The Center for Confident American English Communication

When I ask my accent reduction clients why they speak English so quickly, many of them say, “I always think that if I speak quickly, no one will notice my accent”. Oh, oh! That’s not true at all. If you speak English too quickly it’s probably contributing to your accent. Native speakers do say some

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In American English we typically stress compound nouns on the first syllable. HOMEwork WEEKend AIRport PASSport PRINTout (noun) This is an easy rule to follow. Most of my accent reduction students are able to pronounce compound nouns correctly they learn the rule and get a bit of practice. One thing that they don’t always do

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During the past year I’ve had the pleasure of working with two Brazilian Portuguese speakers in my accent reduction coaching program. Here are three of their most common English pronunciation problems: Dropping the sounds at the end of words. Lack of length and pitch in stressed vowel sounds. Little or no differentiation between the /ae/

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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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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

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I know that many readers of my blog are Brazilians who want to improve their American English pronunciation. I am pleased that so many of you visit here! Here are two common problems encountered by Brazilian Portuguese speakers who are trying to improve their pronunciation of American English. 1. The schwa sound /ə/ Brazilian Portuguese

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