The Center for Confident American English Communication

Continuing on my theme of American English vowels I’m going to write briefly on the pronunciation of the vowel combination ou. This vowel combination can be pronounced 3 ways in American English. Here are some examples. ou can be pronounced like /oʊ/ shoulder soul though doughnut although ou can be pronounced like schwa /ə/ cousin

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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

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Several of my students tell me that they have trouble understanding the spoken English of native speakers. This is not at all unusual. One reason that native English speakers are difficult to understand is because they often use reduced speech. When native speakers use reduced speech the words seem to run together and this can

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Haitian Creole speakers and French speakers have some of the same problems with spoken English. One of these is the tendency to delete the /h/ sound at the beginning of words. Word initial /h/ is almost always pronounced in American English. That means that the /h/ must be articulated clearly in words such as: hat,

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If you are an advanced student of American English pronunciation you have probably learned about linking (or liaisons). Linking refers to the connections between words. Ann Cook, author of American Accent Training, says that these connections “allow us to speak in sound groups” instead of word by word. Spoken English has linking between words and

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One fun and effective way to learn the rhythm of spoken English is to sing songs. In my pronunciation classes last year I used this website called KaraokeParty to teach American English songs to the students and they found that this was very helpful way to practice phrasing, linking and vowel lengthening. To find the

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When I was teaching one of my pronunciation classes this week I found out that my students did not know about the two different intonation patterns for questions in American English. Here they are: 1. Use rising intonation when the question can be answered with a “yes” or a “no”. 2. Use falling intonation when

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Chinese speakers from some dialects tend to confuse word medial and word final /l/ & /n/ sounds when they are speaking English. This causes communication problems and contributes to your accent. The /n/ & /l/ sounds are articulated in almost the same manner as the tongue touches behind the tooth ridge. The tongue is a

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This week several of my students asked me if reduced speech was only appropriate in informal situations. I don’t believe that it is. Whenever people speak, they have a tendency to save energy by connecting sounds together. This connected or reduced speech is not necessarily sloppy or informal, it’s the way most Americans speak English

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The letter X has two pronunciations in American English. Here is the first one. When X is followed by a stressed vowel it is pronounced like /gz/. Here are a few examples: 1. exAct→egzact 2. exActly→egzactly 3. exAmple→egzample 4. exAm→egzam 5. exAmine→egzamine When an X is followed by a consonant sound it is pronounced like

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