The Center for Confident American English Communication

The American English r is a very difficult sound for many non-native speakers to articulate correctly! The American English r sounds like /ɚ/. The sound is made by bunching the middle of the tongue high in the back of the mouth and rounding the lips. The tip of the tongue curls up a bit, but

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Several of the students that I work with in my accent reduction coaching program 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

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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

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Many Chinese speakers have problems pronouncing the /r/ sound in American English. Some of my Chinese students don’t say the /r/ sound at the end of words at all and that really contributes to their accent! Sometimes they say the /r/ sound too softly when it comes before another consonant as in the words; forward, learn

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In American English the /l/ is referred to as a “liquid” sound. That’s because when you articulate this sound the tip of your tongue touches the ridge behind your upper teeth and the air flows through the sides of your tongue. When /l/ comes after certain vowel sounds American English speakers will insert a schwa

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As a lingua franca English has always taken on characteristics of other languages. Maybe you’ve heard of Spanglish and Singlish but have you heard of Chinglish? I just read an interesting article in Wired magazine that discusses whether spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese in the near future. If you enjoy reading about the

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