What is Accent?
◦ Accent is the music of language. Pronunciation of
individual words, the way in which words glide into
each other (liaisons), and intonation patterns
determine the accent of a language. A single
language can have a variety of accents.
An accent is made up three parts:
Intonation, liaisons and pronunciation.
◦ Intonation is the most difficult part and the most difficult to change. It is the rhythm
of the language.
◦ Liaisons or linkages, are the ways that words and parts of words are linked together
in a language. This may be very different from how you do it in your native language.
eg. They tell me the dime easier to understand.
They tell me that I’m easier to understand.
(The last 2 sentences above should be pronounced exactly the same ,no matter how
they are written. It is the sound that is important not the spelling.)
◦ Pronunciation is the way that sounds are made in the new language. These sounds
may be similar (rarely exactly the same) to the sounds of your own language, or they
may be very different.
Phonetics is the systematic study of speech sounds in a language.
It is concerned with how speech sounds can be categorized, how
they are generated in the human vocal tract, why they each sound
different to a listener and how a listener is able to recognize
them.
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Bit/beet ship/sheep
Sit/seat lick/leak
Rip/reap chip/cheap
Lip/leap rich/reach
Live/leave dip/deep
Tongue twister
I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit.
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When air passes through the vocal chord, the
chords vibrate, if they are held close together.
This is called a voiced sound and the vibration
can be felt by putting your fingers on the front of
your throat.
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When the vocal chords are held loosely
apart, the air passing through produces no
vibration, the sound of exhaled air gives
the sound an unvoiced quality.
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Type Voiceless Examples Voiced examples
PLOSIVES p Parking, opinion, please, b Ben, bring,
Pay, purpose, apply, people, bought, boot,
problem, bad
t Telephone, temper, tube d Disk, deliver,
date, deed
k Kept, catch, click, g Good, give,
anger, glow
AFFRICATIVES ch Chair, catch, check, purchase, dz General, joint,
picure gym,
management,
badge
f Fall, fill, before, font v Van, vault, very,
move
Soft th Thursday, think, thank, th Though, there,
anything without, together
s Some, set, sale, summer z Zoom, zone,
hazard, prize
sh Shut, shell, shine, shoe zh Usual, measure,
Asia, pleasure
h House, help,
whole
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NASALS m Market, money, manage, comment
n Number, name, nothing, enough
ng Bring, dangle, among, belong
LATERAL l Label, leave, love, model
w Was, wax, work, square, querry
AAPROXIMANTS r Restore, replace, very, bright
j Voyage, year, payable, beyond
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A syllable is the smallest sound unit that a word can be
broken into. It consists of a single uninterrupted sound and a
vowel sound with it.
There may be one or more consonant sound on either side of
this vowel.
A consonant alone can never make a syllable
e.g. com/po/nent for component..
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Every syllable has one vowel sound.
The number of vowel sounds in a word equals the number of
syllables.
E.g. home=1, sub/ject = 2 pub/lish/ing = 3
A one syllable word is never divided.
E.g. stop feet bell
When two or more consonants come between two vowels in a word,
it is usually divided between the first two consonants
E.g. sis/ter but/ter hun/gry
When a single consonant comes between two vowels in a word, it is
usually divided after the consonant if the vowel is short
E.g. lev/el cab/in hab/it
When a vowel is sounded alone in a word, it forms a syllable itself
E.g. grad/u/ate a/pron u/nit
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Words with weak prefixes are stressed on root and not on
the prefix.
E.g. Prefixes like a- , ad-, be-, com-, de-
aBOARD, aCROSS, adMIT, adVICE, beLOW, comPOSE
deDUCE
The inflectional suffixes –es, -ing, -ed and the
derivational suffixes –age, -dom,
-en, -er, -ess, -ful, -fy, -less, -let, -ly, -ment, -ness, -some, -
ward do not affect the stress of the words
e.g. beGIN, BRIGHTen, apPOINTment, CAREful
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Intonation or voice modulation means the
rise or fall in the pitch of one’s voice. Tone
is the pattern of variation in speech.
◦ E.g. I want that report now.
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Thank you
