I don't fully understand what a contraction is. So if I put an 's, 'll, 'd, 've, etc after any word does it make it a contraction? Only in spoken English. But in written English, some contractions are not usually written that

AJ Hoge's "effortless english" is a waste of money. I made the mistake of buying it for a friend who doesn't speak much English and she doesn't even use it. I don't blame her because it takes a lot of effort to learn with

I want to ask 2 questions about pronunciation first: 1) Do Americans say /use- d / or /use- t / in used to? 2) I saw Ann Cook wrote this in American Accent course: If the first consonant is voiced, the next one will be as well. If the

Hi David, here you can find some stuff about American English. Vowels, consonants, lots of stuff... http://evaeaston.com/pr/home.html On that website there's also a link to this page, where the states are pronounced.

Hi again, I'm so sorry, I should have read CalifJim's post about T's a little more carefully before posting. I see that there's also a glottal stop after R's, so the t in "smart" or "cart" is held. I see that there's a glottal stop (but sometimes

I've heard British singers who tap their t's, pronounce the o's in "not, god, etc." like the "a" in "car", ect. Is that because they want to imitate an American Accent, then? Robbie Williams sings that way, he's British, so what kind of British

Hi, this is interesting, it reminds me of something I read in a book for improving pronunciation (the famous "American Accent Training"). The title of the paragraph is "Spoon or Sboon?" She (the author) say: "Say spoon. Now say sboon. Hear how

To tell you the truth, I've never heard any foreigner (unless they learned English when they were very young, or had lived in an English speaking country for at least a decade, and had extensive, and personalized accent coaching) ever be able to

I think the problem with his Standard American Accent is two fold- one, his native accent sneaks through a few times in the consonants as a few have pointed out. Secondly, and I think this is the deal breaker, he has some problems with stress

For the most part I agree. When a person here speaks in a Boston accent (for example) I would not consider their speech wrong unless they were trying to speak with something other than a Boston accent. Two of my favorite examples of accent