Get access to downloadable Audio for ALL of the Exercises in this book! To listen to Audio for all of the exercises in this book, go to: http://AmericanAccent.barronsaudio.rints.com 4-0810-MasterAmerAccent-IFC.indd 1 5/23/16 9:46 AM 4-0810_MasterAmericanAccent_1 8/3/16 4:55 PM Page i MASTERING the American ACCENT Lisa Mojsin, M.A. Director, Accurate English, Inc. Los Angeles, CA Second Edition 4-0810_MasterAmericanAccent_1 8/3/16 4:55 PM Page ii Acknowledgments This book is dedicated to my accent reduction students who came to the United States from all parts of the globe. Their drive to excel, passion for learning, amazing work ethic, and belief in the American dream have inspired me to write this book. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” Thanks to all of the supportive and extremely professional people at Barron’s: Marcy Rosenbaum, the editor of the current edition; Dimitry Popow, my editor of the first edition; Wayne Barr for seeking me out to write this book; and Veronica Douglas for her support. I am enormously grateful to Lou Savage, “The Voice.” His is the beautiful male voice on the recordings. He was also responsible for all of the expert audio engineering and audio editing. Thank you, Lou, for being such a perfectionist with the sound and insist- ing on fixing the audio “mistakes” I couldn’t hear anyway. I am also grateful for the contributions of Maryam Meghan, Jack Cumming, Katarina Matolek, Mauricio Sanchez, Sabrina Stoll, Sonya Kahn, Jennie Lo, Yvette Basica, Marc Basica, and Laura Tien. © Copyright 2016, 2009 by Barron’s Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright owner. All inquiries should be addressed to: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc. 250 Wireless Boulevard Hauppauge, NY 11788 www.barronseduc.com ISBN: 978-1-4380-0810-3 Library of Congress Control Number 2016941015 Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 4-0810_MasterAmericanAccent_1 8/3/16 4:55 PM Page iii Contents Introduction vi Chapter 1: The Vowel Sounds 1 Production of Vowels 1 Main Vowel Sounds of American English 3 /i/ as in meet 4 /I/ as in sit 4 / / as in take 6 eɪ / / as in get 7 ɛ / / as in fat 8 æ / / as in father 9 ɑ / / as in fun 10 ə / /as in saw 11 ɔ / / as in boat 13 oʊ / / as in good 14 ʊ / / as in too 14 u / r/ as in bird 16 ə / / as in time 16 aɪ / / as in house 17 aʊ / / as in boy 18 ɔɪ Chapter 2: Vowels in Detail 19 Review of / / and / / Sounds 19 I i Review of / / and / / Sounds 20 ɛ æ Review of / /, / /, / /, and /ou/ Sounds 21 ə ɑ ɔ The Problematic o 22 Three Different Ways to Pronounce the o 25 Review of / / versus / / 25 æ ə The American / / Sound 26 ɔ Review of / /, / /, / /, / /, / /, and / / 28 ɛ æ ɑ ɔ ə oʊ The Problematic / / Sound 29 ʊ Review of / / and / / Sounds 30 ʊ u Comparing / / and / / 30 u yu Review of the / r/ Sound 31 ə Vowels Followed by the / / Sound 32 r Chapter 3: Consonants 33 Forming American Consonants 33 Voiceless and Voiced Consonants 34 Vowel Length and Voiced and Voiceless Consonants 35 Stops and Continuants 37 Chapter 4: Problematic Consonants 39 The Various t Sounds of American English 39 The “Fast d” Sound 43 The / / Sound: tr 44 tʃr The / / Sound: dr 44 dʒr iii 4-0810_MasterAmericanAccent_1 8/3/16 4:55 PM Page iv The / / Sound: duand d+ y 45 dʒ The / / Sound: tuand t+ y 45 tʃ Words Ending in -ed 46 The thSound 49 The American /r/ 53 The American /l/ 56 Understanding /l/ Versus /r/ 58 The /v/ Sound 61 Understanding /b/ Versus /v/ 62 The /w/ Sound 63 Understanding /v/ Versus /w/ 64 The /s/ and /z/ Sounds 65 The / / Sound: Pronouncing ng 68 ŋ Consonant Clusters 70 Chapter 5: Syllable Stress 73 Stressed and Reduced Vowels 73 Comparing Stressed and Reduced Vowels 76 Dangers of Stressing the Wrong Syllable 78 General Rules for Stress Placement 79 Two-Syllable Words 79 Noun and Verb Pairs 80 Words Ending in -tionand -ate 81 -ateEndings of Verbs and Nouns 81 More Stressed Suffixes 82 Rules for Prefixes 82 Syllable Stress Changes 84 Reduced Vowels for Review 86 Chapter 6: Word Stress 89 Compound Nouns 89 Proper Stress with Adjectives 91 Phrasal Verbs 93 Noun Forms of Phrasal Verbs 94 Abbreviations and Numbers 95 Names of Places and People 96 Word Stress Within a Sentence 96 Lengthening the Main Vowel in Stressed Words 96 Which Words Should I Stress? 98 Content Words 98 Content Words in Detail: Verbs 99 Stress Nouns but Not Pronouns 99 Content Words in Detail: Adjectives 100 Reducing Vowels in Unstressed Words 101 Weak Forms 101 Reducing Pronouns 104 Strong Forms 105 Thought Groups and Focus Words 106 Contrastive Stress 107 iv 4-0810_MasterAmericanAccent_1 8/3/16 4:55 PM Page v Chapter 7: Intonation 109 Falling Intonation 109 Statements 109 Questions 109 Rising Intonation 110 Non-final Intonation 111 Unfinished Thoughts 111 Introductory Words 112 Series of Words 112 Expressing Choices 112 Wavering Intonation 113 Chapter 8: Sound Like a True Native Speaker 115 Linking Words for Smoother Speech Flow 115 Rules for Linking 116 Linking Consonant to Vowel 116 Linking Consonant to Same Consonant 119 Linking Two Consonants 120 Linking Vowel to Vowel 122 Linking Vowels Within a Word 123 Contractions 125 Commonly Contracted Words 126 Conditional Tense and Contractions 130 Casual Versus Formal Speech 132 Rules and Patterns of Casual Speech 133 Chapter 9: Memorizing the Exceptions 135 Same Spelling, Different Pronunciation 136 Two Correct Pronunciations 137 Words with Dropped Syllables 137 Words with Silent Letters 138 Homophones 139 Native Language Guide 141 Chinese 141 Farsi 149 Filipino Languages 152 French 155 German 160 Indian Languages 164 Indonesian 168 Japanese 172 Korean 176 Portuguese 180 Russian 184 Spanish 188 Vietnamese 193 Index 199 v 4-0810_MasterAmericanAccent_1 8/3/16 4:55 PM Page vi Track 1 Introduction This book will help non-native speakers of English learn to speak with an American accent. Which American Accent Will This Book Teach Me? You will learn to produce the standard American accent. Some people also call it “broad- caster English.” It’s the kind of standard, neutral speech that you hear on CNN. It’s a non- regional American accent, meaning that people do not associate the dialect with any particular part of the United States. How Should I Practice? Listen to the recorded material over and over. You will hear words and sentences pronounced followed by a pause for you to repeat after the speaker. You may want to record yourself repeating so that you can compare your accent to the accents of the speakers on this audio. Before you are ready to apply this new way of speaking to real-life situations, you will need to spend some time practicing the new sounds on your own. One method is to select a doc- ument that you plan to read aloud. Before reading it, highlight or underline the new sounds that you have learned from this book. Then read the document slowly and carefully. Don’t worry if you sound exaggerated or strange at first. If you read the same document over and over again, you will notice that your speech will start to sound more natural, and you will be able to speak more quickly. Focus only on a few sounds at a time and only practice additional sounds in the same document when you feel ready. Then try speaking English to yourself, slowly and carefully, when no one is listening. You may need to repeat something you said several times until it sounds correct. This is a great practice technique for improving quickly. And finally, apply this new way of speaking in social situations. Don’t worry about making mistakes. It’s a natural process of learning. If you pay attention to how you speak, you will gradually break your old habits and make fewer and fewer mistakes. Be patient with the process and remember: you will be successful if you keep trying, and you don’t give up. Let’s get started. vi Mastering the American Accent 4-0810_MasterAmericanAccent_1 8/3/16 4:55 PM Page 1 Track Chapter One 2 THE VOWEL SOUNDS In this chapter you will learn how to accurately pronounce all of the main American English vowel sounds. The English alphabet has five vowels, a, e, i, oand u,but it has about 15 main vowel sounds. For some learners this is one of the most difficult aspects of American English to master. Speakers of languages with fewer vowel sounds are likely to speak English using only the same number of sounds that exist in their native language. Sometimes they do not even hear the distinction between certain sounds in English. Consequently, non-native speakers might pronounce “hill” and “heal” the same way. Similarly, the words selland sale,or cup, cop, and capmay also sound the same when spoken by a non-native speaker. Because there is not always a direct relationship between how a word is spelled and how it is pronounced, you should become familiar with the phonetic symbols that represent the sounds that you are learning. This way, you will be able to use your dictionary when you come across a word that contains a vowel sound that you don’t know how to pronounce. Make sure you also become familiar with the phonetic symbols of your dictionary as they may be a bit different from the symbols that this book uses. Production of Vowels Track 3 We categorize vowels as front, middle, or back depending on which part of the tongue is used to produce the sound. For example, /i/ is a front vowel because the front part of the tongue goes up in the front of the mouth, and /u/ is a back vowel because the back of the tongue goes up in the back of the mouth. We also categorize vowels as highor low. In high vowels, the tongue is pushed up high near the roof of the mouth as in /i/, and in low vow- els, the tongue is flat down at the bottom of the mouth, as in / /. æ Diphthongs consist of two different vowel sounds that are closely joined together and treated as one vowel. They are represented by two phonetic symbols. To create this sound, move your tongue smoothly from one vowel position to another. The following vowels are diphthongs: / / as in take, / / as in boat, / / as in time, / / as in house,and / / as in boy. eɪ oʊ aɪ aʊ ɔɪ You will now learn how to correctly pronounce each type of vowel. Refer to the diagrams below to help you better understand the correct tongue and lip positions for these various vowel sounds. Chapter One:THE VOWEL SOUNDS 1 4-0810_MasterAmericanAccent_1 8/3/16 4:55 PM Page 2 front /i/ meet I e /I/ sit i eɪ /e / take ɪ æ / / get ɛ / / fat æ middle ər ə ɑ / r/ bird ə / / fun ə / / father ɑ u Ʊ ɑ c back /u/ too / / good ʊ / / father ɑ / / saw ɔ 2 Mastering the American Accent