Amercian Accent Training

After laying our foundation with intonation and liaisons, here we finally begin to refine your pronunciation! We are now going to work on the differences between æ, ä, and , as well as ō, ā, and ε. Let’s start out with the æ sound. (See also Pronunciation in Read This First, Chapters 1, 10, and 12, and the Nationality Guides.)

Although not a common sound, æ is very distinctive to the ear and is typically American. In the practice paragraph this sound occurs five times. As its phonetic symbol indicates, æ is a combination of ä + ε. To pronounce it, drop your jaw down as if you were going to say ä; then from that position, try to say ε. The final sound is not two separate vowels, but rather the end result of the combination. It is very close to the sound that a goat makes: ma-a-a-a!

If you find yourself getting too nasal with æ, pinch your nose as you say it. If kæt turns into kεæt, you need to pull the sound out of your nose and down into your throat.

Note As you look for the œ sound you might think that words like down or sound have an æ in them. For this diphthong, try æ + oh, or æo. This way, down would be written dœon. Because it is a combined sound, however, it’s not included in the Cat? category. (See Pronunciation Points.)

The ä sound occurs a little more frequently; you will find ten such sounds in the exercise. To pronounce ä, relax your tongue and drop your jaw as far down as it will go. As a matter of fact, put your hand under your chin and say mä, pä, tä, sä. Your hand should be pushed down by your jaw as it opens. Remember, it’s the sound that you make when the doctor wants to see your throat, so open it up and dräp your jäw.

Last is the schwa , the most common sound in American English. When you work on the practice paragraph, depending on how fast you speak, how smoothly you make liaisons, how strong your intonation is, and how much you relax your sounds, you will find from 50 to 75 schwas. Spelling doesn’t help identify it, because it can appear as any one of the vowels, or a combination of them. It is a neutral vowel sound, uh. It is usually in an unstressed syllable, though it can be stressed as well. Whenever you find a vowel that can be crossed out and its absence wouldn’t change the pronunciation of the word, you have probably found a schwa: photography ph’togr’phy (the two apostrophes show the location of the neutral vowel sounds).

Because it is so common, however, the wrong pronunciation of this one little sound can leave your speech strongly accented, even if you Americanized everything else.

Note Some dictionaries use two different written characters, and , but for simplicity we are only going to use the first one.

A schwa is neutral, but it is not silent. By comparison, the silent e at the end of a word is a signal for pronunciation, but it is not pronounced itself: code is kōd. The e tells you to say an o. If you leave the e off, you have cod, käd. The schwa, on the other hand, is neutral, but it is an actual sound—uh. For example, you could also write photography as phuh•tah•gruh•fee.

Because it’s a neutral sound, the schwa doesn’t have any distinctive characteristics, yet it is the most common sound in the English language.

To make the sound, put your hand on your diaphragm and push until a grunt escapes. Don’t move your jaw, tongue, or lips; just allow the sound to flow past your vocal cords. It should sound like uh.

Once you master this sound, you will have an even easier time with pronouncing can and can’t. In a sentence, can’t sounds like kæn(t), but can becomes kn, unless it is stressed, when it is kæn (as we saw in Exercise 1-23). Repeat.

In the vowel chart that follows, the four corners represent the four most extreme positions of the mouth. The center box represents the least extreme position—the neutral schwa. For these four positions, only move your lips and jaw. Your tongue should stay in the same place—with the tip resting behind the bottom teeth.

1.To pronounce beat, your lips should be drawn back, but your teeth should be close together. Your mouth should form the shape of a banana.

2.To pronounce boot, your lips should be fully rounded, and your teeth should be close together. Your mouth should form the shape of a Cheerio.

3.To pronounce bought, drop your jaw straight down from the boot position. Your mouth should form the shape of an egg.

4.To pronounce bat, keep your jaw down, pull your lips back, and try to simultaneously say ä and ε. Your mouth should form the shape of a box.

Note Word-by-word pronunciation will be different than individual sounds within a sentence. That, than, as, at, and, have, had, can, and so on, contain æ sounds when they stand alone, but are weak words that reduce quickly in speech.

There are five æ, ten ä, and 50 to 75 sounds in the following paragraph. Underscore them in pen or pencil. (The first one of each sound is marked for you.)

Hello, my name is_________. I’m taking әmerәcәn æcsnt Training. There’s a lät to learn, but I hope to make it as enjoyable as possible. I should pick up on the American intonation pattern pretty easily, although the only way to get it is to practice all of the time. I use the up and down, or peaks and valleys, intonation more than I used to. I’ve been paying attention to pitch, too. It’s like walking down a staircase. I’ve been talking to a lot of Americans lately, and they tell me that I’m easier to understand. Anyway, I could go on and on, but the important thing is to listen well and sound good. Well, what do you think? Do I?

Next, check your answers with the Answer Key. Finally, take your markers and give a color to each sound. For example, mark æ green, ä blue, and ә yellow.

Note It sounds regional to end a sentence with ust. In the middle of a sentence, however, it is more standard: I ust live there.

Here we will read down from 1 to 24, then we will read each row across. Give the ā sound a clear double sound ε + ee. Also, the o is a longer sound than you might be expecting. Add the full ooh sound after each “o.”

A fashionably tan man sat casually at the bat stand, lashing a handful of practice bats. The manager, a crabby old bag of bones, passed by and laughed, “You’re about average, Jack. Can’t you lash faster than that?” Jack had had enough, so he clambered to his feet and lashed bats faster than any man had ever lashed bats. As a matter of fact, he lashed bats so fast that he seemed to dance. The manager was aghast. “Jack, you’re a master bat lasher!” he gasped. Satisfied at last, Jack sat back and never lashed another bat.

John was not sorry when the boss called off the walks in the garden. Obviously, to him, it was awfully hot, and the walks were far too long. He had not thought that walking would have caught on the way it did, and he fought the policy from the onset. At first, he thought he could talk it over at the law office and have it quashed, but a small obstacle* halted that thought. The top lawyers always bought coffee at the shop across the lawn and they didn’t want to stop on John’s account. John’s problem was not office politics, but office policy. He resolved the problem by bombing the garden.

When you read the following schwa paragraph, try clenching your teeth the first time. It won’t sound completely natural, but it will get rid of all of the excess lip and jaw movement and force your tongue to work harder than usual. Remember that in speaking American English we don’t move our lips much, and we talk though our teeth from far back in our throats. I’m going to read with my teeth clenched together and you follow along, holding your teeth together.

Some pundits proposed that the sun wonders unnecessarily about sundry and assorted conundrums. One cannot but speculate what can come of their proposal. It wasn’t enough to trouble us,* but it was done so underhandedly that hundreds of sun lovers rushed to the defense of their beloved sun. None of this was relevant on Monday, however, when the sun burned up the entire country.

Read What Must the Sun Above Wonder About? twice. Try it with your teeth clenched the first time and normally the second time.

Listen for the actual sounds . . . not what you think they are! As you saw in Chapter 1 with Bobby bought a bike (bäbee bäd bäik), there is a difference between pure sound and spelling.

The trouble with starting accent training after you know a great deal of English is that you know a great deal about English. You have a lot of preconceptions and, unfortunately, misconceptions about the sound of English.

Every sound of every language is within every child. So, what happens with adults? People learn their native language and stop listening for the sounds that they never hear; then they lose the ability to hear those sounds. Later, when you study a foreign language, you learn a lot of spelling rules that take you still further away from the real sound of that language—in this case, English.

What we are going to do here is teach you to hear again. So many times, you’ve heard what a native speaker said, translated it into your own accent, and repeated it with your accent. Why? Because you “knew” how to say it.

The first thing you’re going to do is write down exactly what I say. It will be nonsense to you for two reasons: First, because I will be saying sound units, not word units. Second, because I will be starting at the end of the sentence instead of the beginning. Listen carefully and write down exactly what you hear, regardless of meaning. The first sound is given to you—kit.

Read it out loud to yourself and try to hear what the regular English is. Don’t look ahead until you’ve figured out the sense of it.

Again, listen carefully and write the sounds you hear. Start at the end and fill in the blanks right to left, then read them back left to right. Write whichever symbols are easiest for you to read back.

1.	Yoo zih dp.	2.	Weh rih dæout.	3.	May kit doo.	4.	Orr doo with æout.
	Use it up.		Wear it out.		Make it do.		Or do without.

Let’s do a few more pure-sound exercises to fine-tune your ear. Remember, start at the end and fill in the blanks right to left, then read them back left to right. You will only need five non-alphabet symbols: æ, ä, ә, ü, and ε. There are clues sprinkled around for you.

I can do it.	I kn do it
I can’t do it.	I kæn’t do it

	single	double
ä	dock	dog
	duck	dug