An Honest Answer to “Do I Need Accent Reduction?”
Here’s how it goes: I meet someone for the first time, and the question of what I do for work inevitably comes up. I tell them that I’m an accent reduction instructor, and if the person has an accent, the next question is almost always: “What do you think – do I need accen...
Read MoreWhy can’t some people hear their own accents?
In a previous blog post, 5 Myths About Why You Have an Accent, I discussed what causes people to have a foreign accent in American English. Accents are a result of your spoken English being filtered through the sound system of your first language. In other words, your mouth is most comfortable ma...
Read MoreCan you ever completely lose your foreign accent?
One of the most frequently asked questions I get as an American accent instructor is, “Can adults ever completely lose their foreign accents?” This is certainly an important and relevant question for anyone wanting to sound like a native speaker of American English. The short answer is that it is...
Read MoreAmerican /s/ vs. British /z/
In this video blog post, we discuss a small, subtle difference between how some words with “s” are pronounced between American and British English. This tip may be most useful if you are trying to learn an American accent, but are coming from a starting point of being more familiar with British E...
Read MoreHow to Raise a Bilingual Child
As a Bilingual Speech-Language Pathologist, people ask me all the time: “How do you raise kids to be bilingual?” The short answer is that you expose them to two languages. The rest of this blog post is just an elaboration on that basic idea. Here are some useful definitions that are used in this ...
Read MoreConfusing stress in similar words
A stressed syllable is part of a word which is pronounced louder and longer than the other parts of the word. The importance of word stress has been discussed in the previous 2 blog posts – Introduction to Word Stress and Unstressed Syllables. As mentioned in those posts, placing stress on ...
Read MorePutting the “Uh” in “Unstressed Syllable”
Anyone who is familiar with the English language will not be surprised to hear that English words are not always pronounced exactly the way that they are spelled. There are many reasons why a spelling may differ from its pronunciation – perhaps the word was borrowed from a foreign language ...
Read MoreA Stress-Free Introduction to Word Stress
One important aspect of pronunciation which is often overlooked is stress. Stress is the emphasis given to a part of a word, or to a whole word within a sentence. In this post, we’ll discuss stress within individual words, specifically stress patterns of 2 syllable nouns and verbs. A word can be ...
Read MoreWords with more than one correct pronunciation
In my work as an accent instructor, people often ask me which of two pronunciations of a certain word is correct. This confusion is very understandable. You may have encountered more than one pronunciation of a certain word – perhaps you looked it up in the dictionary and two alternate pron...
Read MoreCommon Words Pronounced Differently in British versus American English
This post is the fourth in a series on the subject of differences between American and British English. For more information on this topic, please see the first three parts of the series: British Versus American “A” News About American “oo” and British “you” That You Never Knew The “oo” Sound: Am...
Read MoreSound System of American English
This is the third blog post in a three-part series on the relationships between the pronunciation of English words and their spellings. Follow the links for part one of the series on Silent Letters and part two on Homophones. As mentioned in the previous blog posts, it frequently happens that the...
Read MoreHomophones: Words that Sound the Same, but are Spelled Differently
This is the second blog post in a three-part series on the relationships between the pronunciation of English words and their spellings. Follow the links for part one of the series on Silent Letters and part three on the Sound System of American English. As mentioned in the previous blog post, it...
Read MoreSilent letters
This is the first blog post in a three-part series on the relationships between the pronunciation of English words and their spellings. Follow the links for part two of the series on Homophones and part three on the Sound System of American English. The English language is notable for having a la...
Read MoreWhy non-native speakers seem to “lose their accent” when singing English songs
As you may have noticed, people often sound like they have less of an accent (or sometimes none at all) when they sing in a foreign language. This holds true even if they have a noticeable accent when they speak in that languages, or even if they don’t know the foreign language at all. Why ...
Read MoreHow do you say “the”? Thuh vs. Thee
In this video blog post, we discuss how to say the word “the”. When do you pronounce it “thuh” and when do you pronounce it “thee”? Here is how to pronounce “the” in American English: pronounce it “thuh” when the next word begins with a consonant sound, and pronounce it “thee” when the next word ...
Read MoreThe “oo” sound: American versus British pronunciation
This is the third blog post in a series on differences between British and American English. Also, see parts 1, 2, and 4 of this series: 1. British versus American “a” 2. News About American “oo” and British “you” That You Never Knew 4. Words Pronounced Differently in British vs. American English...
Read MoreNews about American “oo” and British “yoo” that you never knew
This is the second blog post in a multi-part series on the subject of differences between British and American English. For more information on this topic, also see parts 1, 3, and 4 of the series: 1. British versus American “a” 3. The “oo” sound: American versus British pronunciation 4. Words Pr...
Read MoreBritish versus American “a”
This is the first blog post in a multi-part series on the subject of differences between British and American English. For more information on this topic, also see parts 2-4 of the series: 2. News About American “oo” and British “you” That You Never Knew 3. The “oo” sound: American versus British...
Read MoreWhy don’t accents go away by themselves?
Many of us know individuals who came to the United States as teenagers or adults. Maybe they’ve even lived in the United States for decades, and their English language has become more and more fluent and native-like- and yet still they retain their original accent, as they had when they first arr...
Read MoreDropped Syllables
A “dropped” syllable is a syllable in the middle of a word that is not pronounced. The unpronounced syllable can even be a single vowel sound in the middle of a word, for example pronouncing “every” as “EV-ree”. The technical term for this phenomenon is “syncope”. When are syllables n...
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