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.

 

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.

Cattle vs kettle - Short A (AA) and Short E (EH) sounds

Hi,

Earlier in this blog, after the classification of American English vowels, we began to work on the vowels in pairs. In this series, we were speaking about the /i/ (Long E - EE) and /ı/ (Short I – IH)sounds. And now we’re going to learn about the /æ/ (Short A - AA)  and /ɛ/ (Short E – EH) sounds. The methods we will use will be similar. We’re going through some useful materials from Rachel’s website and video channel, and we will talk about Mandy’spronuncian.com and her excellent podcast. There are many good teachers who concentrate on American English pronunciation, but in my opinion Rachel and Mandy are the best.

The Challenge of English Pronunciation and Spelling

Hi everyone,

Welcome back. Now let’s begin to work seriously. For this post, I'll write about some methods that show the pronunciation of English words in written form. At the same time, I would like to talk about the wall that was built in my brain as a consequence of my first English teacher. Later, other teachers were able to demolish this hindering wall. I'll try to connect different methods with my personal experiences.

Merry Christmas

Hi everyone,

For today, I’m writing you a short entry. It’s a special Christmas edition! I know that many people don’t celebrate Christmas, but I hope I won’t offend anyone with this post. I’m spending these days with my family. Before going on their winter holiday, Rachel and Mandy published special Christmas videos or podcasts.

Mandy's Pronuncian.com

Hi everyone,

In the second blog post, I introduced Rachel’s English. Now it’s time to introduce another excellent site, that I like very much. It is Mandy's Pronuncian.com.  Mandy’s target is to teach pronunciation. However, she uses methods that are different from Rachel’s ones.