One of the challenges of speaking English is making sure to use the "little words" correctly:  articles, prepositions, and other grammatical markers.  There are many other languages that don't use articles (a, an, the), so it can be hard to remember them and to know which one to use.  These words are frequently unstressed in the sentence, which means they are also harder to notice when listening.  But if they are absent, it is very noticeable.

You can learn more about how to use articles correctly here.

Buzz Feed frequently plays with language and culture, from people trying international junk foods to trying out different accents.  Here's a fun clip of people around the world showing off their best attempts at the American accent.

Much of our focus when changing our speech is on pronunciation, or how we say the sounds in words.  This is important for being understood, but it is not the only element of an accent.  It might not even be the most important element when trying to make yourself understood in English.  The musical patterns of our speech, or intonation, might just be more important than how we say the words.  Intonation is complex and conveys meaning.  There are some rules and distinct American patterns. 

For an entertaining look at how much we use intonation to convey meaning, check out this video.  If you can't understand quite what they are saying, it's probably because they aren't actually speaking English.  But despite this, you can almost get the message.

Pronouncing vowel sounds can be challenging in a foreign language.  This is because we interpret the vowels we hear through the filter of our native language.  We hear a sound close to a vowel sound in our language, and our brain lumps it together with that known sound.  Fortunately, we can learn to override this filter and adapt it to include a different set of vowels.  But we have to know which words have the new vowel sound, and with the lack of consistent spelling in English, this is a learning process.

Let's look at the vowel sounds one sound at a time.  The best way to re-train your brain to hear these sounds is to use listening skills.  But being familiar with the variations in spelling will also help you succeed.
The sound /ɪ/; or "vowel ɪ," is challenging for many non-native English speakers.  In English, this vowel sound has at least six different ways that it is spelled, however, it is most frequently spelled with the letter i and is sometimes called "short i".  You can see examples of the sound's various spellings in the chart below.  To learn more about pronouncing this sound, you can read here.

In 2012, we reached the one million mark in the US for legal permanent residents from other countries.  The majority of immigrants in most states are from Mexico as you can see in these maps. Indians, Filipinos and Burmese top the population in the most states after Mexicans.  The image below shows which countries of origin are represented most in each state (after Mexicans, who are the top group).

When we speak a foreign language, the sound system of our first language acts as a filter which affects how we pronounce the foreign words.  This filtering of pronunciation as well as our intonation patterns contribute to what we call an accent.

Our native language influences not only how we sound when we speak a foreign language, but also what we perceive when listening.  When listening to English, you hear the sounds through the filter of your native language's sound system.  This means it can be difficult to notice your pronunciation differences, because to you, it sounds the same as what you hear when Americans speak.

The good news is, we can overcome these filters and re-train our listening and speaking to include new sounds, and to differentiate between similar sounds.  Systematically exposing ourselves to the American English sounds in combination with imitating them can help us learn to produce them correctly.  You can read research into this phenomenon here.

When you watch a movie from the 1930's or 40's, you might think that Americans used to have a very different way of speaking.  Not quite British, but definitely not what you hear in American media today.  The real story, however, is that actors were taught a stylized way of speaking, called the Mid-Atlantic Accent, because it was considered sophisticated.  It was a hybrid of the British Received Pronunciation and the modern American accent.  You can read more about this phenomenon and see movie clips in this article by Trey Taylor in the Atlantic.

Pronouncing vowel sounds can be challenging in a foreign language.  This is because we interpret the vowels we hear through the filter of our native language.  We hear a sound close to a vowel sound in our language, and our brain lumps it together with that known sound.  Fortunately, we can learn to override this filter and adapt it to include a different set of vowels.  But we have to know which words have the new vowel sound, and with the lack of consistent spelling in English, this is a learning process.

Let's look at the vowel sounds one sound at a time.  The best way to re-train your brain to hear these sounds is to use listening skills.  But being familiar with the variations in spelling will also help you succeed.

The sound /i/; or "vowel ee," is common in most languages, so we will begin with it. In English, this vowel sound has at least nine different ways that it is spelled, and likely more.  You can see examples of the sound's various spellings in the chart below.  To learn more about pronouncing this sound, you can read here.

In the middle of some words, the "t" sounds more like a light or short “d” sound.  This is because we say the "t" without a puff of air.  Produce t without letting the air out, or add a little voicing (think “d.”)

This is also sometimes referred to as the “flap” t.

Some examples:  better, batter, butter, letter, waiter, writer, water, litter, greater, lighter, wetter
        waited, righted, lighted, matted, sighted, fitted, metabolic
        artificial, comforting, dirty
        fatal, hospital, turtle

You can pronounce an aspirated t in these words and it will be correct.  Americans usually only use the aspirated t in these words if they are trying to be extra clear or precise.  It can sound stiff or formal if the aspirated t always used.

If you learned to speak English in India, your pronunciation of American English will be affected by both your native language(s) and the Indian English Dialect. Whether you first spoke Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali or another language, it is likely that you have some of the following pronunciation patterns that contribute to your accent when speaking English.

You can use this chart to identify which pronunciation targets you can work on to improve your American Accent.  Many sounds link to practice materials or further information. 

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