When you are speaking American English it is really important to recognize the difference between voiced sounds and voiceless sounds! A voiced sound causes your vocal chords to vibrate. A voiceless sound does not cause your vocal chords to vibrate. American English has 8 voiced/voiceless consonant pairs such as /z/ & /s/ and /v/ & /f/. Here are a couple of examples:
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One of the most frequent questions that I get is how to tell the difference between voiced and voiceless consonants. Here are rules. American spoken English has 24 consonant sounds. Fifteen of these sounds are voiced and nine are voiceless. Voiced sounds create a vibration in your vocal chords when you say them. Voiceless sounds
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This is Part 3 of a series of posts that describe why you have an accent when you speak American English. In the past two posts I wrote about syllable stress and the duration of vowel sounds. Today I will write about voiced and voiceless consonant sounds. Using voiceless consonant sounds instead of voiced consonant
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Thanks to all the nice people from India who read my blog. I am very happy that you found this website and I hope you find it helpful. I recently came across a website that featured 10 Tips on English Pronunciation & Accent Improvement (for Indians). I think that the following tips on the website
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Do you ever feel like the English spelling system does not match the sounds of spoken American English? It seems that way doesn’t it? English spelling is the way that words are written using the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. Since English is not a phonetic language there is not always a one-on-one relationship
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Last week I had many visitors here on the blog from Singapore. Thanks for visiting, I’m happy that you’ve found my site! Keeping in mind that Singaporeans come from many language backgrounds, here are a few problems that Singaporean English speakers often have when they speak American English. Syllable Structure and Stress American English pronunciation
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In spoken American English there are many pairs of consonant sounds that are articulated using the same tongue and mouth shape. The difference between these pairs of sounds is that one sound is voiced and the other is voiceless. Voiced sounds cause the vocal chords to vibrate. Voiceless sounds are softer and do not cause
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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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The voiced th sound is one of the most problematic sounds for non-native English speakers to pronounce. To make the sound place your tongue slightly between your teeth. Vibrate your vocal chords as you push the air through your throat. While there are not that many words that have the voiced th sound, the words
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