British English??

[laurade]

I'm an American and I teach English at a language school here in Germany

Comments

[gyre]

The English people in my office say they're crazy. I'll have to ask a friend from Cambridge later.

[laurade]

Please do.. I looked like an idiot this morning! :O)

[enismirdal]

I'm a UK student in Cambridge at the moment. Not that it makes a lot of difference; Cambridge has a truly international student population, so the accents I hear ever day go from Scottish and Irish to Swedish, Chinese and Finnish! The Cambridge local accent is not especially distinctive, in my experience; certainly no unique quirks that have drawn my attention.

I think if you go to very traditional British RP (received pronunciation), the 'r' in 'beard' actually becomes more of an aspirant 'h' ('be-ahd'); you wouldn't hear it properly pronounced except in the West Country and parts of Scotland. The 't' in 'postman', I agree, is definitely there, albeit not usuallu overpronounced, and certainly the Queen seems to pronounce 't's in those sorts of places in words! It depends how fast you're speaking, I guess.

[girlofthemirror]

Sweet, when have you EVER heard a cambrisge accent. We talk to students... as you said they come from everywhere!

[zeni]

I'm English and currently live in Switzerland, postman and beard have no silent letters as far as I'm concerned.

Beard with a silent R is bead, the book makes no sense.

[kittana]

Maybe their thinking with beard and postman is if you say them rather quickly you cannot really hear that there is a r or t when you make them so the letters kind of run together. Otherwise I would say the book is wrong.

[evilshell]

Someone was smoking crack when they thought of those examples!

[fi]

I'm sitting here saying "postman" to myself and realising that what I'm actually saying is "poce-man" so maybe they've got a point!

Although one definitely hears the "r" in beard when I say it, being Irish. :-)