Last week I had many visitors here on the blog from Singapore. Thanks for visiting, I’m happy that you’ve found my site!
Keeping in mind that Singaporeans come from many language backgrounds, here are a few problems that Singaporean English speakers often have when they speak American English.
Syllable Structure and Stress
American English pronunciation patterns are based on syllable stress patterns. You must know and use these stress patterns if you want to sound more “American”.
American English speakers also delete syllables in many multi-syllabic words. Singaporean English speakers tend to pronounce all the syllables in a word and that sounds strange to Americans.
Vowel Lengthening
In spoken American English we lengthen the sounds of vowels in stressed syllables. We also lengthen the sounds of vowels that occur before voiced consonants. Many Singaporean English speakers do not lengthen their vowel sounds enough and this makes their speech sound choppy to American listeners.
These are just a couple of examples that I’ve heard when I’ve done accent coaching with professionals living in Singapore.
Tags: Accent Reduction Coaching, american accent, American English Pronunciation, singaporeans, Syllable stress, voiced & voiceless sounds
