In Vowels^x, Accent Training^x

Hmm, can I answer even though I am not a native speaker? I would say "thee eagle" because I learned to pronounce it "thee" before vowel sounds. Words like "university" and "wall" don't really start with a vowel sound, but with "semivowels", I...

First of all, you need some grammar too, because I noticed typical Asian mistakes, or non native constructions anyway.Here's the best tips I can give you:1 - Get a grammar book, and read it, learning the most common structures. "English grammar in use" by Cambridge University Press...

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

Oh! I didn't know of that thread! It's about different kinds of schwas... I wanted to open a thread like that too, but then I thought "It's gonna be a mess to discuss that", so I didn't post. So I see it's not only me that thinks there are a lot of "schwas", or "reduced sounds". Some people just...

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 it's not complete) after L and N, for example in...

Hi, yes, there are books that deal with stress, intonation, and pronunciation. I've read "American Accent Training" by Ann Cook. There's really a lot of stuff in that book (and on the 5 CDs). I haven't tried any other books anyway, so I can only tell you about that one. It treats American...

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 they sound the same?" This is similar to your p/b...

Hi, I'm having trouble with diphthongs, especially those in words like nice and down. Diphthongs consists of two vowels, so we will consider the first diphthong as /ai/ (nice /nais/), and the second as /au/ (down /daun/). Let's consider /ai/ (as in nice, like and I), which sound is /i/ in...