The Center for Confident American English Communication

I receive lots of questions from people about the IPA symbols used for American English vowel and consonant sounds. Here is some basic information. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system that was developed to represent the sounds of spoken languages. The system uses characters from the Latin and Greek alphabets. IPA symbols include

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Each week I receive lots of questions from people asking about the best online dictionary for American English pronunciation. I usually use Merriam Webster, but I don’t love it.☹ The dictionary’s audio voice articulates the sounds at the ends of words too strongly. There are also LOTS of advertisements….but it’s free so we can’t complain.

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If you are a Chinese speaker who is working to improve your American English pronunciation, you may have found that you’re having trouble with your /l/ & /n/ sounds. Don’t worry!! This is a very common problem & you can fix it. ✔ The /n/ & /l/ sounds are articulated in almost the same manner.

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All of the people who I work with in my accent reduction coaching program are: well educated professional career oriented successful ✪ Still, many of them speak English with an “accent” that American listeners find difficult to understand.✪ They are working with me in order to understand WHY American listeners don’t always understand them and

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One excellent tool that I use with all of my accent reduction clients is the  American English pronunciation software developed at the University of Iowa. The Phonetics Software shows you how to pronounce all of the American English vowel and consonant sounds using audio and video samples. The animated diagrams show you how to move

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This morning one of my accent reduction coaching clients asked me: What’s the difference between the words lose & loose? Here is my step by step answer: Phonetically, the verb lose sounds like luwze. The vowel sound is /uw/ as in Blue. The S has a /z/ sound. Phonetically, the adjective loose sounds like luwse.

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OK, this post is for all you Russian, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese speakers…let’s take a minute to talk about those American O sounds. My accent reduction clients who speak Russian, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese often ask me to work with them on the sounds of O. They find the letter O rather confusing…and I totally

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Are you an Arabic,  Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese or Spanish speaker who is working to improve your American accent? If you are….it’s really important that you learn to use  voiced consonant sounds! Let me explain what I mean….. A voiced sound causes your vocal chords to vibrate. A voiceless sound does not cause your vocal chords to vibrate. TRY THIS

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Sometimes my accent reduction clients ask me how actors learn to speak with an American accent. In order to answer that question, let’s listen to a professional actor.☝ Here’s what the actor Matthew Rhys says about mastering an American accent: “you can nail the sound, but sometimes I think you can tell a British actor when

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Most of the people who I work with in my Skype accent reduction coaching program are learning to: Improve the way they communicate in their workplace Improve the way they speak in everyday situations (at the market, at lunch, on the phone) We often call the latter skill, “small talk”. For those of you who

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