Welcome back! Have you checked out my Accent Reduction classes yet? Here is some excellent information from Ann Cook about how to improve your American English pronunciation using linking or liaisons. If you use liaisons like native speakers do your speech will sound smoother and less choppy to American listeners.
Liaisons in American English
Here is a [...]
Posts under ‘Spanish & Portuguese Speakers’
American English Pronunciation: Linking and Liasons
Syllable Stress Patterns: Compound Words
Those of you who read my blog frequently know that using syllable stress correctly is one of the very best ways to improve your comprehensibility when you speak English. That said, here are a few syllable stress patterns for compound words that you may find useful.
Compound nouns are stressed on the first word in the [...]
Syllable & Sentence Stress in American English
One of the most notable features of spoken English is its rhythm. Native English speakers alternate between using stressed and unstressed syllables in words and sentences. They do not pronounce all words and syllables with the same emphasis.
One way that non-native English speakers can improve their accent is to learn to use the rhythms of [...]
American English:The Sounds of ed
Several of the students that I am coaching have trouble hearing the ed that comes at the end of past tense verbs. One reason why they are having this problems is that ed does not always sound like /ed/. Sometimes ed sounds like /d/ and sometimes it sounds like /t/.
The other reason the word final [...]
Accent Reduction Tips for Spanish Speakers
Image via Wikipedia
One of the most problematic American English vowel sounds for Spanish speakers is the /iy/ sound as in the words cheap, meet & piece.
Spanish speakers often pronounce this sound as /ɪ/ so that:
cheap sounds like chip
meet sounds like mit
piece sounds like piss
To articulate the /iy/ sound you should pull your lips back into [...]
American English Pronunciation for Portuguese Speakers
Here is an accent reduction tip for Portuguese speakers who want to improve their spoken American English.
Be careful when you pronounce the letter P. Portuguese speakers often pronounce the American English /p/ sound like a /b/ sound. This can be confusing to American listeners because when you do that:
pill sounds like bill
pull sounds like bull
poor sounds like boor [...]
American English Pronunciation:The Voiced & Voiceless Th Sounds
In spoken American English the letter combination TH makes two different sounds. One of these sounds is voiced and the other is voiceless.
The IPA symbol for the voiced th sound looks like this /ð/.
The IPA symbol for the voiceless th sound looks like this /θ/.
While both of these sounds cause problems for non native speakers [...]
The Most Common English Sounds
Linguistic research indicates that the most common sound in spoken English is the schwa vowel sound. This is because native English speakers pronounce the vowels in most reduced syllables with the schwa sound. The phonetic symbol for schwa is /ə/.
Here is an example. When I say my name, Susan, the first syllable is stressed so the [...]
American English Pronunciation: The /iy/ and /I/ Sounds
One American English vowel sounds that non-native speakers frequently mispronounce is the /iy/ sound and in the word sheep. They frequently shorten this sound so that it sounds more like the /I/ sound as in the word ship.
This means that when non-native speakers (especially Spanish & Portuguese speakers) say the word cheap, it sounds like [...]
American English Syllable Stress Patterns & Schwa
One of the most effective ways to improve your American English pronunciation is to use syllable stress correctly. The problem is that many students of spoken English don’t know the syllable stress patterns. Here is a general rule that will help you-
Most two syllable nouns are stressed on the first syllable. Other two syllable words [...]
