Trap & Bath [æ] Vowel Changes for Various ESL Accents

The [æ] vowel sound, as in trap doesn't exist for many ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers, so they will tend to shift to a more familiar vowel sound when speaking English. When actors are learning a foreign language accent, they need to consider this - plus in can be influenced by which kind of English they learned, such as American English or British English. Here's the lowdown:

Maybe that explains the big, fat mouth I'm showing in the thumbnail of this video. My mother would be so proud...

Here's a transcript of the video:

Hey there, Jim Johnson for AccentHelp.com, and I want to talk about the ash sound as in TRAP or BATH and the shift that will tend to happen for almost all english-as-a-second-language accents.

Alright, so if we look at this vowel quadrilateral. So this is the layout of the vowels, and where they are in the mouth. This is the front, the back, the top, the bottom of the mouth, so in theory, this is where those sounds happen.

And I'm talking about the ash which is this lower front vowel very commonly written sort of as that. If I want to get more technical, it's actually this a, and then this lowercase e right attached to it. But it's a heck of a lot faster to just write it that way. So I'm meaning that symbol precisely down here.

Alright, so this ash sound as in TRAP and BATH, this doesn't exist in most languages, so it's oftentimes very challenging for an ESL speaker - English as a second language speaker - to figure out the sound. TRAP BATH. So in their attempt to do it, they oftentimes do something else.

What they do oftentimes have access to is this vowel just above it, which is the epsilon. So a lot of people instead of saying TRAP in their accent, they may say TREP, BETH, yeah? So CAT becomes CET CET. Almost a KET keh, epsilon, dress. That sound. That may be one of the shifts that happens.

Another shift that may happen is that they may move to more of an ah sound, and that might, may either be a very forward ah or a little bit further back in the mouth. So it might move to that more forward one, which is this sort of, it looks like a typed a, something a typewriter or a computer, the way that it might be in some fonts. Or it may look like what's commonly called a script a where you're writing this a, and that's the ah sound like FATHER.

I like to think of this one as being very similar, the ah sound like FATHER, but it's a little bit further forward in the mouth. It's, commonly I like to think of it as the Boston "Park your car in Harvard Yard." A much more forward sound.

So oftentimes a word like TRAP may either go towards this epsilon "trep" or they may go to "trop" or "trap" "Park your car" TRAP. "This trap" "this trep" "this trop" trop trap trep. But the challenge is to try to say TRAP, which again doesn't occur in so many languages, so they're looking for something else to go to.

We've also got another complexity in that depending on what kind of English they're learning, which through much of the world is going to tend to be British English, they may have learned through RP, Standard British, they may have learned a distinction between the ayh sound in the word TRAP and the ayh sound for Americans, but in British being more the ayh or the ah as in BATH. "Bath asked answer grass."

Whereas Americans would say "bath ask answer grass." So an ESL speaker may make a distinction and say CAT and TRAP as "ket trep." But then when you got to BATH and ASK, it becoming "bath ask" or "bath ask."

Some of that, whether, which a it is may depend on the placement is it more at the back or is a little bit further forward in that accent. So because of the challenge of that sound, most ESL speakers will shift the vowel to one of these guys. Most ESL accents. There you go.

For more info on accents, check out AccentHelp.com.