American Accent Training A guide to speaking and pronouncing American English for everyone who speaks English as a second language Second Edition . Ann Cook Take the "pure-sound" approach to speaking Listen to the rhythms of spoken language Imitate the fluid ways of American speech Americans will understand you better- and you'll understand them better too! "I took pronunciation classes for two years at Princeton, and in my opinion, American Accent Training is far superior." -Dr. Z. Kabala, Hydrologist BARRON'S
Table of Contents Introduction: Read This First A Few Words On Pronunciation Preliminary Diagnostic Analysis Chapter 1 American Intonation Staircase Intonation Syllable Stress Complex Intonation Two-Word Phrases Grammar in a nutshell The Miracle Technique Reduced Sounds Word Groups and Phrasing ... Chapter 2 Word Connections 59 Chapter 3 Cat? Caught? Cut? Chapter 4 The American T Chapter 5 The El 85 Voice Quality Chapter 6 The American R.... 95 Chapters 1-6 Review and Expansion 101 Two, Three- and Four-Word Phrases Chapter 7 Tee Aitch 118 Chapter 8 More Reduced Sounds.. 121 Middle i list.… 125 Intonation and Attitude 128 Chapter 9"V"as in victory. 129 Chapter 10 S or Z? 131 Chapter 11 Tense and Lax Vowels 135 Grammar in a Bigger Nutshell Chapter 12 Nasal Consonants 145 Chapter 13 Thro Final Diagnostic Analysis +:+ 150 Chapters 1-13 Review and Expansion .......151 Nationality Guides… 172 Indian German… 189 r Key 193 Index… 197
American Accent Training Read This First CD 1 Track 1 Welcome to American Accent Training. This book and Cd set is designed to get you started on your American accent. We'll follow the book and go through the 13 lessons and all the exercises step by step. Everything is explained and a complete Answer Key may be found in the back of the text What Is Accent? Accent is a combination of three main components: intonation(speech music), liaisons (word connections), and pronunciation(the spoken sounds of vowels, consonants, and com binations). As you go along, you'll notice that you're being asked to look at accent in a different way. You'll also realize that the grammar you studied before and this accent you're studying now are completely different Part of the difference is that grammar and vocabulary are systematic and structured- the letter of the language. Accent, on the other hand, is free form, intuitive and creative- more the spirit of the language. So, thinking of music, feeling, and flow, let your mouth relax into the American accent Can I Learn a New Accent? Can a person actually learn a new accent? Many people feel that after a certain age, it's just not possible. Can classical musicians play jazz? If they practice, of course they can! For your American accent, it,'s just a matter of learning and practicing techniques this book and CD set will teach you. It is up to you to use them or not. How well you do depends mainly on how open and willing you are to sounding different from the way you have sounded all your life A very important thing you need to remember is that you can use your accent to say what you mean and how you mean it. Word stress conveys meaning through tone or feeling which can be much more important than the actual words that you use. We'll cover the ion of these feelings through int You may have noticed that I talk fast and often run my words together. You ve prob- ably heard enough "English-teacher English” where∴. everything…is…. pronounced without having to listen too carefully. That's why on the CDs we're going to talk just like the native speakers that we are, in a normal conversational tone Native speakers may often tell people who are learning English to"slow down"and to speak clearly. This is meant with the best of intentions, but it is exactly the opposite of what a student really needs to do. If you speak fairly quickly and with strong intonation, you will be understood more easily. To illustrate this point, you will hear a Vietnamese student first trying to speak slowly and carefully and then repeating the same words quickly and ith strong intonation. Studying, this exercise took her only about two minutes to practice but the difference makes her sound as if she had been in america for many years Please listen. You will hear the same words twice Hello, my name is Muoi. Im taking American Accent Training
Introduction You may have to listen to this Cd a couple of times to catch everything. To help you, every word on the Cd is also written in the book. By seeing and hearing simultaneously, you' ll learn to reconcile the differences between the appearance of English( spelling) and the sound of English(pronunciation and the other aspects of accent) The CD leaves a rather short pause for you to repeat into The point of this is to get you responding quickly and without spending too much time thinking about your response Accent versus Pronunciation Many people equate accent with pronunciation. I don' t feel this to be true at all. America is a big country, and while the pronunciation varies from the east Coast to the West Coast, from the southern to the northern states, two components that are uniquely American stay basically the same-the speech music, or intonation, and the word connections or liaisons Throughout this program, we will focus on them. In the latter part of the book we will work on pronunciation concepts, such as Cat? Caught? Cut? and Betty Bought a Bit of Better Butter; we also will work our way through some of the difficult sounds, such as TH, the American R, the L, v, and z. Which Accent is correct?5 American Accent Training was created to help people"sound American"for lectures, inter- views, teaching, business situations, and general daily communication. Although America has many regional pronunciation differences, the accent you will learn is that of standard American English as spoken and understood by the majority of educated native speakers the United States. Dont worry that you will sound slangy or too casual because you most definitely won't. This is the way a professor lectures to a class, the way a national news- caster broadcasts, the way that is most comfortable and familiar to the majority of native " Why Is My Accent So Bad? be seriously hampered by a neg tant point early. First, your accent is not bad; it is nonstandard to the American ear. There is a joke that goes: What do you call a person who can speak three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who can speak two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a rson who can only speak one language? American. Every language is equally valid or good, so every accent is good. The average Ameri can, however, truly does have a hard time understanding a nonstandard accent. George Bernard Shaw said that the English and Americans are two people divided by the same Some students learn to overpronounce English because they naturally want to say th word as it is written. Too often an English teacher may allow this, perhaps thinking that colloquial American English is unsophisticated, unrefined, or even incorrect. Not so at all! Just as you dont say the T in listen, the Tt in better is pronounced D, bedder. Any other pronunciation will sound foreign, strange, wrong, or different to a native speaker
American Accent Training Less Than It Appears . More Than It Appears As you will see in Exercise 1-21, Squeezed-Out Syllables, on page 18, some words appear to have three or more syllables, but all of them are not actually spoken. For example.busi- ness is not(bi/zi/ ness), but rather(biz/ness) Just when you get used to eliminating whole syllables from words, you' re going to come across other words that look as if they have only one syllable, but really need to be said with as many as three! In addition, the inserted syllables are filled with letters that are not in the written word I'll give you two examples of this strange phenomenon. Pool looks like a nice, one-syllable word, but if you say it this way, at best, it will sound like pull,and at worst will be unintelligible to your listener. For clear comprehension, you need to say three syllables(pu/wuh/luh). Where did that W come from? It's certainly not written down anywhere, but it is there just as definitely as the P is there. The second example is a word like feel. If you say just the letters that you see, it will sound more like fill. You need to say (ee/yuh/luh). Is that really a Y? Yes. These mysterious semivowels are explained under Liaisons in Chapter 2. They can appear either inside a word as you have seen, or between words as you will learn Language Is Fluent and Fluid Just like your own language, conversational English has a very smooth, fluid sound. Imag- ine that you are walking along a dry riverbed with your eyes closed. Every time you come to a rock, you trip over it, stop, continue, and trip over the next rock. This is how the average foreigner speaks English. It is slow, awkward, and even painful Now imagine that you are a great river rushing through that same riverbed--rocks are no problem, are they? You just slide over and around them without ever breaking your smooth flow. It is this feeling that I want you to capture in English Changing your old speech habits is very similar to changing from a stick shift to an automatic transmission. Yes, you continue to reach for the gearshift for a while and your foot still tries to find the clutch pedal, but this soon phases itself out. In the same way, you may still say" telephone call"(kohl)instead of (kahl) for a while but this too will soon pass You will also have to think about your speech more than you do now. In the same way that you were very aware and self-conscious when you first learned to drive, you will even tually relax and deal with the various components simultaneously A new accent is an adventure. Be bold! Exaggerate wildly! You may worry that Ameri cans will laugh at you for putting on an accent, but I guarantee you, they wont even notice They'lI just think that you've finally learned to"talk right. "Good luck with your new accent
Introducti A Few Words On Pronunciation CD 1 Track 2 rd like to introduce you to the pronunciation guide outlines in the following chart. There aren' t too many characters that are different from the standard alphabet, but just so you' ll be familiar with them, look at the chart. It shows eight tense vowels and six lax vowels and semivowels Tense Vowels? Lax Vowels? In some books, tense vowels are called long and lax vowels are called short. Since you will be learning how to lengthen vowels when they come before a voiced consonant, it would be confusing to say that hen has a long, short vowel. It is more descriptive to say that it has a lax vowel that is doubled or lengthened Tense Vowels Lax Vowels Symbol Sound Spelling Example ymbol Sound Spelling Example [tak] eat ih uh Thop] some [smut caught kat Semivowels a+e ae+o down [deon dull [dal] Although this may look like a lot of characters to learn, there are really only four new ones ae, a, a, and u. Under Tense Vowels, you'll notice that the vowels that say their own name iply have a line over them: [a],[el, [i], [o], [u]. There are three other tense vowels. First lal, is pronounced like the sound you make when the doctor wants to see your throat, or when you loosen a tight belt and sit down in a soft chair--aaaaaaaah! Next, you'll find [ae], a combination of the tense vowel [a] and the lax vowel [e It is similar to the noise that a goat or a lamb makes. The last one is [aeol, a combination of [a] and [o]. This is a ver common sound, usually written as ow or ou in words like down or round a tense vowel requires you to use a lot of facial muscles to produce it. If you say [e] you must stretch your lips back; for [u] you must round your lips forward; for [a] you drop your jaw down; for [a] you will drop your jaw far down and back; for [a] bring your lips back and drop your jaw a bit; for di] drop your jaw for the ah part of the sound and pull back up for the ee part; and for [o] round the lips, drop the jaw and pull back up into [u].An American [o] is really [ou V Now you try it. Repeat after me. [el,[u],[a], [ae],[a], i], [o]
American Accent trainin A lar vowel, on the other hand, is very reduced. In fact, you don' t need to move your face at all. You only need to move the back of your tongue and your throat These sounds are very different from most other languages Under Lax Vowels, there are four reduced vowel sounds, starting with the greek letter epsilon [el, pronounced eh; [i] pronounced ih, and [u] pronounced u, which is a combina tion of ih and uh, and the schwa, [el, pronounced uh--the softest, most reduced, most relaxed sound that we can produce. It is also the most common sound in English. The semivowels are the American R(pronounced er, which is the schwa plus R)and the ameri can L(which is the schwa plus L). Vowels will be covered in greater detail in Chapters 3, 8, nd 11 Voiced Consonants? Unvoiced Consonants? A consonant is a sound that causes two points of your mouth to come into contact, in three locations-the lips, the tip of the tongue, and the throat. a consonant can either be unvoiced (whispered)or voiced(spoken), and it can appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a ord. You'l notice that for some categories, a particular sound doesnt exist in English Initial Medial Unvoiced Voiced Unvoiced Voiced Unvoiced voiced bu ble avoid 200 aces raises pressure Pleasure crush garage gouger either smooth gumn xit player wool collect swImme connect finger nng
Pronunciation points 1. In many dictionaries, you may find a character that looks like an upside down V, [A] d another character that is an upside-down e [], the schwa. There is a linguistic distinction between the two, but they are pronounced exactly the same. Since you down e to indicate the schwa sound. It is pronounced just be using the upside- can't hear the difference between these two sounds. we'll 2. The second point is that we do not differentiate between [a] and [o]. The [a]is pro nounced ah. The backwards C lo] is more or less pronounced aw. This aw sound has a back East"sound to it, and as it's not common to the entire United States it won't be included here 3. R can be considered a semivowel. One characteristic of a vowel is that nothing in the mouth touches anything else. r definitely falls into that category. So in the exercises throughout the book it will be treated not so much as a consonant but as a vowel 4. The ow sound is usually indicated by [au], which would be ah + ooh. This may have been accurate at some point in some locations, but the sound is now generally [aeo] Town is [teon], how is [haol, loud is [laeod ], and so on 5. Besides voiced and unvoiced, there are two words that come up in pronunciation These are sibilant and plosive. When you say the [s] sound, you can feel the air sliding out over the tip of your tongue-this is a sibilant. When you say the [p] sound, you can feel the air popping out from between your lips-this is a plosive. Be aware that there are two sounds that are sometimes mistakenly taught as sibilants, but are actually plosives: [th] and [v] 6. For particular points of pronunciation that pertain to your own language, refer to the Nationality Guides on page 172 Throughout this text, we will be using three symbols to indicate three separate actions Indicates a command or a suggestion 1 Indicates the beep tone x Indicates that you need to turn the Cd on or off, back up, or pause
American Accent Training Telephone Tutoring Preliminary Diagnostic Analysis CD 1 Track 3 This is a speech analysis to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your American accent. If you are studying American Accent Training on your own, please contact toll-free(800) 457-4255orwww.americanaccent.comforareferraltoaqualifiedtelephoneanalystThe diagnostic analysis is designed to evaluate your current speech patterns to let you know where your accent is standard and nonstandard Hello, my name is Im taking American Accent Training. Theres a lot to learn, but I hope to make it as enjoyable as possible. I should pick up on the American intona tion pattem pretty easily, although the only way to get it is to practice all of the time 1. all, long, caught 5. ice, I'll, sky 9. come, front, indicate 13 out, house, round 2. cat, matter, laugh 6. it, milk, sin 10. smooth, too, shoe 14. boy, oil, toy 3. take, say, fail 7. eat, me, seen 11. took, full, would 4. get, egg, any 8. work, girl, bird 12 told, so, roll D I. bit 1. staple 1. stable 1. cab 2. veer 2. refers 2. reverse 2. have 3.z00 ces 3. ph ases 3.race 3. raise 4. sheer 4. din 4. 5. medal 6. chin 6. catcher 6. cadger 6. rich 7. thin 7. gut 7. ether 7. eithe 7. bath 8. 8. bicker bigge 8. tack 9. yellow 9. breed 9. million 9. correction 9. sore 10. would 10. man 10. coward 10. how ll. him 11. name 11. reheat 11. summer 11. soul 12. lace 12. collection 12. runner 12 people 12can 13. bleed 13. 13. kingdom 13. sing 1. Go upstairs 1. Betty bought a bit of better butter 2. I am going to the other room. 3. My name is Ann 2. Beddy bada bida bedder budder 4. It is the end of the bad years 5. Give it to his owner 3. Italian Italy 1. Go(upstairs 4. attack attic 2. I(am going t thee ether room 3. My nay mi Zaen 6. photography photograph 4. Idiz theen dv th'ba dyearz 5.G’v’to(峨izon'r. 7. bet
Chapter 1 American Intonation The American Speech Music CD 1 Track 4 What to Do with your mouth to Sound american One of the main differences between the way an american talks and the way the rest of the world talks is that we dont really move our lips. (So, when an American says, Read my lips! "what does he really mean? We create most of our sounds in the throat, using our tongue very actively. If you hold your fingers over your lips or clench your jaws when you practice speaking American English, you will find yourself much closer to native-sounding speech than if you try to pronounce every .. single.. sound..very .. carefully. If you can relate American English to music, remember that the indigenous music is jazz. Listen to their speech music, and you will hear that Americans have a melodic, jazzy way of producing sounds. Imagine the sound of a cello when you say, Beddy bada bida bedder budder(Betty bought a bit of better butter) and you'll be close to the native way of aying it. Because most Americans came from somewhere else, American English reflects the accent contributions of many lands. The speech music has become much more exaggerated than British English, developing a strong and distinctive intonation. If you use this intona- tion, not only will you be easier to understand, but you will sound much more confident, dynamic, and persuasive Intonation, or speech music, is the sound that you hear when a conversation is too far away to be clearly audible but close enough for you to tell the nationality of the speakers The American intonation dictates liaisons and pronunciation, and it indicates mood and meaning. Without intonation, your speech would be flat, mechanical, and very confusing for your listener. What is the American intonation pattern? How is it different from other languages? Foa egzampuru, eefu you hea ah Jahpahneezu pahsohn speakingu Ingurishu the sound would be very choppy, mechanical, and unemotional to an American. Za sem vey vis Cheuman pipples, it sounds too stiff. A mahn frohm Paree ohn zee ahzer ahnd, ee intonashon goes up at zee end ov evree sentence, and has such a strong intonation that he sounds romantic and highly emotional, but this may not be appropriate for a lecture or a business meeting in English