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. Want to learn more about the American Accent? Subscribe to our special online practice site for speakers of Indian English. Videos, audio recordings and more, all designed for native speakers of Indian Languages. Subscribe today!
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Pronunciation errors on the "w" and "v" sounds are common for those with a variety of language backgrounds. For most, learning how to clearly differentiate the two sounds is an important step in pronouncing them correctly. These sounds can be distinctly identified and produced by how they are formed with the mouth.
Next, try these minimal pair words with w and v. Make a clear distinction between rounded lips w, and lip on teeth v. Practice with the recording below.
Not only does signing your favorite American song help you make subtle changes in your American Accent (see this post for details), but you might do well with remembering new words by singing them. We all have pop songs, advertising jingles and tv theme songs from our childhood taking up valuable memory space in our brains, but perhaps we can harness our ability to remember words set to music to our own advantage. Researchers in Scotland set up an experiment which involved teaching groups of people words in Hungarian. Those who were taught using a method of signing the words had the best results when asked to remember them later. You can read more details here. When you come across a new word you'd like to remember or a word for which you need to change your pronunciation, if you can find a song with the correct rhythm, you can sing the word to store it for later. For example, let's say you need to learn the stress pattern for the word technology. This word has the stress on the second syllable, technology. Take the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and change the words to "Now I sing technology, now I sing technology." Tying the correct word stress and pronunciation to a tune might help build pathways in your brain to correctly pronouncing this word in running speech. And it might also be fun.
Vowel sounds are always voiced (the vocal folds buzz when saying these sounds). Consonant sounds can be either voiced or voiceless, and they come in pairs called cognates. Why is it helpful to know about voiced and voiceless cognate sounds? A frequent error in accented speech is the de-voicing of final consonants. What this means is that the speaker does not use any or enough voicing (buzzing of the vocal folds) on the last sound of the word, so it sounds like the voiceless cognate. This occurs for various reasons. The speaker's native language may not have words that end with voiced sounds. The speaker may be listening to American English speech, and not really hear or notice the voicing on the ends of words when listening to Americans. Or the voiced sounds might be part of a group of consonants at the end of the word, and the challenge of producing this consonant cluster makes using correct voicing difficult.
Whatever the reason, attention to this error is important because you may sound like you are saying a different word than you are. Your listener will likely understand based on the context, but having to interpret what you are saying puts an increased cognitive load on the listener, and they may struggle to follow what you are saying as a result. The pairs of consonant sounds are as follows: voiceless: t voiced: d Examples: to, do voiceless: p voiced: b Examples: poor, boor voiceless: k voiced: g Examples: came, game voiceless: f voiced: v Examples: fan, van voiceless: s voiced: z Examples: sip, zip voiceless: sh voiced: zh Examples: mesh, measure voiceless: ch voiced: j Examples: choke, joke voiceless: th (IPA /θ/) voiced th (IPA /ð/) Examples: thigh, thy One helpful way to ensure you are pronouncing the final consonant with the correct voicing is to lengthen the vowel sound before the voiced consonant. For example, when we say the word "bead," we hold the vowel ee for a little step down because the "d" is voiced. When we say the word "beat" we don't hold the vowel ee for any additional length. Listen to the pairs below and try making a longer vowel and voiced sound to end the word. Then try some of the words in the list on your own.
beat bead
bop Bob pick pig leaf leave bus buzz mesh measure rich ridge breath breathe Do you have some words which you find difficult to say? Do you know which sounds are different in your accent? Whatever your pronunciation difficulties, understanding the approaches to changing pronunciation can help you address your goals. While accented speech is comprised of several elements, pronunciation is one aspect which many speakers and listener can identify as sounding different. Some sounds in American English are infrequent or nonexistant in other languages and must be learned and practiced in a hierarchy to develop the sound. Others are easier to say, but hard to use in running speech. Understanding the levels of practice is an important step to changing your speech. 1. Sound level (phonemes): This level is single sounds. Practicing at this level is usually only necessary when the sound is new to you, but knowing how to say a sound by itself correctly is helpful and can be used as a tool when working at more challenging levels. Use the recordings below to try some of the American English phonemes which are most frequently mispronounced in accented speech.
2. Syllable level: This level is target sound plus an additional sound. If the target is a consonant, the additional sound is a vowel, and vice versa. While two sounds together can make a word, syllables can also be part of a word or just a nonsense word. Practice at this level is useful when breaking down difficult words, integrating a difficult target into words, or changing a habitual pattern with the target sound. The recording below demonstrates how to add various vowels to the challenging target voiceless th (IPA symbol: /θ/). 3. Word level: This level is the target sound in real words. The target could be in the beginning, middle or end of the word (initial, medial or final position). Depending on your native language, you may only need to practice one word position. Sometimes speakers have an accurate phoneme in the initial position, but make errors when the target sound is in word-final position. For example, you may be able to use your voiceless th sound correctly in the word "think," but have an error pattern on the word "teeth." You can try some words with initial, medial and final voiceless th sounds using the recordings below. 4. Phrase or Sentence level: The next step to changing a pronunciation pattern is to use the target sounds at the phrase or sentence level. Once you have achieved accurate productions at the word level, you can imitate or create sentences using the same words you practiced at the word level. This is more challenging because you are having to hold the new target in your mind as you say the sentence. If needed, you can practice at different levels within this step. Easiest, imitate a sentence with the target word at the beginning of the sentence. Next easiest, imitate a sentence with the target word in the middle or end of the sentence. Next, create your own sentence with the target word at the beginning of the sentence, and last, create a sentence with the target word in the middle or the end of the sentence. Use the recordings below to try the target voiceless th in imitated sentences. Then make your own sentences with voiceless th words. 5. Conversational level: This is the goal and the final step in changing pronunciation. Sometimes transitions between steps 4 and 5 are necessary, such as practice while reading aloud. There are many techniques to moving from the sentence to the conversational level, including raising awareness of where your targets occur and repeat motor practice to gain automaticity.
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