The Center for Confident American English Communication

Over the weekend I was working on vowel sound articulation with one of my accent reduction coaching clients. We were working on the difference between the /iy/ sound in the words feet & leave and the /I/ sound as in the words fit & live. My client, a project manager at an international communications company,

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This week one of my accent reduction clients asked me to explain the difference between the vowel sounds in the words want & won’t. Here is my answer: The ‘a’ in want has an /ɑ/ sound. This is the same vowel sound in the word father. The ‘o’ in the won’t has an /ow/ sound.

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This week I am writing about why you have an accent when you speak English.  Yesterday I wrote about syllable stress and intonation. Today I will talk about the importance of lengthening certain vowel sounds. When you are speaking English you must lengthen the vowel sounds that occur in stressed syllables. You must also lengthen

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Two of the American English vowel sounds that non-native speakers frequently mispronounce are the /iy/ sound in the word sheep and the /I/ sound in the word ship. When non-native speakers (especially Spanish & Portuguese speakers) say the word cheap, it often sounds like chip. When they say the word seat, it sounds like sit.

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The Roman alphabet has five letters that represent vowels;  a, e, i, o, & u, but in spoken American English there are approximately 15 vowel sounds. Linguists and many pronunciation teachers use phonetic symbols to represent these 15 sounds. Dictionaries and pronunciation books do not all use the same phonetic symbols. However, each will have a symbol key

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Last week, I was working on vowel sound articulation with one of my accent reduction coaching students. We were working on the tense /iy/ sound in the words feet & leave and the lax /I/ sound in the words fit & live. My student, a project manager at an international communications company, said “but Susan,

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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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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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There are many English words spelled with the letter o in  which the o is pronounced like /ɑ/ as in the word father. To make the /ɑ/ sound relax your lips and your tongue. Your tongue should be low in your mouth when you articulate this sound. Here is a list of words in which the

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