PRACTICE GUIDES · ABOUT 5 MINUTES
British RP accent practice: a five-minute starter exercise
Record “park the car” and “dance class”. Then work on two sounds and listen for what changed. You only need your phone’s voice recorder.
RP stands for Received Pronunciation. It’s one named accent variety, not “the British accent”. This exercise introduces two targets from Accentuate’s RP lessons; the app adds guided lessons, recording and directional feedback.
Listen, say it, then compare. Use the players below as often as you like. These AI-generated references come from Accentuate’s RP lesson library. Record your own attempts with your phone’s voice recorder; this page doesn’t record you.
Start the exercise0:00–0:30 · KEEP A FIRST TAKE
Start with your everyday voice
Open your recorder and say these two phrases once. Leave a short pause between them.
Park the car.
Dance class.
Save that take. You’ll use it for comparison at the end, so there’s no need to make it sound like RP yet.
0:30–2:00 · NON-RHOTIC R
Let “car” end on the vowel
In the RP target, you don’t pronounce an R sound in park, or at the end of car before a pause. That’s what “non-rhotic” means in these examples. Keep the vowel audible without adding an R at the end.
car · bar · far
This reference could not load. You can continue with the written exercise.
This reference could not load. You can continue with the written exercise.
- Play “Car” above. Listen to the whole word, then repeat it. Play “Park the car” to hear the sound in a phrase.
- Say “car”, “bar” and “far”, with a pause after each. Try them again, letting each word finish on its vowel.
- Record “park the car”. Play the reference, then your take: can you hear an R in “park” or at the end of “car”? Try once more, keeping the words at a comfortable pace.
Don’t remove every R. RP keeps R before a vowel sound. At a word boundary, an R can link into a following vowel too. For now, keep the pause after “car” so you can focus on this one context.
2:00–3:30 · THE BATH VOWEL
Try the open vowel in “bath”
For this RP target, bath, glass and class use /ɑː/: the open “ah” vowel, as in RP “father”. It differs from the vowel in “cat”. Changing the vowel matters; simply stretching your usual vowel may not produce the target.
bath · glass · class
This reference could not load. You can continue with the written exercise.
This reference could not load. You can continue with the written exercise.
- Play “Bath” above. Notice the vowel between the first and last consonants, then repeat the word. Play “Dance class” and listen for that vowel in both words.
- Say the three words slowly, using that open vowel. Keep your jaw comfortable; there’s no need to force it wide.
- Record “dance class”, using the same vowel in both words. Play the reference, then your take: did you change both vowels, or only the one in “class”?
This is a target for these words in RP, not a rule for every written A or for every British speaker.
3:30–5:00 · LISTEN BACK
Compare one thing at a time
Record both opening phrases again at an easy conversational pace. Play your first take, then your latest one. Listen once for R in “park the car”, then again for the two vowels in “dance class”.
Write down one thing you heard: “I still hear an R in park”, or “I changed class but not dance”. Repeat that phrase once. If your first take already matched the target, practise keeping it steady instead of exaggerating it.
Two sound patterns are a starting point. In longer speech, listen for stress, pauses, rhythm and pitch movement as well.
CONTINUE WITH A REFERENCE VOICE
Hear it, record it, compare it
In Accentuate, choose British RP and start the guided lessons. Hear reference audio, record your attempt and use the feedback to choose what to revisit. Shadow mode lets you listen and compare without a score.
Feedback is directional. A score isn’t a precise diagnosis of a particular sound, or proof that your whole performance sounds convincingly RP.