PRONUNCIATION

AN INTRODUCTION IN LEARNING THE BASICS OF PRONUNCIATION

INTRODUCTION
There are 3 level of English pronunciation:

Level 1: People often don't understand what you want

to say. You use the wrong sounds in English words.

Level 2: People understand what you want to say, but
it is unpleasant to listen to you.

Level 3: People understand you, and your English is

pleasant to listen to
 INTRODUCTION
When a person learns English as Second Language, they are
speaking English filtered through their first language.
They are using their native languages speech rules of
pronunciation (and often grammar) on their new language.
They are not aware of the American speech rules
There are many schools and classes which teach English all
around the world, however, few of them address the
speech rules This is because many of the teachers who are
providing English training do not know of these speech
rules
INTRODUCTION
Anybody with the desire to reduce their accent can reduce their accent.
Change begins with the desire to change. When we combine our desire with
proper instruction and practice, we achieve success!
The key to learning to speak English clearly and correctly is training and
practice. Clear and accurate speech comes from "doing."
Reducing your accent is different than other skills such as grammar and
vocabulary. Studying accent reduction is more like studying dance, music,
sports or martial arts. It involves the training of muscle groups. Everybody
is born with these muscle groups located in our tongue, lips and jaw.
All that you need is the desire to change, proper instruction and most of
all practice and training! Accent reduction is about "doing."
Simply observing or knowing how to, is not enough. Awareness and
knowledge is important but you have to try it in order to be able to
actually do it.
What is an accent
We often hear people say, I want to reduce my accent, I
want to have a British accent, but what exactly is an accent?
An accent is way of speaking. A process by which a speaker
substitutes a sound from their native language for a sound from
English. This transference occurs mainly for two reasons.
The first reason is that the speaker is not aware that a specific
sound exists in English. Hence they use the closest sound from
their native language instead.
For example, many students are unaware of the sound. [I] as in
the word chip or big. As a result, when saying the word chip,
they substitute a similar sound which exists in their native
language. Usually, they choose [i] as in the word he or meet
PHONETICS
Study of Speech Sounds
PHONETICS

Phonetics is the science of speech

sounds, which aims to provide the set
of features or properties that can be
used to describe and distinguish all the
sounds used in human language.
 The principal cavities or resonators:
-the pharyngeal cavity
-the oral cavity
-the nasal cavity
(-the labial cavity)

The vocal tract:

- the long tubular structure formed by the first
three cavities.
English Pronunciation
by G. Nolst Trenit

If you can pronounce correctly every word

in this poem, you will be speaking English
better than 90% of the native English
speakers in the world.
After trying the verses, a Frenchman said
hed prefer six months of hard labor to
reading six lines aloud.
 Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how its written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
 Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciations OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does.
Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Wont it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?

.
Its a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

.
ENGLISH SOUNDS

CONSONANT SOUNDS The

sounds in the production of
which there is an obstruction
of the air- stream at some
point of the vocal tract .
ENGLISH SOUNDS

VOWELS -the sounds in the

production of which no articulators
come very close together and the
air-stream passes through the
vocal tract without obstruction.
CONSONANTS

Consonants are produced when the airstream is obstructed in

the vocal tract.
Consonant sounds can be characterized according to three main
phonetic properties:
(a) place of articulation, which refers to where in the mouth
the sound is produced;
(b) manner of articulation, which refers to the way the air is
obstructed in the mouth while producing the sound;
(c) Voicing, which refers to whether or not there is a vibration
of the vocal cords as the sound is produced.
MANNERS OF ARTICULATION
Speech sounds are also differentiated by the way the
airstream is affected as it travels from the lungs up and out
of the mouth and nose. This is referred to as the manner of
articulation for the sound.
Stops or Plosives: such sounds are produced by a
complete obstruction of the airstream in the mouth, e.g.
[b], [p], [t], [d], [k], and [g].
Fricatives: such sounds are produced by a partial
obstruction of the airstream, where the passage in the
mouth through which the air escapes is very narrow,
causing friction, e.g. [f], [v], [s], [z], [T], [D], [S], and [Z].
MANNERS OF ARTICULATION
Affricates: such sounds are produced by a stop closure followed
immediately by a slow release of the closure characteristic of the
fricative, e.g. [tS] and [dZ].
Nasals: such sounds are produced when the air escapes through the
nasal cavity rather than the mouth, e.g. [m], [n], and [N].
Liquids: In the production of these sounds, there is some
obstruction of the airstream in the mouth, but not enough to cause
any real constriction or friction, e.g. [l] and [r].
Glides: such sounds are produced with little or no obstruction of
the air in the mouth, e.g. [j] and [w]. When occurring in a word,
they must always be either followed or preceded by a vowel, and
in their articulation the tongue moves rapidly in a gliding fashion
either toward or away from a neighboring vowel.
PLACES OF ARTICULATION
Bilabialsounds, which are produced when both lips are
brought together, e.g. [p], [b], and [m].
Labiodental sounds, which are produced by having the
lower lip touch the upper teeth, e.g. [f] and [v].
Linguadental sounds, which are produced when the tip of
the tongue comes between the upper and lower teeth, e.g.
[T] as in think, and [D] as in this.
Alveolar sounds, which are produced by raising the front
part of the tongue to the alveolar ridge, e.g. [t], [d], [n],
[s], [z], [l], and [r].
PLACES OF ARTICULATION
Linguaalveolar sounds, which are produced when
the front part of the tongue touches the alveolar
ridge and then the hard palate (that part of the
mouth which is just behind the alveolar ridge), e.g.
[S] as in shoe, [Z] as in vision, [tS] as in
choose, and [dZ] as in jam.
Velarsounds, which are produced by raising the
back part of the tongue to the soft palate or the
velum, e.g. [k], [g], and [N], which is the final
sound in king.
Glottal sounds, which are produced at the glottis,
e.g. [h] and [/].
VOICING
VoicedConsonants These are the consonant
sounds which is produced from the larynx and
the pronunciation of the same will make the
vocal chord vibrate
VoicelessConsonants These are the
consonant sounds which is produced from the
tongue tip and their will be no vibration of
vocal chord while pronouncing the same.

lips bottom tongue - tongue on hard back of throat
together lip - teeth toothridge palate tongue
teeth on soft
palate
VLVD VLVD VLVD VLVD VLVD VLVD VL

stop pb td kg
fv h
fricative
sz
affricate

nasal
m
n
liquid
l r
glide
y w
PRACTICE PRONUNCIATION

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