The difference between the English accent from the American. Learn English pronunciation

Speaking pure English for a foreigner is the result of painstaking work that can be achieved if you follow the advice of linguists. Before mastering the phonetic subtleties of pronunciation, decide what standard you want to achieve: American (GenAm) or British (RP). The first is easier to learn and easier to learn in practice. British is considered the most complex, with many sound nuances, intonation features. By the way, not every Briton has an ideal pronunciation.

How to speak English without emphasis - engage, engage and engage. This is the same work as sports: building muscle is possible only as a result of training. With the speech apparatus, the situation is synonymous. In this article, we have gathered useful tips and advice from linguists to help you achieve pure American or British pronunciation.

How to learn to speak English correctly

Do you think how to get rid of the Russian accent in English and develop a British pronunciation? Learn 10 useful tips with which you can build a competent system of classes. Each of the points is part of a training complex based on theory and practice, combined into a single whole.

Before you start working on English pronunciation, we’ll give you one fact that can to some extent encourage and reassure you. Not everyone succeeds in learning the British accent. Only owners of a unique talent for sound imitation can speak English without a Russian accent. If your speech abilities are standard, do not strive for the ideal - it is very difficult to achieve it.

10 tips to learn how to pronounce English correctly

Strive for British English pronunciation - use authentic study guides, audio and video recordings from native speakers. Look for materials without interpretation, choose authors born in Great Britain.

• The ideal option is to download or buy textbooks from Cambridge or Oxford. Students from all over the world are engaged in it, who carefully work on their pronunciation in English. Want to hear what language the British speak - watch live broadcasts and programs of the BBC channel. Hosts, studio guests, reporting heroes are real native speakers who will help you learn how to speak like an Englishman. Become an attentive viewer, listen to words and intonations, memorize speech features, phrase structures;

  Do not be shy of your voice, pronounce words and phrases out loud. Doing according to the textbook - reinforce classes with oral speech, turn on audio recordings and pronounce what you heard, trying to repeat the necessary intonations and stresses in words. This is one of the effective ways to train your English pronunciation. Watch the video - memorize phrases, put on a stop and pronounce phrases and sentences. So it will be easier for you to understand and master the speech subtleties of the language.

  And your way of speaking English, where from?

  A Texas star that shows accent well is Matthew McConaughey. Some films in which you can see the southern accent are Dallas Trade Club, Gangster Love, and Sweet Home. As you saw, there are several ways to speak English. Now, have you stopped thinking with what “dialect” your English-speaking way looks like?

  There are some differences between American English and British English. Make sure there is no risk. Some people say they prefer to study American English in language courses because it is easier for them or because their sonority is easier to identify. And there are those who say the exact opposite.

How to speak English with a British accent, cleanly and competently?

In this case, intonation is very important, its absence, an overabundance or inappropriate use will betray a foreigner in you, will be perceived rudely and not organically. Listen to the speech of native speakers and remember every accent and phonetic features with accuracy to sound. Pay attention to exclamatory and interrogative sentences - emphasis on words in a British English accent is completely different than in Russian. One way to train your pronunciation in English and put a British accent is to memorize phrases.

You need to start gradually, with short sentences, then move on to the quatrains, and when the memory is trained, you can memorize passages from the text. This technique develops a language habit, helps the vocal apparatus to reproduce sounds correctly, to achieve British pronunciation. Memorization also enriches the vocabulary, fills with new phrases and speech turns.

The surefire way to learn how to pronounce English words with a British accent is to practice constantly. Only in this way can you achieve the expected result.

In learning a language, one of the main points that is most difficult to achieve is correctly placed accents, speech intonations and semantic stresses in sentences. Linguists recommend listening more to how the English speak and repeating, imitating every sound.

Communicate in English with family and friends, find interested online conversations. Watch movies, programs and retell what you saw - work on the speech apparatus should not stop. This is one of the most effective methods for achieving perfect English pronunciation without an accent.

Many modern online learning programs include the ability to communicate with a native speaker via Skype. This is a great way to absorb the speech features of English, hear the correct intonations and understand at what level you yourself are. Such classes in a free conversation format will allow you to adjust the acquired practical skills, correct mistakes in time, clean up speech and remove the Russian accent in English.

At the training stage, focus on the dictionary. It should be your handbook. Unsure of a specific phonetic passage - check the transcription and remember it. Take this pattern of action as a habit.

Remember, mistakes are more difficult to correct than trying to prevent them. Complicated words have appeared that you can’t remember in any way - write them down in a notebook and periodically pronounce them. How to develop an English pronunciation and make a British accent - you will be helped by attentiveness, diligence and a competent dictionary base.

• Before embarking on a speech training, decide which standards are closer to you and what you want to achieve as a result.. American and British pronunciation are different. The second is considered primordial, ideal, which aspire students Cambridge and Oxford. The American standard implies somewhat facilitated transcriptions, phonetics is simpler, easier to learn. But if you are still looking for a way to achieve a British accent, you need to focus on the RP standard;

  Record your voice. For the first time, your own speech may even seem funny and strange, but you will quickly get used to it. The main task on the way how to train a purely English pronunciation is to speak more. Build the lesson as follows: first turn on the audio recording, remember the phrases and play them out loud, and then record yourself on the recorder and listen to what happened. So you can easily compare the native speaker’s speech with your own and understand where the weaknesses are, what you should pay special attention to;

  On these sites. The channel specializes in business English.

  • Private English Portal - Steve Ford lives in Canada.
  • His specialty is tips for representatives from different countries.

  Many people were taught incorrectly at school. Popular pronunciation errors - How do you pronounce a bow? Gill is a very experienced teacher. In this video, she presents the mistakes that most students usually make.

  The most common mistakes in the pronunciation of words - in your videos, Alex is trying to recreate a real cool environment. In this particular case, he brings some words, the pronunciation of which is often more difficult for most students. Even if you have studied grammar well and always studied vocabulary, this is not enough to be able to speak as a native speaker. There are many dialects, slang and typical expressions in the United States and Great Britain that are very difficult to understand.

One of the surest ways to achieve British pronunciation is to find yourself in a linguistic environment, go to the UK. The option that linguists recommend is a language camp. Programs focus on different ages and levels of knowledge. Also, depending on financial capabilities, you can choose the length of stay. Strive for independence and do not want to push yourself into the framework - organize a trip for yourself with a family.

But the language base should be at a confident conversational level. Favorable exchange formats are available for students today.

English language: rules and errors

Language is prone to change. Modern English has incorporated new features that have appeared due to speech borrowings, new discoveries and phenomena that technological progress gives us. Everything that happens around us is reflected in our speech. Language is a flexible structure that is constantly evolving.

Perhaps this may seem absurd, but one of the methods of formation was the pronunciation error. This fact should please foreigners, because even native British often pronounce words incorrectly, and over time it becomes the norm. Consider the errors that went into the dictionary in a completely different status.

Result of “Redeployment”

This term means separating a part of a word and attaching it to the previous one, standing side by side in a phrase. One such example is the words umpire (judge) and adder (viper). Previously, the first letter of these words was “n”. But when pronouncing it seemed that the sound “n” did not belong to the word, but joined to “a”: an adder. And this mistake was not made by foreigners, but by true native speakers. The phenomenon was massive and as a result became normative, “n” disappeared forever.

Metathesis

In philology, this is called a change of position - when the letters fall into other places, the rotation is mirrored. This phenomenon occurs due to speech adaptation by native speakers, when frequently used words become more convenient for pronunciation. Here are some examples: the horse used to be hros - now the horse; originally a bird - brid, today - bird; Dozens of years ago, the wasp was pronounced waps, according to modern standards - wasp. You confuse letters in words - do not be embarrassed, this phenomenon is characteristic even of the British.

Syncope

In other words, this is extinction. In Russian, a similar phenomenon also takes place. An example from English in which the letter disappeared from spoken language is Wednesday, in the modern pronunciation, the letter “d” from the first syllable is swallowed and it turns out Wensday. This is one of the oldest words that originates in paganism. The ancient Britons, the heart of the week - Wednesday - were named after Odin, one of the Scandinavian gods. With “Christmas” the situation is synonymous, “t” is not pronounced.

Epenthesis

This philological term means sound mutations, when an additional appears in a series of established phonemes. A similar phenomenon is explained by the physiological features of the structure of the speech apparatus. Each language has words that are very uncomfortable to pronounce. One of the most common examples of epenthesis is the appearance of a consonant between nasal and non-nasal sounds. For example: today thunder is thunder, and earlier thuner; empty we say “empty”, and before that the word did not have “t” - “emty”.

The language is changing

Or in the language of philology - velarization, change of position during pronunciation. This, first of all, concerns the sound “l”, which often gives out to foreigners. There are a number of words in which “l” should be spoken as softly as possible, shifting the tip of the tongue up, lifting the back part. Example: in “walk” and “folk” the sound “l” becomes very similar to “w”.

Affricates

This is not a brotherhood of meerkat gophers, but a serious philological phenomenon, which has recently been more and more found in English. The modern generation is trying to simplify phonemes and make them readable. So, for example, the word “tune” is pronounced today without “y” after “t”, the same goes for “duke” and “tutor”.

When studying English, try to communicate with live native speakers who use words with actual pronunciation in speech. This applies to the American standard, the British are conservative, not prone to rapid changes.

To summarize

There are many ways to get to speak English without an accent. But each of the methods must be supported by practice:

• Active communication.  Only live speech helps to effectively absorb new phrases and phrases, memorize words and their intonations;

  Listen to others and yourself.  Carefully master each stress and semantic accent, try to convey them in your speech. Record yourself on a voice recorder - this way you will understand your weaknesses and be able to correct mistakes in a timely manner;

  Be guided by the dictionary and check transcriptions. Unsure of the pronunciation of a particular word - ask for help for help, don't get used to saying it wrong.

If you want to achieve spoken English without an accent - find a good teacher who will help at all stages of your language formation.

The accents that are characteristic of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales differ from each other, and over time you can start to speak one of them in such a way that you will be mistaken for a local resident. Along with emphasis, there are manners that you should learn, as it is no less important. Here you will find instructions for correct english speech  or the so-called "Oxford pronunciation" (RP), common in South England and Wales, but almost never used in modern Britain, but there is a stereotype among foreigners that the British say that. Learning RP is mostly about pronunciation, while standard language learning also includes spelling, official vocabulary, and style.

Steps

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Please note that there are words that are written and pronounced the same way.  The word "herb" must be pronounced with the sound N. The word "been" is pronounced as "bean", not "bin" or "ben". In RP, “Again” and “renaissance” are pronounced “a gain” and “run nay sänce”, while “ai” sounds like the word “pain”, and not like “said”. Words with the endings of "body" are pronounced the same way as they are written, that is, it is correct to say "any body", and not "any buddy". But you should use a short British sound O.

Keep in mind that the letter H  pronounce not  is always.  "H" is pronounced in the word "herb", unlike the American version erb. However, in many British accents H  at the beginning of a word it is often omitted, for example, in many northern accents and in the Cockney accent.

Say bean, not bin when you say been.   In the American accent often pronounce bin. In an English accent, the usual option is beenbut in everyday speech one can often hear “bin”, especially without stress.

Please note that two or more vowels standing side by side can form an additional syllable.  For example, usually the word "road" is pronounced as rohdbut in Wales, some social groups in Northern Ireland can pronounce it as ro.ord. Some people even say reh-uud.

Part 6

Listen to the "music" of the language.  All accents and dialects have a special sound. Pay attention to the tones and stresses of the British. Sentences usually end on a high note, on the same or with an increase? How does the tone change in a regular sentence? There is a huge difference in tonality in different areas of the country. English speech, especially RP, is usually not very different from American English throughout the sentence, except that toward the end of the sentence the tone decreases slightly. But in Liverpool and in the north-east of England, everything is completely different!

• For example, instead of saying “is he going to the STORE?”, Say “is he GOING to the store?” You should lower the tone near the end of the interrogative sentence, as opposed to raising the tone (increased tone is common in American and Australian English).

1. Ask the Briton to clearly state well-known sentences:  “How now brown cow” and “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain” and listen carefully. London-specific rounded vowels, such as “about,” are pronounced in Northern Ireland without lip rounding.

   Immerse yourself in English culture; that is, surround yourself with people who speak, live, walk and communicate in British English. This is the most reliable way to quickly learn to speak like a British. You will soon notice that your pronunciation has become much more diverse. You need to listen to English speech - listening to the BBC (free radio and television news releases on the Internet), songs of English singers or films in English is perfect.

• Along with the emphasis, pay attention to slang words such as lads  or blokes  instead of boys and men birds  or lasses  (in the north of England and Scotland) instead of women. Loo  denotes a toilet, and bathroom  - This is the room where they bathe.
• As with any accent, the best and fastest way to learn it is to listen to the native speakers and imitate them. Do not forget that when you were a child, you learned the language by listening, and then repeating the words, trying to imitate the accent.
• It's easier to learn accents by listening to people. The official British accent is often heard on BBC news. The official British speech is more clear and unhurried compared to the American one, but the announcers specifically reinforce these differences by reading the news on TV or radio.
• When you say “at all,” pronounce it as “a tall,” but with a British accent.
• Oxford pronunciation (RP) is not just called the Queen's English - listen to what Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II says. It would be nice to hear her speech in honor of the Official Opening of Parliament. She always makes a very long speech and you will have a great opportunity to watch this.
• Do not learn more than one accent at a time. Since Estuary English is very different from the dialect of the Newcastleans, you will get confused very easily.
• There are hundreds of different accents in the United Kingdom, so classifying them all as dialects of the British would be wrong; wherever you go, you will come across an incredible variety of reprimands.
• Be creative. Enjoy your activities. Expand your knowledge, not stopping there. Test your British accent while talking with your friends! They will tell you whether you succeeded or not!
• Many places have their own rules for using words. You will find many British terms in the British dictionary online. Keep in mind that behind the obvious differences between words like tap / faucet, pavement / sidewalk, there may be a different meaning, which at best will amuse the locals, and at worst, they will condescend to your attempts to adopt local words and phrases.
• If you visited England, then remember that the University of Oxford and Cambridge is one of the last havens of the traditional RP and the emphasis of the "English Queen." However, an increasing number of students speak dialects of different parts of not only Britain, but also the whole world, and natives of local cities and environs speak their (very characteristic) accents. They may even be offended if you decide what they say “like typical British”; do not believe the general error, thinking that the Oxford or Cambridge accent is the same as RP.
• Say each word clearly and distinctly, always keeping a pause between the words.
• Improve your British accent using the standard program of many schools around the world, "Learn the British accent-FAST!" - It is available online right now.
• Take a trip to the United Kingdom and listen to real live speech.
• Children have a better developed ability to perceive various sound frequencies, giving them the opportunity to distinguish and reproduce the sounds of the languages \u200b\u200bthat surround them. For better mastery of the accent, you should develop your hearing by listening to examples again and again.
• As soon as you understand the principle of work and begin to listen to British speech, try to read excerpts from works written in dialect. It will be interesting and will benefit you.
• If you want to hear a more modern version of this accent, check out a couple episodes of TV shows East End residents  and Fools are lucky. People continue to say so, especially the working class in east London and in parts of Essex and Kent, although this is more noticeable when talking to older people.
• Remember that the accents are Julie Andrews or Emma Watson (Hermione from the movie Harry Potter), who speak the correct pronunciation (RP), are very different from the accents of Jamie Oliver and Simon Cowell (Estuary English is probably the most common accent in Southern England, somewhere between Cockney and RP) or Bill Connolly (Glasgow).
• Always use British English words if they are different from American English. The British, as always, foresaw everything, even the differences. In particular, it is better to use rubbish and tap rather than trash and faucet. It is also better (but not necessary) to pronounce the word “schedule” with the prefix “sh_” rather than “sk_”, but you should learn to say “specialty” with five, not three syllables, as it is pronounced in Britain (spe-ci -al-i-ty).
• Having developed your hearing, you will speak on the machine. When you “hear” a sound, it will be easier for you to pronounce it.
• Another method of practicing English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish accents is to watch and follow some news anchor on any British news channel and repeat it. Daily half-hour viewing will greatly improve your speech in just a couple of weeks.
• If you are familiar with a native English speaker, ask him to tell you a couple of phrases so that you hear them and repeat them.
• Take care of your audience. If you want people to truly believe that you are British, you need to look deeper, because in different areas they speak differently, and you will have to work hard to achieve what you want.
• You may have heard the Cockney accent (East London). This accent is very unusual for the 21st century, but if you try to imitate it, keep in mind that London workers pronounce the words almost singing and almost always replace the vowels and remove the letters, that is, the word “i” will be heard in the word “change”. Films based on Dickens books, such as “My Fair Lady,” may contain examples of such accents.

Warnings

• Do not overestimate yourself, thinking that can speak with a good British accent. It is very difficult to learn to speak at the level of a native speaker.
• Do not think that you will be able to master the accent too quickly. Most likely, the native Briton will immediately understand you, but foreigners can also believe you.
• You do not need to narrow your lips too much when you pronounce the words with the letter “A”, for example shark  or chance. Otherwise, it may seem that you have a South African accent.

What do you need

• CD player, several British accent discs
• You can also watch the BBC Learning English website.
• Record a British accent, open it in windows media player and set it to slow playback. This will help you quickly master the British accent.