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

So in Webster words talk, caught and bought are written as ˈtȯk, ˈkȯt, ˈbȯt but I also read in some textbooks on General American English accent that those words are also pronounced as ˈtäk ˈkät ˈbät. So I don't know what pronunciation is

I don't use that website either because it seems to pronounce words with an annoying posh accent, and there are no phonetic transcriptions. I just need the transcription because I already have my way of pronouncing each phoneme, so I usually

Of course both those books have CD's. Without CD's those books would be worthless... Both books are especially about intonation, linking words, reduced sounds and something about pronunciation you can hardly find in books on American

Remember also that native English speakers' pronunciation varies depending on which part of the world they are from and which social group they belong to. yes, indeed. Dictionary.com has both "standard" British and American English

hmm, the problem is that your native phonology is acting as filter. Work with some accent reduction coach first; after that, try to grasp the phology of spoken American English. Work on stress, rhythm, connected speech and intonation.

Hi Tom My pronunciation of "maximum" is apparently a little more "staccato" than yours, and there is definitely no Z sound. I might represent my pronunciation this way: macks-ih-mum The pronunciation in the M-W dictionary

Hi Kooyeen I have never concentrated on learning any particular variety of English because it has always been my objective to acquire as good a command of the languagae as possible. Limiting my efforts to just one variety would constitute a

Weird problem. I'd just like to hear as many opinions as possible. I have learned a lot of stuff about pronunciation, and I like to learn as much as possible, to keep improving my English. However, I have never seriously practiced spoken English,

You are also right on me not being a native speaker. If I may ask, how did you find out? I cheated. I didn't hear it, I read it. Anyway, as I said, if I hadn't known that, I would not have thought you were a non-native speaker of English,