My apologies to my regular readers because I haven’t posted any accent reduction tips in over a week! Sorry, I’ve been so busy teaching…and after working with many people on their accent in the past couple of weeks I want to emphasize something…. If you want to speak English more clearly one thing you absolutely
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Most non-native speakers of American English have problems articulating the two ‘th’ sounds that we use so frequently in spoken American English. Most of my clients including Spanish, Chinese and Indian language speakers pronounce the voiceless th as a /t/ sound and the voiced th as a /d/ sound. Since the ‘th’ sounds are used
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Spanish speakers frequently drop the consonant sounds at the ends of words. This can cause your speech to sound both accented and grammatically incorrect. If you are a Spanish speaker, here is one technique you can use to reduce your accent. Words in Spanish do not typically end in a consonant clusters but English words
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I meet many non-native English speakers who have excellent grammar. However, they do not articulate word final consonant sounds strongly enough and this contributes to their accent. One word final sound that many people fail to articulate is the past tense ed. Failing to pronounce the ed will definitely contribute to your accent! Most of
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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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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
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Linking happens in every English sentence. We connect two words together when the first word ends in a vowel sound and the next word begins with the same vowel sound. that table sounds like thattable next time sounds like nexttime We also connect words when the first word ends with a consonant sound and the
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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
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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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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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