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 sounds at the end of words will contribute to your accent. Here is what happens-
Non native English speakers frequently pronounce the word final /g/ as a /k/ so that the word dog sound like dock. Or they pronounce the word final /z/ as /s/ so that the word peas sounds like peace.
Learning to used voiced consonants at the end of words (and lengthening the vowel sounds that come before these) will help you avoid these types of mistakes and reduce your accent.
Tomorrow I will finish this series by talking about sound substitution.
Tags: Accent Reduction Techniques, American English Pronunciation, S & Z sounds, voiced & voiceless sounds, voiced consonant sounds
