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