My favorite Nightwish covers

Hi everyone,

After a longer break caused by some unpleasant things, I return to writing, but this post won’t be very serious. Now, let me answer a question about music. I was asked quite often about my favorite style of music, and group. Well, I’m great fan of rock music. If I begin to chat about it, I can hardly finish. I do love a lot of groups from Hungary and other parts of the world. My favorite group outside of Hungary is Nightwish from Finland. What kind of music do they play? You’ll see it, I mean you’ll hear it. At the moment, they are between two albums, and two tours. They may be preparing new songs under the radar, so I have no information about it. I don’t feel like writing about their past, about their former albums. I would rather write about other groups and singers who like performing covers. 

You rang M'Lord

As the title of this blog indicates I’m involved in learning American English. However, it doesn’t mean that I avoid every piece of material from the United Kingdom. I have some favorite musical groups (such as Deep Purple, or Iron Maiden) from Great Britain and I also like some funny movies or TV series.  In this post, I’d like to introduce you to a funny series from the BBC entitled “You rang M’Lord”. It was broadcast between 1990 and 1993 on BBC. The episodes show a house of an aristocratic family in the 1920s, contrasting the upper-class family and their servants in a house in London. 

Cot vs caught - Short O and AW sounds

Hi Everyone, 


My new book on Crazy English spelling.

A couple of weeks ago I began to introduce the American vowels in pairs. The first pair was Sheep vs ship - Long E (EE) and Short I (IH), the second one was Cattle vs kettle - Short A (AA) and Short E (EH), and then the third one was Suit vs soot – Other OO (OO) and Other U (UH). And now I’m going to speak about the [ɑ] (Short O - AH) and the [ɔ] (AW)  sounds.

 

Out of time

Hey guys,

I get several question about my next post here. Well, you're right. At the beginning I posted more. I have two unfinished series:
- American English vowels,
- tricks of T sounds,
- interviews.
These series are not interrupted, I'm going to continue them. 
My next posts are written right now, but I can do it slower than at the beginning. I've published 27 posts. My target is to reach the 40th post (this one is not counted).

If you want to watch nice videos about American English just follow Rachel's English on youtube. I also recommend Mandy's pronuncian.com. 

I'm going to post an interview with Kate very soon.

Bye bye,

Attila

Tricks of T sound 3 – What happens with T (or D) sound between two consonants

Hi everyone,

After the flap T, and glottal stop  let’s see what can happen with the T (or D) sound between two consonant sounds. Try to pronounce the word “exactly”. Its “official” pronunciation is /ɪgˈzæktli/. It means that the T sound should be pronounced but it’s not so easy, especially in quick everyday speech. So what happens in real everyday conversations, or even in formal situations? I have an easy job now. What I will do is only refer to one of Rachel’s recent videos.

Tricks of American T sound 2. – Glottal stop

In the previous post, I introduced the Flap T with the help of Jennifer’s video channel and I also mentioned Rachel’s and Mandy’s materials. It means that sound T can be pronounced as a soft D sound in specific situations (between vowels – or sound L and R, when it’s not stressed). T can be interesting in other occasions as well. You can hear something interesting when an American says these words: button, written, Clinton, mountain, fountain, sentence. In the dictionaries, you can see the “official” pronunciation of the “-ton”, “-ten” or “-tain” is /- tən/ or /-t^ən/ or /-tn/, but you can hear something else. This is called a glottal stop.

Tricks of American T sound - Flap T

I have a series on American English vowel sounds, but I think it’s important to speak about consonants as well. I would like to begin with the 'T' sound. If you have learned British English the American T sound can be very tricky for you as it can change in several ways. First of all I would like to speak about Flap T.  In American movies you can often hear the 'D' sound rather than the 'T' sound (like in water, or city). It is one of the characteristics of American English and it’s accepted even in formal speeches, however some teachers (even from the States) consider Flap T as lazy speech, but they’re not right at all. You can hear Flap T everywhere.

Today's idiom - Bend over backwards

Hi everyone,

After learning the idioms spill the beans, and pay through the nose  we’re going to speak about the idiom ”bend over backwards”. As I mentioned before, learning the idioms is a great adventure. I can’t show you all the idioms, I can show you some of them, in addition I can recommend some sources that can help you learn them.

Suit vs soot – Other OO and Other U sounds

Hi everyone,

Some weeks ago we began to work on American English sounds in pairs. We learned the difference between ‘sheep and ship’ (Long E – EE – and Short I – IH – Sounds) , and between ‘cattle and kettle’ (Short A – AA – and Short E –EH –sounds) . We also learned that in American English, long vowels are NOT consequently longer than short vowels. Long and short vowels are simply the names that have been used for naming them for ages. 

In this article, we will compare the other OO and other U sounds. I have to add that if you only read my article, it’s probably not enough. If you want to learn this topic entirely, you should visit the materials that I recommend you. Let’s get started.

Interview with Jaime Miller - TOEFL teacher

Hi everyone,

In my former blog posts, I was writing about Jaime Miller. First, when I summarized my TOEFL experience. Second, when I introduced her excellent right notes course. And now I'm very happy because Jaime gave me the possibility to conduct an interview with her. I hope you'll like it and maybe some of you feel like visiting Jaime's website, youtube  channel or even working with her.

Update - please visit my other interviews as well: Gardeniafly and Kate. Both of them from Georgia, USA.

So, let's meet Jaime.

 -     Hi, Jaime. Thank you very much for this interview. Let’s begin with your studies. When and where did you graduate from university? 

-       I graduated from a school called Lewis & Clark in Portland, Oregon. It was in May, 2008. It was five years ago.

-       What kind of faculty did you attend?

-       I studied History mostly.