Exercise 4-6: Rule 4: Held T before end The held T is, strictly speaking, not really a T at all. 1. He's forgotten the carton of satin mittens. 2. She's certain that he has written it. 3. The cotton curtain is not in the fountain. 4. The hikers went...
Exercise 4-5: Rule 3 Bottom of the Staircase T at the bottom of a staircase is in the held position. 1. She hit the hot hut with her hat. 2. We went to that 'Net site to get what we needed. 3. Pat was quite right, wasn't she? 4. What? Put my hat back...
Exercise 4-4: Rule 2 Middle of the Staircase An unstressed T in the middle of a staircase between two vowel sounds should be pronounced as a soft D. Betty bought a bit of better butter. Pat ought to sit on a lap. Read the following sentences out loud...
Exercise 3-6: Reading the Sound When you read the following schwa paragraph, try clenching your teeth the first time. It won't sound completely natural, but it will get rid of all of the excess lip and jaw movement and force your tongue to work harde...
Exercise 3-1 : Word-by-Word and in a Sentence that He said th't it's OK. than It's bigger th'n before as 'z soon'z he gets here... at Look' t the time! and ham'n eggs have Where h'v you been had He h'd been at home. can C'n you do it Exercise 3-2: Fi...
Liaison Rule 3: Vowel Vowel When a word ending in a vowel sound is next to one beginning with a vowel sound, they are connected with a glide between the two vowels. A glide is either a slight y sound or a slight w sound. How do you know which one to...
Chapter 2 Word Connections As mentioned in the previous chapter, in American English, words are not pronounced one by one. Usually, the end of one word attaches to the beginning of the next word. This is also true for initials, numbers, and spelling....
Chapter 1 American Intonation The American Speech Music 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, whe...
Syllable Stress Syllable Count Intonation Patterns In spoken English, if you stress the wrong syllable, you can totally lose the meaning of a word: MA-sheen is hardly recognizable as ma-SHEEN or machine. At this point, we won't be concerned with why...
Statement Versus Question Intonation You may have learned at some point that questions have a rising intonation. They do, but usually a question will step upward until the very end, where it takes one quick little downward step. A question rises a li...
