British accent app sharpens your vowels..

1015thumb.jpgWell I hoped we’d moved on from the days where your accent could hold you back at work. Where people would pass you over for promotion because you said your “a” like “eh” and not like “ah”, but for those of you with offices still stuck in the Victorian era, there is an app to help you speak proper.

“Boost your British accent to boost your career!” boasts British Accent for iPhone

Perhaps more useful these days if you want to get in with all the technorati in Silicon Valley is “American accent made easy”. That I imagine is $4.99’s worth of encouraging you to say “gee” and speaking real slooow.

Anyway, back to the British one. It just teaches you RP by schooling you through the basic sounds of the British accent….

* 15 different Vowel Sounds
* 16 different Consonant Sounds
* General Vocabulary
* Fricatives
* Affricates
* Long Vowel Sounds
* Short Vowel Sounds

Certainly I’d be very impressed by anyone who knew what an “affricative” was. Probably impressed enough to give them a job.

And in the words of the app-makers themselves, let’s just remember why we want to get our affricatives right: to -“IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES WITH YOUR REFINED BRITISH ACCENT” [their capitals]

Anna Leach