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.