This document provides an introduction to English pronunciation, discussing the 3 levels of pronunciation proficiency and sources of accent for non-native English speakers. It explains key linguistic concepts like phonetic transcription, places and manners of articulation for consonant sounds, and voicing. The document emphasizes that proper instruction and practice are needed to improve pronunciation skills beyond just awareness or knowledge. Mastering the articulation of English sounds requires training muscle groups through regular practice.

1. PRONUNCIATION
AN INTRODUCTION IN LEARNING THE BASICS OF PRONUNCIATION

2. INTRODUCTION
There are 3 level of English pronunciation:
 Level 1: People often don't understand what you want
to say. You use the wrong sounds in English words.
 Level 2: People understand what you want to say, but
it is unpleasant to listen to you.
 Level 3: People understand you, and your English is
pleasant to listen to

3. INTRODUCTION
When a person learns English as Second Language, they are
speaking English “filtered” through their first language.
They are using their native language’s “speech rules” of
pronunciation (and often grammar) on their new language.
They are not aware of the American “speech rules”
There are many schools and classes which teach English all
around the world, however, few of them address the
“speech rules” This is because many of the teachers who
are providing English training do not know of these “speech
rules”

4. Anybody with the desire to reduce their accent can reduce their accent.
Change begins with the desire to change. When we combine our desire
with proper instruction and practice, we achieve success!
The key to learning to speak English clearly and correctly is training
and practice. Clear and accurate speech comes from "doing."
 Reducing your accent is different than other skills such as grammar
and vocabulary. Studying accent reduction is more like studying
dance, music, sports or martial arts. It involves the training of muscle
groups. Everybody is born with these muscle groups located in our
tongue, lips and jaw.
 All that you need is the desire to change, proper instruction and most
of all practice and training! Accent reduction is about "doing."
 Simply observing or knowing how to, is not enough. Awareness and
knowledge is important but you have to try it in order to be able
to actually do it.
INTRODUCTION

5. What is an “accent”
 We often hear people say, “I want to reduce my accent,” “I
want to have a British accent”, but what exactly is an accent?
 An accent is way of speaking. A process by which a speaker
substitutes a sound from their native language for a sound from
English. This “transference” occurs mainly for two reasons.
 The first reason is that the speaker is not aware that a specific
sound exists in English. Hence they use the closest sound from
their native language instead.
 For example, many students are unaware of the sound. [I] as in
the word chip or big. As a result, when saying the word chip,
they substitute a similar sound which exists in their native
language. Usually, they choose [i] as in the word he or meet

7. PHONETICS
Study of Speech Sounds

8. PHONETICS
 Phonetics is the science of speech sounds,
which aims to provide the set of features or
properties that can be used to describe and
distinguish all the sounds used in human
language.

9.  The principal cavities or resonators:
-the pharyngeal cavity
-the oral cavity
-the nasal cavity
(-the labial cavity)
 The vocal tract:
- the long tubular structure formed by the first three
cavities.

11. English Pronunciation
by G. Nolst Trenité
If you can pronounce correctly every word
in this poem, you will be speaking English
better than 90% of the native English
speakers in the world.
After trying the verses, a Frenchman said
he’d prefer six months of hard labor to
reading six lines aloud.

12. Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:

13. Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,

14. Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does.

15. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

16. Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
.

17. Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
.

18. Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
.

19. It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
.

20. ENGLISH SOUNDS
CONSONANT SOUNDS The sounds
in the production of which there is
an obstruction of the air- stream at
some point of the vocal tract .

21. ENGLISH SOUNDS
VOWELS -the sounds in the production of
which no articulators come very close
together and the air-stream passes through
the vocal tract without obstruction.

22. CONSONANTS
 Consonants are produced when the airstream is obstructed in
the vocal tract.
 Consonant sounds can be characterized according to three main
phonetic properties:
 (a) place of articulation, which refers to where in the mouth
the sound is produced;
 (b) manner of articulation, which refers to the way the air is
obstructed in the mouth while producing the sound;
 (c) Voicing, which refers to whether or not there is a vibration
of the vocal cords as the sound is produced.

23. MANNERS OF ARTICULATION
Speech sounds are also differentiated by the way the
airstream is affected as it travels from the lungs up
and out of the mouth and nose. This is referred to as
the manner of articulation for the sound.
 Stops or Plosives: such sounds are produced by a
complete obstruction of the airstream in the
mouth, e.g. [b], [p], [t], [d], [k], and [g].
 Fricatives: such sounds are produced by a partial
obstruction of the airstream, where the passage in
the mouth through which the air escapes is very
narrow, causing friction, e.g. [f], [v], [s], [z], [T],
[D], [S], and [Z].

24. MANNERS OF ARTICULATION
 Affricates: such sounds are produced by a stop closure followed
immediately by a slow release of the closure characteristic of the
fricative, e.g. [tS] and [dZ].
 Nasals: such sounds are produced when the air escapes through the
nasal cavity rather than the mouth, e.g. [m], [n], and [N].
 Liquids: In the production of these sounds, there is some
obstruction of the airstream in the mouth, but not enough to cause
any real constriction or friction, e.g. [l] and [r].
 Glides: such sounds are produced with little or no obstruction of
the air in the mouth, e.g. [j] and [w]. When occurring in a word,
they must always be either followed or preceded by a vowel, and
in their articulation the tongue moves rapidly in a gliding fashion
either toward or away from a neighboring vowel.

25. PLACES OF ARTICULATION
 Bilabial sounds, which are produced when both lips are
brought together, e.g. [p], [b], and [m].
 Labiodental sounds, which are produced by having the
lower lip touch the upper teeth, e.g. [f] and [v].
 Linguadental sounds, which are produced when the tip of
the tongue comes between the upper and lower teeth, e.g.
[T] as in “think”, and [D] as in “this”.
 Alveolar sounds, which are produced by raising the front
part of the tongue to the alveolar ridge, e.g. [t], [d], [n],
[s], [z], [l], and [r].

26. PLACES OF ARTICULATION
 Linguaalveolar sounds, which are produced when
the front part of the tongue touches the alveolar
ridge and then the hard palate (that part of the
mouth which is just behind the alveolar ridge), e.g.
[S] as in “shoe”, [Z] as in “vision”, [tS] as in
“choose”, and [dZ] as in “jam”.
 Velar sounds, which are produced by raising the
back part of the tongue to the soft palate or the
velum, e.g. [k], [g], and [N], which is the final
sound in “king”.
 Glottal sounds, which are produced at the glottis,
e.g. [h] and [/].

27. VOICING
 Voiced Consonants – These are the
consonant sounds which is produced from
the larynx and the pronunciation of the
same will make the vocal chord vibrate
 Voiceless Consonants – These are the
consonant sounds which is produced from
the tongue tip and their will be no vibration
of vocal chord while pronouncing the same.

28. lips
together
bottom
lip -
teeth
tongue -
teeth
tongue on
toothridge
hard
palate
back of
tongue
on soft
palate
throat
VL VD VL VD VL VD VL VD VL VD VL VD VL
stop p b t d k g
fricative
f v Θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h
affricate
ʧ ʤ
nasal
m
n ŋ
liquid
l r
glide
y w

29. PRACTICE PRONUNCIATION
WATCH PAUL GRUBER’S VIDEOS
ON PRONUNCIATION