English Pronunciation: the American Way
E-book and audio-book Information for English Pronunciation: the American Way
This book and its accompanying audio book are designed to help non-native speakers of English to master the pronunciation of the English language. The type of accent we will learn in this book is American English. This book is written by Nanhee Byrnes, PhD and the audio book is narrated by John Byrnes, PhD.
Pronunciation, the foundation
Pronunciation is the foundation of learning any spoken language. It is like arithmetic in mathematics. Through the knowledge of pronunciation, we can say words in sentences correctly. And when we say words correctly, we are understood easily.
Shadowing does not work
Some people think that we can learn spoken English without learning pronunciation. One popular alternative method, suggested instead, is shadowing, where we imitate and repeat what the natives say. Shadowing is very effective to learn the rhythm of a language (e.g., phrasal stress and pitch contour). However, shadowing is not an effective method if we cannot hear the sounds clearly and distinctly. Hearing clearly and distinctly means understanding precisely what is said. And understanding precisely means being able to infer all the words that are said, which in turn means knowing how the words are pronounced. If we don’t know what is said or how to say it, we cannot repeat it correctly and confidently. In other words, shadowing can be done effectively only after we master pronunciation. Practicing shadowing without having the knowledge of pronunciation is like trying to study calculus without knowing arithmetic.
Adult learners of English
Language is not something like clothes that we can remove and change into a different one. Once we are stuck with our own native language, it works like a fish net in our brain. Our brain can only catch speech sounds that already exist in our own native language. Regarding the sounds that do not exist in our own language, we either cannot hear them or hear them in a distorted way. This is why for some English word pairs, we cannot hear the difference, but the English natives do. Young children, whose native language is still in the process of morphing, may be able to absorb any speech sounds the way they are, and thus may be able to reproduce the sounds easily. This is not the case for adult learners of another language, and thus they need to be taught how to produce the sounds.
Different set of phonemes
Learning pronunciation begins with learning all the particles of English sound. The smallest unit of speech sound is called a phoneme. Specifically, a phoneme is a unit of sound that distinguishes one word from another. So, different phonemes make different words. For example, consider these words: rug, rag, and lag. ‘Rug’ means a floor mat, ‘rag’ means cleaning cloth, and ‘lag’ means to be left behind. The fact that the sounds /ʌ/ and /æ/, and /l/ and /r/ make different words demonstrates that these sounds are the phonemes of English. Different languages have different sets of phonemes. For instance, in Korean /r/ and /l/ are not two separate phonemes, and /æ/ is not a phoneme at all. To Koreans, /æ/ is a sound a goat makes.
Allophones: the same phoneme with different sounds
Phonemes are categorical speech sounds, sounds in abstraction, sounds independent of their actual use in words. When phonemes are used in words, they may sound different from the sound in abstraction. Consider, for example, words like captain, butter and mountain, all of which have /t/ phoneme sound in common. But the /t/ has different sounds in these words. The T in ‘captain’ has the clear /t/ sound: /t/, but the T in ‘bottle’ is pronounced by tapping the back of the top teeth. This way of pronouncing /t/ is called the flap T: [ɾ]. And the T in ‘mountain’ is pronounced by blocking the glottis. This way of pronouncing /t/ is called the glottal stop: [ʔ]. As we can see, when phonemes are actually used in words, their sounds change. These different sounds of the same phoneme are called allophones. So, for example, some allophones of the phoneme /t/ are the flap-T and the glottal stop. Most English phonemes have a few allophones. And if we don’t use correct allophones, our speech will sound foreign or unrecognizable. Naturally, in this book we learn phonemes and their allophones.
Connected speech
In addition, we will learn sound modification that inevitably happens when several words are spoken like one word. In the natural speech environment, words are spoken in chunks. That is, instead of saying each word separately, we group words based on intended meaning units, and speak them as if they are one word. We pause briefly between each chunk of words. The method of pronouncing multiple words like one word is called connected speech. The sound modification is substantial in connected speech, but the change is systematic. Depending on the speech environment, some phonemes are eliminated, some phonemes are lengthened, some phonemes are moved to the next word, and some phonemes are transformed into entirely different phoneme sounds.
American phonemes (15 vowels and 24 consonants)
In this book, we will learn all these aspects of English pronunciation. Specifically, in Part I, we learn the 15 vowel phoneme sounds; in Part II, we learn 24 consonant phoneme sounds and their allophones; and in Part III, we learn sound modification in connected speech.
Minimal pair method
Learning pronunciation is like learning a new body movement, like learning a ballet move or learning to throw a baseball. Mastering pronunciation is acquiring muscle memory. Naturally, in this book, we not only cover the theories of pronunciation but we also provide abundant practice material for the tongue, lips and jaws. For this, we first isolate each phoneme sound and learn the mechanics of its production. We then practice the same sound in different ways: the phoneme in words and in sentences. We also compare each phoneme with neighboring sounds that can cause confusion. For this we use the minimal pair method, where a pair of words have exactly the same sound except for one phoneme. Through these phonemic consistency and phonemic contrast methods, we can master all the sounds of English.
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