New Year's Resolution -- A Better American English Accent?

It’s December. A time of year when many people make New Year’s resolutions for the

next year. What’s your New Year’s Resolution for 2016? Does it include gaining more fluency

in your spoken English?

How long have you been studying English? And how happy are you with your pronunciation?

It’s a new year, and a new opportunity to get fluency in spoken American English. The

Sounds of American English, and how they relate to stress, are the building blocks of American

English. So I’ve made a new set of 36 videos, totaling nearly 3 hours, that is truly special

for the way integrates understanding stress into learning sounds.

Most of the materials you'll find elsewhere just teach the sounds on their own, in isolation.

It's a mistake to learn this way -- we learn sounds to speak words and sentences, not

just sounds! For beginners, you can focus on the different sounds, and how they’re

made.

More advanced learners can focus on the subtleties of how sounds are affected by stress to put

the finishing touches on their American accent. Every vowel and diphthong video teaches the

sounds in the context of stress, so you’re working on the overall character of American

English, which is so important.

These videos have a mix of explanations, images, and slow motion speech study. I recommend

watching all of the videos at once, several times. It’s a lot of information. Give your

mind the time to take it all in and get the bigger picture. Then go back and study individual

sounds. Imitate and practice the example words out loud.

This set of videos can be purchased as a download on January 12 for just $27. That’s less

than a dollar per video. You can download the videos to your device or simply stream

them. But, if you order now, during the prelaunch sale, that is, any time before January 12, you can

get all 36 videos for just $19.

Go to RachelsEnglish.com/sounds to purchase, and you’ll get access to the

videos as soon as they’re released in January. If a DVD is more your style, I’ve got you

covered. The set is available as a DVD as well.

If you can’t afford to purchase, you’ll still get access to the videos. The videos

in this collection will be released on YouTube twice a month, every first and third Thursday

until May 2017. But why wait? Get the whole set now, study the sounds as a unit, and get

fluency in your spoken English. Make 2016 YOUR year. Welcome to 2016, welcome to your

new accent.

Here’s the first video in the series, General Information on the Sounds of American English.

And look for another sneak peak of the videos, as the AA as in BAT vowel will be coming out

in January.

In this American English Pronunciation video, we’re going to go over a few general concepts

concerning the sounds of American English.

Before you study the Sounds of American English specifically, let’s go over a few general

concepts.

First, voiced vs. unvoiced sounds. A voiced sound is a sound that uses the voice, uh.

An unvoiced sound is a sound that only uses air, hh. Uh, hh. Every vowel and diphthong

in American English is voiced; we engage the vocal cords to make a sound: aa, ur, oy.

Consonants can either be voiced or unvoiced.

There is a set of consonants—paired consonants—where

both sounds in each pair have the same mouth position. What makes them different is one

is voiced and one is unvoiced. For example, pp and bb. Can you tell which one is voiced?

Which has the vocal sound in it, uh? It’s the B consonant, bb. Pp, bb.

The rest of the consonants are not paired. They have a unique mouth position. Out of

these consonants, only one is unvoiced, the H consonant. Hh. The rest are all voiced,

for example, mm, ww, ll.

Second, let’s talk about nasal sounds. A sound is nasal when the soft palate is lowered,

allowing air to pass through the nasal passages. Some languages have nasal vowels. English

has none. English has just three nasal consonants: nn, mm, and ng. If your native language has

a lot of nasal vowels, you’ll have to be careful when speaking English.

When you’re working on the nasal consonants, I encourage you not to worry about lowering

the soft palate. I’ve been working with students many years and I’ve never found

someone unable to do this. It happens naturally. The main concern is making sure the rest of

the sounds in American English don’t have a nasal quality, have a closed soft palate.

You’ll notice in my videos, that I use symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet. This

system was developed to write the sounds of spoken languages. In American English, certain

sounds are spelled lots of different ways. So having one symbol to represent one sound

is very helpful. I suggest using the International Phonetic Alphabet any time you’re studying

the pronunciation of a foreign language. In this set of videos, you’ll get acquainted

with the symbols of the sounds of American English.

Finally, a note on stress. The stress of a syllable affects everything about the syllable,

including the sounds. Most of the length in syllables comes from the vowel and diphthongs,

so as you learn these, you’ll learn how to make them sound both stressed and unstressed.

It’s important to get used to the idea of making some syllables longer and clearer,

and other syllables shorter and less clear. This concept is one of the foundations of

American English.

Now you’re ready to dive in and study the Sounds of American English.