯克裏說。不斷練習，直到口音在任何情況下都不會改變，就算做愛或者匆忙叫住迎面而來的出租車時也一樣。

Get good enough, and eventually you will be able to slip effortlessly into the accent. “It should be second nature to you,” Berkery says.

好好練習吧，最後你一定能輕鬆轉換成那種口音的。“它應該變成你的第二本能，”伯克裏說。