101 Read This First
102 A Few Words On Pronunciation
104 The American Speech Music
105 Exercise 1-1: Rubber Band Practice with Nonsense Syllables
106 Staircase Intonation
107 Statement Intonation with Nouns
108 Statement Intonation with Pronouns
109 Exercise 1-3; Noun and Pronoun Intonation
110 Statement Versus Question Intonation
Emotional or Rhetorical Question Intonation
112 Exercise 1-5: Four Main Reasons for Intonation
113 Exercise 1-6: Pitch and Meaning Change
114 Exercise 1-7: Individual Practice
115 Exercise 1-8: Meaning of "Pretty"
116 Exercise 1-9: Inflection
117 Exercise 1-10; Individual Practice
118 Exercise 1-11: Translation
120 Exercise 1-13: Variable Stress
122 Application of Intonation
123 Exercise 1 -15: Application of Stress
124 How You Talk Indicates to People How You Are
126 Exercise 1-17: Staircase Intonation Practice
127 Exercise 1-18: Reading with Staircase Intonation
128 Exercise 1-19: Spelling and Numbers
129 Exercise 1-20; Sound/Meaning Shifts
130 Exercise 1-21: Squeezed-Out Syllables
131 Syllable Stress Syllable Count Intonation Patterns
132 Exercise 1-22: Syllable Patterns
133 Exercise 1-23：Syllable Count Test
134 Word Count Intonation Patterns
135 Exercise 1-24: Single-Word Phrases
Two-Word Phrases
136 Descriptive Phrases
137 Exercise 1-25: Sentence Stress with Descriptive Phrases
138 Exercise 1 -26: Two Types of Descriptive Phrases
139 Exercise 1-27: Descriptive Phrase Story—The Ugly Duckling
141 Exercise 1-28: Sentence Stress with Set Phrases
143 Exercise 1-30: Set Phrase Story—The Little Match Girl
144 Exercise 1-31: Contrasting Descriptive and Set Phrases
145 Exercise 1-32: Two-Word Stress
101 Read this first
Welcome to American Accent Training. CD1 track 1 录音下载
This book and CD set is designed to get you started on your American accent. We'll follow the
book and go through the 13 lessons and all the exercises step by step. Everything is explained
and a complete Answer Key may be found in the back of the text.
What Is Accent?
Accent is a combination of three main components: intonation (speech music), liaisons (word
connections), and pronunciation (the spoken sounds of vowels, consonants, and combinations).
As you go along, you'll notice that you're being asked to look at accent in a different way.
You'll also realize that the grammar you studied before and this accent you're studying now are
completely different. Part of the difference is that grammar and vocabulary are systematic and
structured— the letter of the language. Accent, on the other hand, is free form, intuitive, and
creative— more the spirit of the language. So, thinking of music, feeling, and flow, let your
mouth relax into the American accent.
Can I Learn a New Accent?
Can a person actually learn a new accent? Many people feel that after a certain age, it's just not
possible. Can classical musicians play jazz? If they practice, of course they can! For your
American accent, it's just a matter of learning and practicing techniques this book and CD set
will teach you. It is up to you to use them or not. How well you do depends mainly on how open
and willing you are to sounding different from the way you have sounded all your life.
A very important thing you need to remember is that you can use your accent to say what you mean and how you mean it. Word stress conveys meaning through tone or feeling, which can be much more important than the actual words that you use. We'll cover the expression of these feelings through intonation in the first lesson. You may have noticed that I talk fast and often run my words together. You've probably heard enough "English-teacher English"—where ... everything ...is ... pronounced without having to listen too carefully. That's why on the CDs we're going to talk just like the native speakers that we are, in a normal conversational tone.
Native speakers may often tell people who are learning English to "slow down" and to "speak
clearly." This is meant with the best of intentions, but it is exactly the opposite of what a
student really needs to do. If you speak fairly quickly and with strong intonation, you will be
understood more easily. To illustrate this point, you will hear a Vietnamese student first trying
to speak slowly and carefully and then repeating the same words quickly and with strong
intonation. Studying, this exercise took her only about two minutes to practice, but the
difference makes her sound as if she had been in America for many years.
Please listen. You will hear the same words twice. Hello, my name is Muoi. I'm taking American Accent Training.
You may have to listen to this CD a couple of times to catch everything. To help you, every word on the CD is also written in the book. By seeing and hearing simultaneously, you'll learn to reconcile the differences between the appearance of English (spelling) and the sound of English (pronunciation and the other aspects of accent). The CD leaves a rather short pause for you to repeat into. The point of this is to get you responding quickly and without spending too much time thinking about your response.
Accent versus Pronunciation Many people equate accent with pronunciation. I don't feel this to be true at all. America is a big country, and while the pronunciation varies from the East Coast to the West Coast, from the southern to the northern states, two components that are uniquely American stay basically the same—the speech music, or intonation, and the word connections or liaisons. Throughout this program, we will focus on them. In the latter part of the book we will work on pronunciation concepts, such as Cat? Caught? Cut? and Betty Bought a Bit of Better Butter; we also will work our way through some of the difficult sounds, such as TH, the American R, the L, V, and Z.
"Which Accent Is Correct?"
American Accent Training was created to help people "sound American" for lectures, interviews, teaching, business situations, and general daily communication. Although America has many regional pronunciation differences, the accent you will learn is that of standard American English as spoken and understood by the majority of educated native speakers in the United States. Don't worry that you will sound slangy or too casual because you most definitely won't. This is the way a professor lectures to a class, the way a national newscaster broadcasts, the way that is most comfortable and familiar to the majority of native speakers.
"Why Is My Accent So Bad?"
Learners can be seriously hampered by a negative outlook, so I'll address this very important point early. First, your accent is not bad; it is nonstandard to the American ear. There is a joke that goes: What do you call a person who can speak three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who can speak two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who can only speak one language? American. Every language is equally valid or good, so every accent is good. The average American, however, truly does have a hard time understanding a nonstandard accent. George Bernard Shaw said that the English and Americans are two people divided by the same language! Some students learn to overpronounce English because they naturally want to say the word as it is written. Too often an English teacher may allow this, perhaps thinking that colloquial American English is unsophisticated, unrefined, or even incorrect. Not so at all! Just as you don't say the T in listen, the TT in better is pronounced D, bedder. Any other pronunciation will sound foreign, strange, wrong, or different to a native speaker.
Less Than It Appears ... More Than It Appears
As you will see in Exercise 1-21, Squeezed-Out Syllables, on page 18, some words appear to have three or more syllables, but all of them are not actually spoken. For example, business is not (bi/zi/ness), but rather (birz/ness). Just when you get used to eliminating whole syllables from words, you're going to come across other words that look as if they have only one syllable, but really need to be said with as many as three! In addition, the inserted syllables are filled with letters that are not in the written word. I'll give you two examples of this strange phenomenon. Pool looks like a nice, one-syllable word, but if you say it this way, at best, it will sound like pull, and at worst will be unintelligible to your listener. For clear comprehension, you need to say three syllables (pu/wuh/luh). Where did that W come from? It's certainly not written down anywhere, but it is there just as definitely as the P is there. The second example is a word like feel. If you say just the letters that you see, it will sound more like fill. You need to say (fee/yuh/luh). Is that really a Y? Yes. These mysterious semivowels are explained under Liaisons in Chapter 2. They can appear either inside a word as you have seen, or between words as you will learn.
Language Is Fluent and Fluid
Just like your own language, conversational English has a very smooth, fluid sound. Imagine that you are walking along a dry riverbed with your eyes closed. Every time you come to a rock, you trip over it, stop, continue, and trip over the next rock. This is how the average foreigner speaks English. It is slow, awkward, and even painful. Now imagine that you are a great river rushing through that same riverbed—rocks are no problem, are they? You just slide over and around them without ever breaking your smooth flow. It is this feeling that I want you to capture in English. Changing your old speech habits is very similar to changing from a stick shift to an automatic transmission. Yes, you continue to reach for the gearshift for a while and your foot still tries to find the clutch pedal, but this soon phases itself out. In the same way, you may still say "telephone call" (kohl) instead of (kahl) for a while, but this too will soon pass. You will also have to think about your speech more than you do now. In the same way that you were very aware and self-conscious when you first learned to drive, you will eventually relax and deal with the various components simultaneously.
A new accent is an adventure. Be bold! Exaggerate wildly! You may worry that Americans will laugh at you for putting on an accent, but I guarantee you, they won't even notice. They'll just think that you've finally learned to "talk right." Good luck with your new accent!
下一篇：A Few Words On Pronunciation
This book and CD set is designed to get you started on your American accent. We'll follow the
book and go through the 13 lessons and all the exercises step by step. Everything is explained
and a complete Answer Key may be found in the back of the text.
What Is Accent?
Accent is a combination of three main components: intonation (speech music), liaisons (word
connections), and pronunciation (the spoken sounds of vowels, consonants, and combinations).
As you go along, you'll notice that you're being asked to look at accent in a different way.
You'll also realize that the grammar you studied before and this accent you're studying now are
completely different. Part of the difference is that grammar and vocabulary are systematic and
structured— the letter of the language. Accent, on the other hand, is free form, intuitive, and
creative— more the spirit of the language. So, thinking of music, feeling, and flow, let your
mouth relax into the American accent.
Can I Learn a New Accent?
Can a person actually learn a new accent? Many people feel that after a certain age, it's just not
possible. Can classical musicians play jazz? If they practice, of course they can! For your
American accent, it's just a matter of learning and practicing techniques this book and CD set
will teach you. It is up to you to use them or not. How well you do depends mainly on how open
and willing you are to sounding different from the way you have sounded all your life.
A very important thing you need to remember is that you can use your accent to say what you mean and how you mean it. Word stress conveys meaning through tone or feeling, which can be much more important than the actual words that you use. We'll cover the expression of these feelings through intonation in the first lesson. You may have noticed that I talk fast and often run my words together. You've probably heard enough "English-teacher English"—where ... everything ...is ... pronounced without having to listen too carefully. That's why on the CDs we're going to talk just like the native speakers that we are, in a normal conversational tone.
Native speakers may often tell people who are learning English to "slow down" and to "speak
clearly." This is meant with the best of intentions, but it is exactly the opposite of what a
student really needs to do. If you speak fairly quickly and with strong intonation, you will be
understood more easily. To illustrate this point, you will hear a Vietnamese student first trying
to speak slowly and carefully and then repeating the same words quickly and with strong
intonation. Studying, this exercise took her only about two minutes to practice, but the
difference makes her sound as if she had been in America for many years.
Please listen. You will hear the same words twice. Hello, my name is Muoi. I'm taking American Accent Training.
You may have to listen to this CD a couple of times to catch everything. To help you, every word on the CD is also written in the book. By seeing and hearing simultaneously, you'll learn to reconcile the differences between the appearance of English (spelling) and the sound of English (pronunciation and the other aspects of accent). The CD leaves a rather short pause for you to repeat into. The point of this is to get you responding quickly and without spending too much time thinking about your response.
Accent versus Pronunciation Many people equate accent with pronunciation. I don't feel this to be true at all. America is a big country, and while the pronunciation varies from the East Coast to the West Coast, from the southern to the northern states, two components that are uniquely American stay basically the same—the speech music, or intonation, and the word connections or liaisons. Throughout this program, we will focus on them. In the latter part of the book we will work on pronunciation concepts, such as Cat? Caught? Cut? and Betty Bought a Bit of Better Butter; we also will work our way through some of the difficult sounds, such as TH, the American R, the L, V, and Z.
"Which Accent Is Correct?"
American Accent Training was created to help people "sound American" for lectures, interviews, teaching, business situations, and general daily communication. Although America has many regional pronunciation differences, the accent you will learn is that of standard American English as spoken and understood by the majority of educated native speakers in the United States. Don't worry that you will sound slangy or too casual because you most definitely won't. This is the way a professor lectures to a class, the way a national newscaster broadcasts, the way that is most comfortable and familiar to the majority of native speakers.
"Why Is My Accent So Bad?"
Learners can be seriously hampered by a negative outlook, so I'll address this very important point early. First, your accent is not bad; it is nonstandard to the American ear. There is a joke that goes: What do you call a person who can speak three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who can speak two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who can only speak one language? American. Every language is equally valid or good, so every accent is good. The average American, however, truly does have a hard time understanding a nonstandard accent. George Bernard Shaw said that the English and Americans are two people divided by the same language! Some students learn to overpronounce English because they naturally want to say the word as it is written. Too often an English teacher may allow this, perhaps thinking that colloquial American English is unsophisticated, unrefined, or even incorrect. Not so at all! Just as you don't say the T in listen, the TT in better is pronounced D, bedder. Any other pronunciation will sound foreign, strange, wrong, or different to a native speaker.
Less Than It Appears ... More Than It Appears
As you will see in Exercise 1-21, Squeezed-Out Syllables, on page 18, some words appear to have three or more syllables, but all of them are not actually spoken. For example, business is not (bi/zi/ness), but rather (birz/ness). Just when you get used to eliminating whole syllables from words, you're going to come across other words that look as if they have only one syllable, but really need to be said with as many as three! In addition, the inserted syllables are filled with letters that are not in the written word. I'll give you two examples of this strange phenomenon. Pool looks like a nice, one-syllable word, but if you say it this way, at best, it will sound like pull, and at worst will be unintelligible to your listener. For clear comprehension, you need to say three syllables (pu/wuh/luh). Where did that W come from? It's certainly not written down anywhere, but it is there just as definitely as the P is there. The second example is a word like feel. If you say just the letters that you see, it will sound more like fill. You need to say (fee/yuh/luh). Is that really a Y? Yes. These mysterious semivowels are explained under Liaisons in Chapter 2. They can appear either inside a word as you have seen, or between words as you will learn.
Language Is Fluent and Fluid
Just like your own language, conversational English has a very smooth, fluid sound. Imagine that you are walking along a dry riverbed with your eyes closed. Every time you come to a rock, you trip over it, stop, continue, and trip over the next rock. This is how the average foreigner speaks English. It is slow, awkward, and even painful. Now imagine that you are a great river rushing through that same riverbed—rocks are no problem, are they? You just slide over and around them without ever breaking your smooth flow. It is this feeling that I want you to capture in English. Changing your old speech habits is very similar to changing from a stick shift to an automatic transmission. Yes, you continue to reach for the gearshift for a while and your foot still tries to find the clutch pedal, but this soon phases itself out. In the same way, you may still say "telephone call" (kohl) instead of (kahl) for a while, but this too will soon pass. You will also have to think about your speech more than you do now. In the same way that you were very aware and self-conscious when you first learned to drive, you will eventually relax and deal with the various components simultaneously.
A new accent is an adventure. Be bold! Exaggerate wildly! You may worry that Americans will laugh at you for putting on an accent, but I guarantee you, they won't even notice. They'll just think that you've finally learned to "talk right." Good luck with your new accent!
下一篇：A Few Words On Pronunciation
102 A Few Words On Pronunciation
A Few Words On Pronunciation CD 1 track 2 录音下载
I'd like to introduce you to the pronunciation guide outlines in the following chart. There aren't too many characters that are different from the standard alphabet, but just so you'll
be familiar with them, look at the chart. It shows eight tense vowels and six lax vowels and semivowels.
Tense Vowels? Lax Vowels? In some books, tense vowels are called long and lax vowels are called short. Since you will be learning how to lengthen vowels when they come before a voiced consonant, it would be confusing to say that hen has a long, short vowel. It is more descriptive to say that it has a lax vowel that is doubled or lengthened.
Tense Vowels ..................................... Lax Vowels
Symbol Sound Spelling Example ... Symbol Sound Spelling Example
ā εi take [tak] ...................................... ε eh get [gεt]
ē ee eat [et] ......................................... i ih it [it]
ī i ice [is] ........................................... ü ih + uh took [tük]
ō ou hope [hop] ................................ uh some [sm]
ū ooh smooth [smuth]
ah caught [kt] .................................. Semivowels
+ ε cat [kt] ................................................. r er her [hr]
o + o down [don] ..................................... l ul dull [dl]
Now you try it. Repeat after me.
Voiced Consonants? Unvoiced Consonants? A consonant is a sound that causes two points of your mouth to come into contact, in three locations—the lips, the tip of the tongue, and the throat. A consonant can either be unvoiced (whispered) or voiced (spoken), and it can appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. You'll notice that for some categories, a particular sound doesn't exist in English.
上一篇：Read this first
下一篇：The American Speech Music
I'd like to introduce you to the pronunciation guide outlines in the following chart. There aren't too many characters that are different from the standard alphabet, but just so you'll
be familiar with them, look at the chart. It shows eight tense vowels and six lax vowels and semivowels.
Tense Vowels? Lax Vowels? In some books, tense vowels are called long and lax vowels are called short. Since you will be learning how to lengthen vowels when they come before a voiced consonant, it would be confusing to say that hen has a long, short vowel. It is more descriptive to say that it has a lax vowel that is doubled or lengthened.
Tense Vowels ..................................... Lax Vowels
Symbol Sound Spelling Example ... Symbol Sound Spelling Example
ā εi take [tak] ...................................... ε eh get [gεt]
ē ee eat [et] ......................................... i ih it [it]
ī i ice [is] ........................................... ü ih + uh took [tük]
ō ou hope [hop] ................................ uh some [sm]
ū ooh smooth [smuth]
ah caught [kt] .................................. Semivowels
+ ε cat [kt] ................................................. r er her [hr]
o + o down [don] ..................................... l ul dull [dl]
Now you try it. Repeat after me.
Voiced Consonants? Unvoiced Consonants? A consonant is a sound that causes two points of your mouth to come into contact, in three locations—the lips, the tip of the tongue, and the throat. A consonant can either be unvoiced (whispered) or voiced (spoken), and it can appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. You'll notice that for some categories, a particular sound doesn't exist in English.
上一篇：Read this first
下一篇：The American Speech Music
104 The American Speech Music
Chapter 1 American Intonation
The American Speech Music CD 1 Track 4 录音下载
What to Do with Your Mouth to Sound American One of the main differences between the way an American talks and the way the rest of the world talks is that we don't really move our lips. (So, when an American says, "Read my lips!" what does he really mean?) We create most of our sounds in the throat, using our tongue very actively. If you hold your fingers over your lips or clench your jaws when you practice speaking American English, you will find yourself much closer to native-sounding speech than if you try to pronounce every ... single ... sound ... very ... carefully.
If you can relate American English to music, remember that the indigenous music is jazz. Listen to their speech music, and you will hear that Americans have a melodic, jazzy way of producing sounds. Imagine the sound of a cello when you say, Beddy bada bida beader budder (Betty bought a bit of better butter) and you'll be close to the native way of saying it.
Because most Americans came from somewhere else, American English reflects the accent contributions of many lands. The speech music has become much more exaggerated than British English, developing a strong and distinctive intonation. If you use this intonation, not only will you be easier to understand, but you will sound much more confident, dynamic, and persuasive.
Intonation, or speech music, is the sound that you hear when a conversation is too far away to be clearly audible but close enough for you to tell the nationality of the speakers. The American intonation dictates liaisons and pronunciation, and it indicates mood and meaning. Without intonation, your speech would be flat, mechanical, and very confusing for your listener.
What is the American intonation pattern? How is it different from other languages? Foa egzampuru, eefu you hea ah Jahpahneezu pahsohn speakingu Ingurishu, the sound would be very choppy, mechanical, and unemotional to an American. Za sem vey vis Cheuman pipples, it sounds too stiff. A mahn frohm Paree ohn zee ahzer ahnd, eez intonashon goes up at zee end ov evree sentence, and has such a strong intonation that he sounds romantic and highly emotional, but this may not be appropriate for a lecture or a business meeting in English.
American Intonation Do's and Don'ts Do Not Speak Word by Word
+ Do not speak word by word.
If you speak word by word, as many people who learned "printed" English do, you'll end up sounding mechanical and foreign. You may have noticed the same thing happens in your own language: When someone reads a speech, even a native speaker, it sounds stiff and stilted, quite different from a normal conversational tone.
+ Connect words to form sound groups.
This is where you're going to start doing something completely different than what you have done in your previous English studies. This part is the most difficult for many people because it goes against everything they've been taught. Instead of thinking of each word as a unit, think of sound units. These sound units may or may not correspond to a word written on a page. Native speakers don't say Bob is on the phone, but say [bbizn the foun]. Sound units make a sentence flow smoothly, like peanut butter— never really ending and never really starting, just flowing along. Even chunky peanut butter is acceptable. So long as you don't try to put plain peanuts directly onto your bread, you'll be OK.
+ Use staircase intonation.
Let those sound groups floating on the wavy river in the figure flow downhill and you'll get the staircase. Staircase intonation not only gives you that American sound, it also makes you sound much more confident. Not every American uses the downward staircase. A certain segment of the population uses rising staircases—generally, teenagers on their way to a shopping mall: "Hi, my name is Tiffany. I live in La Canada. I'm on the pep squad."
What Exactly Is Staircase Intonation?
In saying your words, imagine that they come out as if they were bounding lightly down a flight of stairs. Every so often, one jumps up to another level, and then starts down again. Americans tend to stretch out their sounds longer than you may think is natural. So to lengthen your vowel sounds, put them on two stairsteps instead of just one.
We're here.
We
///////// 're
///////// ///////// he
///////// ///////// ///////// re.
///////// ///////// ///////// /////////
The sound of an American speaking a foreign language is very distinctive, because we double sounds that should be single. For example, in Japanese or Spanish, the word no is, to our ear, clipped or abbreviated.
No
/////////
Clipped
No ///////// ou
///////// /////////
Standard American
When you have a word ending in an unvoiced consonant—one that you "whisper" (t, k, s, x, f, sh)—you will notice that the preceding vowel is said quite quickly, and on a single stairstep. When a word ends in a vowel or a voiced consonant—one that you "say" (b, d, g, z, v, zh, j), the preceding vowel is said more slowly, and on a double stairstep.
seat ////////////
Unvoiced
see ///////// eed
///////// /////////
Voiced
There are two main consequences of not doubling the second category of words: Either your listener will hear the wrong word, or even worse, you will always sound upset.
Consider that the words curt, short, terse, abrupt, and clipped all literally mean short. When applied to a person or to language, they take on the meaning of upset or rude. For example, in the expressions "His curt reply ...," "Her terse response...'' or "He was very short with me" all indicate a less than sunny situation.
上一篇：A Few Words On Pronunciation
下一篇：Rubber Band Practice with Nonsense Syllables
The American Speech Music CD 1 Track 4 录音下载
What to Do with Your Mouth to Sound American One of the main differences between the way an American talks and the way the rest of the world talks is that we don't really move our lips. (So, when an American says, "Read my lips!" what does he really mean?) We create most of our sounds in the throat, using our tongue very actively. If you hold your fingers over your lips or clench your jaws when you practice speaking American English, you will find yourself much closer to native-sounding speech than if you try to pronounce every ... single ... sound ... very ... carefully.
If you can relate American English to music, remember that the indigenous music is jazz. Listen to their speech music, and you will hear that Americans have a melodic, jazzy way of producing sounds. Imagine the sound of a cello when you say, Beddy bada bida beader budder (Betty bought a bit of better butter) and you'll be close to the native way of saying it.
Because most Americans came from somewhere else, American English reflects the accent contributions of many lands. The speech music has become much more exaggerated than British English, developing a strong and distinctive intonation. If you use this intonation, not only will you be easier to understand, but you will sound much more confident, dynamic, and persuasive.
Intonation, or speech music, is the sound that you hear when a conversation is too far away to be clearly audible but close enough for you to tell the nationality of the speakers. The American intonation dictates liaisons and pronunciation, and it indicates mood and meaning. Without intonation, your speech would be flat, mechanical, and very confusing for your listener.
What is the American intonation pattern? How is it different from other languages? Foa egzampuru, eefu you hea ah Jahpahneezu pahsohn speakingu Ingurishu, the sound would be very choppy, mechanical, and unemotional to an American. Za sem vey vis Cheuman pipples, it sounds too stiff. A mahn frohm Paree ohn zee ahzer ahnd, eez intonashon goes up at zee end ov evree sentence, and has such a strong intonation that he sounds romantic and highly emotional, but this may not be appropriate for a lecture or a business meeting in English.
American Intonation Do's and Don'ts Do Not Speak Word by Word
+ Do not speak word by word.
If you speak word by word, as many people who learned "printed" English do, you'll end up sounding mechanical and foreign. You may have noticed the same thing happens in your own language: When someone reads a speech, even a native speaker, it sounds stiff and stilted, quite different from a normal conversational tone.
+ Connect words to form sound groups.
This is where you're going to start doing something completely different than what you have done in your previous English studies. This part is the most difficult for many people because it goes against everything they've been taught. Instead of thinking of each word as a unit, think of sound units. These sound units may or may not correspond to a word written on a page. Native speakers don't say Bob is on the phone, but say [bbizn the foun]. Sound units make a sentence flow smoothly, like peanut butter— never really ending and never really starting, just flowing along. Even chunky peanut butter is acceptable. So long as you don't try to put plain peanuts directly onto your bread, you'll be OK.
+ Use staircase intonation.
Let those sound groups floating on the wavy river in the figure flow downhill and you'll get the staircase. Staircase intonation not only gives you that American sound, it also makes you sound much more confident. Not every American uses the downward staircase. A certain segment of the population uses rising staircases—generally, teenagers on their way to a shopping mall: "Hi, my name is Tiffany. I live in La Canada. I'm on the pep squad."
What Exactly Is Staircase Intonation?
In saying your words, imagine that they come out as if they were bounding lightly down a flight of stairs. Every so often, one jumps up to another level, and then starts down again. Americans tend to stretch out their sounds longer than you may think is natural. So to lengthen your vowel sounds, put them on two stairsteps instead of just one.
We're here.
We
///////// 're
///////// ///////// he
///////// ///////// ///////// re.
///////// ///////// ///////// /////////
The sound of an American speaking a foreign language is very distinctive, because we double sounds that should be single. For example, in Japanese or Spanish, the word no is, to our ear, clipped or abbreviated.
No
/////////
Clipped
No ///////// ou
///////// /////////
Standard American
When you have a word ending in an unvoiced consonant—one that you "whisper" (t, k, s, x, f, sh)—you will notice that the preceding vowel is said quite quickly, and on a single stairstep. When a word ends in a vowel or a voiced consonant—one that you "say" (b, d, g, z, v, zh, j), the preceding vowel is said more slowly, and on a double stairstep.
seat ////////////
Unvoiced
see ///////// eed
///////// /////////
Voiced
There are two main consequences of not doubling the second category of words: Either your listener will hear the wrong word, or even worse, you will always sound upset.
Consider that the words curt, short, terse, abrupt, and clipped all literally mean short. When applied to a person or to language, they take on the meaning of upset or rude. For example, in the expressions "His curt reply ...," "Her terse response...'' or "He was very short with me" all indicate a less than sunny situation.
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