In today's class, we talked about voiceless stops in word-initial position (/p/, /t/ and /k/). A common error pattern for many speakers is to say these sounds as unaspirated sounds, which means saying the sound without the release of air. We see this especially in those speakers whose native languages are Arabic, Indian English (including Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, Malayalam), Polish, Czech, Urdu, French, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Tagalog, Vietnamese or Yoruba.
To check if you have this pattern, you can try saying some words with your hand in front of your mouth to see if you feel the air releasing. people, put, park table, totally, take kid, capable, could To change this accent pattern, try practicing on common words with these sounds: put, point, past, please, project, program take, talk, today, try, ten, text can, come, could, keep, car, call For even more practice, consider a free trial of one of our online courses.
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Today we talked about the low front unrounded vowel, /æ/. This is the vowel in the words have, had, sad, that, etc..
You might find it helpful to see if you have this vowel in your native language. Check the chart on this wikipedia link. Common error patterns for this vowel are the tongue being too high (sounds like/ɛ/) or the tongue being too far back (sounds like /ɑ/). So "had" would sound like "head" (tongue too high) or "bad" would sound like "bod" (tongue too far back). Practice this vowel on some common words: had have that man sat ran back Now, try some repeated phrases: that man, that time, that thing, that email, that day have a friend, have a meeting, have a lunch, have a few things Check your vowel with some minimal pairs: man men tan ten sat set and end mat met tap top hat hot lack lock iPad iPod Today we talked about pronouncing past tense verbs.
When the verb ends in a voiceless sound (p, t, k, s, ch, sh) "ed" says /t/. For example, talk, talked stop, stopped dress, dressed watch, watched wish, wished When the verb ends in voiced sounds, in other words a vowel or a voiced consonant (b, g, v, z, r, w, j, m, n, ng, l) "ed" says /d. For example, move. moved use, used try ,tried call, called seem, seemed happen, happened When the verb ends in t or d, "-ed" adds a syllable, /ɪd. For example, want, wanted need, needed Get practice recordings for common past tense words here. In today's lesson, we looked at 3 examples of accent error patterns which result in problem communication.
First, we talked about the vowel "o." When you use the vowel /o/ from your native language, it is a short sound, and you can sound abrupt, rude or irritated when you are merely saying "no." To avoid this problem, lengthen your o and use the American diphthong /oʊ/. Want more help with this? Check out this video. Next we talked about the pattern of stopping the "th" sound. This happens when you have your tongue behind your teeth and/or you don't allow the air to flow for a fricative "th" sound. The problem word we identified for this pattern is the word "third." If you stop the "th" in "third," it sounds like you are saying "turd." Find more help for TH on our playlist. Lastly, we talked about using the correct word stress in phrases (stressing the last content word - noun, verb or adjective.). We used the example "I don't know," and pointed out that if you stress "don't" rather than "know," it sounds like you are correctly someone who said you do know. You can see more about this phrase in the video for that specific phrase, here. Today we covered voicing, or voiced and voiceless consonant sounds. To see all of the voiced and voiceless sounds and word examples, check out this post.
To work on your voiced sounds on the ends of words, try our linking exercises. |
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