American English speech Course Structure

Welcome to American English Speech!

This is American English Speech, a course for the pronunciation of the sounds of a Standard of American English Dialect. This course is currently under development and we are making the course available as a pilot while it is under development. Only a portion of the planned modules are currently available and there are planned expansions to these modules. As you take this course, please take the time to share with us what works, what does not work and what could be improved. We value your participation and thank you for your frank feedback.

Course Structure

Your curriculum is divided into six sections or units:

• Foundations of Speech: This first unit of the course is an overview of some of the basic concepts that will lay a foundation for your study of the Standard American English dialect. These concepts include sound identification, voiced and voiceless sounds, syllabification, and aspiration and unaspiration of the three stop-plosive consonant groups.
• Intonational Patterning of American English: The use of the musical patterns of Standard American English Dialect to convey meaning and mood is essential for clear communication. In this unit, you will be instructed in the essentials of successful vocal dynamics: use of vocal range, variety of tempo, pacing, use of inflection and the value of the pause.
• Vowels: The vowels unit will introduce you to the pure vowel sounds of the dialect. Vowels are the tone carriers of the language, the central part of the syllable. There are fifteen vowels in American English Dialect, made specific by the position of the lips, tongue arch and jaw opening. This unit will introduce you to the fifteen vowel sounds of the dialect, in three categories, Front, Mid, and Back.
• Diphthongs: The Standard American English Dialect has a number of vowels for which the quality does not remain constant. The sound of the vowel at the beginning is not the same at the end. A diphthong is a phonemic unit containing two vowels blended into one. This unit will build on what you learned in the vowels unit by introducing the ten diphthongs of the dialect. In the Standard American English Dialect there are five “so called” long diphthongs and five always short diphthongs of r.
• Consonants: This unit introduces the second big component of speech, consonants. Consonants are the articulators of the sound and marginal to the syllabic structure. These are sounds that interrupt, or change the sound coming from the vocal tract. This unit presents consonants according to vibration, the place and manner of articulation. There are sixteen voiced consonants and ten voiceless consonants in Standard American English Dialect.
• Weak Forms: The Weak forms unit presents the parts of speech that are usually weakened in vocal expression; namely, Articles, Conjunctions, Auxiliary Verbs, Personal Pronouns and Prepositions. There are specific pronunciations for these words so that you may achieve clarity and understanding, while subordinating the unessential words in your speech.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is used in this course to provide you with a symbol for each of the forty four sounds of the dialect. It is an effective tool to use for specificity in pronunciation. Eventually, you will associate a symbol for each phoneme as you see its phonetic transcription. To practice the pronunciation, sounds and words will also be represented by the Roman alphabet and audio examples. You will strengthen your ability to distinguish sounds by means of “comparison” exercises.

OBSERVATION...

Why Learn the Standard American English Dialect?

Standard American English is a neutral dialect, devoid of regionalisms. It is a standard of speech indicative of culture and care that does not interfere with the free and happy exchange of ideas; a cosmopolitan form of American speech understood by well spoken natives all over the English speaking world.

Presented here is information for you to practice uniformity of sound and a consistent approach to the language, one that is mechanically flexible and free of tension.

This course will be beneficial if you wish to learn how to communicate with the sounds and music of American English. The purpose here is not to increase your vocabulary, nor to improve your grammar but to deal with the sounds of the words you do utter. Your message is of primary importance, but it will not be understood if your pronunciation is imprecise, inconsistent or regional in aspect.

Opportunities to Hone Your Skills

Throughout the course you will have many opportunities to listen and practice. Here are some basic techniques that we utilize.

• Articulate the forty four sounds of American English. You will use these examples to compare sounds, analyze differences, and imitate speakers.
• Link the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols with the sounds that they represent and make both the visual and audio representations available for you to see and hear.
• Present physical depictions of the moveable articulators for you to emulate for proper articulation of vowel and consonant sounds.
• Use Hermann Klinghardt’s notations for intonational patterning. You will learn this notation and use it to identify musical properties of the Standard American English Dialect.
• Transcribe passages in both the International Phonetic Alphabet and the Roman Alphabet.
• Provide activities on a regular basis to drill the sounds of the Standard American English Dialect, such as “Find the Word that Doesn’t Belong”, “Pick the Correct Word”, and many more.

Course Learning Objectives:

• Articulate sounds and words using the dialect of Standard American English
• Using the International Phonetic Alphabet, listen and think in terms of symbols for sounds
• Use the International Phonetic Alphabet to transcribe from the Roman alphabet into the forty four sounds of Standard American Dialect and vice versa
• Analyze texts for phrasing, operative words, intonational patterns, degrees of stress
• Achieve a proper use of weak forms for certain parts of speech in the English Language, making your speech clear and efficient

American English speech 001

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• The ee-sound is a good example and can seen represented in a variety of ways, as seen in these words:
• Aeschylus, believe, see, Chelsea, latrine, we, people, quay, sea, phoneme, amoeba
• Similarly, the sh-sound is written down in a range of different ways:
• chapparal, ruching, bush, pressure, scansion, emission, patience, eruption, nauseous, oceanic,shoe, sure 
• Words that have the same sounds but are spelled differently, homophones can also confuse the listener:grown, groan one, won eight, ate knead, need scene, seen aisle, I'll aye, eye here, hear red, read mettle, metal tea, tee tax, tacks
• Words that contain silent letters present a particular challenge:
• no B comb, dumb, debt no D Wednesday no G sign, foreign
• no GH daughter, light, right no H why, honest, hour no K know, knight, knob, knee
• no L should, walk, half no P cupboard, psychology no T whistle, listen, fasten
• no U guess, guitar no W who, write, wrong
• Words borrowed from other languages are in our everyday conversation. The English language has always been a melting pot and while often retaining the original spelling, the words do not always preserve their original pronunciation. For example:
• Malay - orang hutang, which means ‘man of the forest’, has been borrowed almost intact in our own ‘orangutan’.
• French - ballet, dozen, centre, aboard, dignity, aplomb, bucket, bureau
• German - angst, kindergarten, sauerkraut, iceberg, blitz, waltz, yodel, noodle, ersatz, frankfurter, hamburger, pretzel
• Yiddish - shtick, bagel, kosher, nebbish, schmooze, tchotchke, maven
• Italian - bravo, forte, vendetta, falsetto, ghetto, braggadocio
• 
  
• 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)

• II
• Now I surely will not plague you
• With such words as plaque and ague.
• But be careful how you speak:
• 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.

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