Improving my English accent as an adult

[SpanishInput]

There's a very interesting thread about acquiring a "native accent" as an adult learner. I didn't want to hijack that thread, so I've decided to start a new one.

I'm now almost 43. I started seriously learning English at age 12. It was an intensive course, 2 hours every day for 2 months, and I took this course for 3 years in a row. From then on, it has been all input. But even when I was seriously learning the language, none of my teachers or books taught me anything about what the sounds of English are or how to produce them. I was just left to imitate my (non-native) teacher's pronunciation and rely on the not very helpful pronunciation guides in my paper dictionaries, which probably only make sense for native speakers.

Fast forward to 2012. I'm talking with a group of foreigners after an event and after having to repeat myself more than once, I become self-conscious about my pronunciation. So I decide to get the book "Mastering the American accent" from Amazon. The book came and I found out its pronunciation guide was different from what I had seen in other sources (I don't remember if it used a version of the IPA or not. At the time I didn't even know about the IPA). Also, having to figure out how the CD tracks matched the sections in the book was no fun. So I ended up giving it away.

Fast forward to 2019-2020. YouTube is now mainstream. The "Sounds American" channel has published lots of videos about English pronunciation. Still, it uses instructions and terms that seem completely foreign for me. "Tense"? "Relaxed"? What on Earth do you mean? Still, from time to time I watch a video or two, but don't really make any real effort to learn.

Fast forward to 2022. As I'm now teaching Spanish to foreigners, I've spent a lot of time devouring books about Spanish phonetics and phonology so I can better help my students. I can now recite all the phonemes and allophones in General Spanish and explain how to produce all of them and how they interact with each other. But there's still a missing piece: I need to go back and really study the sounds of English, at least U.S. English, as that's where most of my students come from. This way I'll be able to better understand their struggles. This time I didn't look for a regular "pronunciation" or "master the accent" book. Now I know where the real meat is: In phonetics/phonology books.

After a bit of shopping around on Amazon, I settled on the book "American English Phonetics and Pronunciation Practice" by Paul Carley, mostly because it's published by Routledge, the same publisher of the first book I read on Spanish phonetics and phonology. Paul Carley uses a mostly phonemic approach in order to keep things simple: 13 vowels and 20 consonants. Most symbols are pretty familiar due to my previous study of Spanish phonetics. So I ordered the Kindle book on July 21st. Thanks to some fantastic videos by Dr. Geoff Lindsey (a friend of Paul Carley), I'm also aware that some of the IPA symbols traditionally used for English are not a true reflection of either real pronunciation or phonotactics. For example, the GOOSE and the FLEECE vowels are diphthongs ending in glides even though they're not traditionally classified as such and their traditional IPA transcriptions do not reflect this. The rest of the diphthongs could also be better represented with either the /j/ or the /w/ glide at the end. Carley's book does not try to rock the establishment, and keeps more traditional symbols, but he leaves out some extra symbols used in dictionaries, such as /ʌ/ for the stressed schwa, ɝ for the stressed schwar, and the elongation diacritic for GOOSE and FLEECE in stressed syllables. I like his approach.

So during the last few days I've been trying to wrap my head around the vowel system of General American. I'm going for a "THOUGHT-less" accent (COT-CAUGHT merger), as it's simpler. I have mixed feelings: At the same time, I'm happy of finally taking steps to learn this, but I'm also kinda angry because I was never taught this before.

As with any serious learning project I've started before, Anki is going to have a central role. I'm using Audacity to edit the mp3 recordings of the book into very short sections: Four words at most for each card. I then add both the regular spelling and the IPA to each card. I'm using Timur's fantastic EasyPronunciation website for this. EP's transcriptions do not always match those in the book. For example, EP uses /ɪr/ instead of /ir/ for this r-colored vowel, which is what the Cambridge dictionary uses, but not what the Britannica dictionary uses. (/ir/ is closer to the actual sound). I'm quicklly getting used to the quirks in each dictionary. Well, except for Merriam-Webster. That one only makes sense for 'Muricans. And speaking of 'Muricans, I'm not really sure I really want to aim for a 'Murican accent. I know I can do better than that. For example, I would prefer to keep all my /t/s as [t]s and all my /d/s as [d]s except when it's obligatory to change them for a glottal stop, instead of transforming them to [ɾ] in words such as city, lady and buddy. After all, this is how these phonemes were treated in the Mid-Atlantic accent. What do you think?

Since vowels are far more challenging for me than consonants, I'm starting my practice from chapter 6, which is where the vowel practice begins. My Anki flashcards are made so:
- I first have to listen to the recording without any text
- I then need to type the IPA of the words in the audio
- I can then compare what I typed to the IPA in the card and finally see the spelling.

Here's an example of a card. Anki highlights all my mistakes in light red. In this case I've omitted all stress marks to save time, so these are marked as mistakes:

anki2.png

For now my focus is only to learn to tell the different phonemes apart when hearing them (ear training), so I'm only doing Sound > IPA cards. Of course I'm also practicing aloud, trying my best to match the recording. Later I'll create a new card type from the same note so I can practice going from spelling to IPA.

The IPA vowel charts in the book make a lot more sense than the weird "tense" and "relaxed" instructions given elsewhere. Now I know that "relaxed" means "lazily, approaching schwa".

For typing the IPA, I'm using a keyboard layout I'm slowly creating myself. Right now it has everything to quickly type both English and Spanish symbols for typical phonetic (not too detailed) transcriptions. I'll keep developing it and maybe one day I'll release it.

[SpanishInput]

Quick update: This is turning out a bit more difficult than I expected and is making me more aware on the differences of how native speakers of different languages perceive sounds. For example:

In Spanish the labial plosives /p/ and /b/ can sometimes be a lot softer than their English counterparts. For example, the Spanish /b/ between vowels is not even a true plosive, but just a labial approximant. Also, the English /p/ is always aspirated at the beginning of words, while the Spanish /p/ is never aspirated. Meanwhile, the English phoneme /h/ does not exist in Spanish. This has two consequences:

1) The Spanish intervocalic /b/ (and also the Spanish /d/ and /g/) can be really hard to hear for native English speakers unless they do some really intensive ear trainining.

2) Spanish speakers can be hypersensitive to any approximation of the lips and perceive this as a /p/ or a /b/, especially when it comes with an /h/ sound, which can be perceived as an aspiration.

Listen to this clip: https://voca.ro/1aINmUMZ15Yi

What's the recording really saying?

The recording comes from the book "American English phonetics and pronunciation practice", chapter 6. The native English speaker is pronouncing the words "hill" and "horn". English speakers will have no problem perceiving these words as intended, but Spanish speakers might perceive them as "pill" and "p***".Especially the second one.

I posted these two words on r/englishlearning, and native English speakers there can ONLY hear these words as intended:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnglishLearnin ... ame=iossmf

I also posted it on r/spanish, and most native Spanish speakers hear the second word as "p****". As for me, it has taken me days to manage to hear the first one as "hill", but I still revert to hearing it as "pill" and still can't hear the second one as "horn".
https://www.reddit.com/r/Spanish/commen ... _palabras/

I guess this is the kind of gaps in your hearing/pronunciation you might have if you have never done intensive listening exercises, such as transcription.

In a similar note, I've noticed it's really hard for me to hear the difference between word final /z/ and /s/, because in Spanish they're just allophones in complementary distribution. I actually had to fire up Praat and see the voicing with my own eyes to finally convince myself that it's there.

[Lawyer&Mom]

American here: I heard hill and horn. And then I listened again and thought *maybe* the first word was pill. Just maybe. But the second word is horn, clear as day. It’s funny to me that the second word is harder for you.

I’m super impressed by your project, keep up the good work!

[jeff_lindqvist]

Non-native English speaker:
'hill' and 'horn'

[BeaP]

This is very interesting, thanks for sharing. I've never had problems with my English pronunciation, but now after years of intensive Spanish input I hear a 'p', especially in the second word, even though I know what I should hear ('h'). (I unfortunately don't know what I would have heard 20 years ago.) Still, this might lead to a new aspect: new languages learned affect the 'older' ones in a negative way. I've already noticed that I'm making mistakes a Spanish person would make. For example I didn't think that I could 'unmake' the b/v distinction, but when I spoke Italian last time, I clearly heard myself say 'bengo' instead of 'vengo'. If I want people to think I'm Spanish I just need to speak Italian and maybe now even English. I haven't noticed any problems with listening comprehension though.

[weissnichtgenau]

Quite an old thread, I don't even know how I came here?!
But so interesting! I actually hear "hill" and the second one definitely with a p. Very strange.
Oh, I'm German, btw.

[Deinonysus]

I'm loving the deep dive into phonology! I totally agree that English diphthongs ought to be written with /w/ or /j/. I saw a very interesting video earlier this year about that which I posted here.

I would caution against mixing and matching your favorite features of different dialects, as tempting as that may be. It will be an impediment to being understood. Remember that you are not just creating a custom accent like the Mid-Atlantic accent that you mentioned. You would be layering this accent on top of your native accent. As an example, there was a German forum member who insisted on speaking English with a Caribbean accent with some patois features. Now, German is one of the easiest foreign accents for English speakers to understand because its phonology is so similar to our own, and Caribbean English is also understood perfectly, even with some light patois features thrown in. However, with the Caribbean accent thrown on top of the German accent, I found him almost impossible to understand.

I would advise you to stick as closely as you can to a neutral American or English accent. If you throw in a cot-caught merger, for instance, that is generally a regional feature (most associated with the upper Midwest), so listeners are likely to get their wires crossed trying to process, say, a Minnesota accent and a Spanish language accent at the same time.

Ignoring American t-flapping should be fine since that is a very common feature of foreign accents, so listeners won't feel like they're trying to process a foreign accent and a regional anglophone accent at the same time.

[Kraut]

What in this sentence "Es hat sich alles ..." (minute 0:30) makes me think his mother tongue is Spain Spanish?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERY8hfbG9g8

In German there are two /ch/ sounds, as in "sich" and "Sache". Spain Spanish has only one /ch/ ( the "Sache" one). I once mispronounced "Gibraltar" in my VHS Spanish evening class and got corrected. In the meantime I have found out that Mexicans at least also pronounce it "suave".
Also, in "Es hat sich alles .." the "Es" to my taste is pronounced too short.

[SpanishInput]

Hi! thanks everyone for your comments and encouragement. I'm still working on individual vowel phonemes, and according to my Anki statistics I'll be doing so for 15 days. After that, I'll start working on vowel minimal pairs, and after that, I'll move on to consonants.

Cot-Caught merger

First, I’m sorry. I made it sound like the cot-caught merged accent is something I’m consciously choosing, when it’s not. In reality:

• The merged accent is the only accent taught in the book “American English Phonetics and Pronunciation Practice”, released in 2020, and it’s the only accent included in the recordings for the book.
• It’s the only US accent included in the pronunciation guides of the online Britannica dictionary, which is the dictionary you’ll reach if you follow a link from the U.S. Government’s website that promotes learning English: https://americanenglish.state.gov/. (Actually the government links to Merriam Webster’s Learner’s dictionary, but the website redirects to the Britanica dictionary).
• It’s the only US accent in the online version of the Cambridge dictionary.
• It’s the only accent in Merriam Webster’s learner’s dictionary (there’s a pop-up version for Firefox).

I must say that the paid iOS app version of the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary does keep the unmerged pronunciation as an alternative pronunciation. The merged pronunciation is always listed first.

I’m by no means qualified to comment on U.S. English dialectology or sociolinguistics, so I'll just quote Professor Carly's rationale for only teaching the merged accent:

A further important factor is that the thought-ful pronunciation of GA is in decline, as thought /ɔ/ is increasingly merged with palm /ɑ/ (as is already the case in Canada). It seems likely that eventually the thought vowel /ɔ/ will be restricted to certain regional accents and will no longer be considered a feature of GA.

Carley, Paul; Mees, Inger. American English Phonetics and Pronunciation Practice (p. 126). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Spanish speakers (both native and learners) vs. everyone else:

It’s funny how the “hill - horn” audio clip has made people on both sides question my ears/sanity/honesty: An English speaker on r/englishlearning said there must something wrong with me for not being able to hear “horn” and that I should work on minimal pairs. The moderator of r/spanish, who is from Mexico, still can’t believe the recording is really saying “horn” and not “p*rn”. The only English speakers who also hear “p*rn” seem to be those who can already speak Spanish.

As for me, I keep hearing “pill” whenever I review the “hill” flashcard, but since I already know it’s supposed to be “hill”, I type the correct answer now. I can hear “hill” if I focus really hard on ignoring the very obvious (for me) labial approximant at the beginning. I still haven’t reached the “horn” flashcard, so I can’t comment on my progress on that one.

Frequent confusions:

I’m often confusing the FOOT vowel with the GOOSE vowel. Especially when the GOOSE vowel is in its “long” form before a voiced consonant, it’s kind of a diphthong that does include a FOOT sound somewhere, and this makes it especially hard to tell them apart. The phenomenon known as “GOOSE fronting”, that is, the GOOSE vowel becoming a bit more frontal in English, makes the acoustic separation between the two even smaller.

Another dificult pair is FLEECE/KIT before voiced consonants. Particularly before the velar nasal, KIT can sound exactly like FLEECE to my ears. I did some searching and confirmed that the KIT vowel can sound like the FLEECE vowel before /ŋ/, for example, in the word “king”. This seems to be a dialectal thing in the US and is known as “pre-velar tensing”. There also seems to be some “pre-R tensing” going on, because /ɪr/ and /ʊr/ can sound like /ir/ and /ur/, and, actually, the latter are the symbols used by Professor Carley and the Britannica dictionary.

The normalization effect:

As you probably know, our brain recognizes vowels mainly by their F1 and F2 formant values. That is, the first and second lowest resonances. But the funny thing is, the exact values don’t matter. What really matters is the relationship between the values of different vowels, that is, the “geometry” of the vowel space. This is why we can still recognize vowels in very different voices: Children, men, women, etc.

The sad side of this normalization is that, while reviewing a flashcard, in this very small context you might only hear a small range of vowel formats and your brain might thus amplify the differences. For example, if I only get the FOOT or the GOOSE vowel plus schwa in the same card, then schwa tends to sound a lot like the TRAP vowel. Another example: I was using artificially generated vowels from Dr. Geoff Lindsey’s vowel space triangle in an ill-advised attempt to train my ears to the whole vowel space, but… When I heard /ɑ/ next to /a/, /ɑ/ tended to sound a lot like /o/, and, similarly, when I heard /ɑ/ next to /ɔ/, then /ɑ/ tended to sound a lot like /a/. So my brain was doing a lot of “normalization”. This normalization happens in a lot of areas in our lives: If you’re living in a war zone, then your coffee being cold is just a very small annoyance. But if you’re living a near-perfect life in the first world, then your coffee being cold is the worst thing ever and ruins your day.

Pre-L breaking:

I swear I can hear pre-L breaking (an extra schwa before syllable final L) after the GOOSE vowel, even though this is not mentioned in Prof. Carley’s book and none of the dictionaries I’ve checked show this. “Rule” sounds like /ˈruəl/, stool sounds like /ˈstuəl/, and so on. I don’t know if this is because I watched Dr. Geoff Lindsey’s video on the phonotactics of English diphthongs. Dr. Lindsey does say that the GOOSE vowel is a diphthong ending in a glide and thus can trigger Pre-L breaking: (Starts at 3:33)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtnlGH055TA

Embarrasing moment:

I noticed the g symbol in the easypronunciation.com IPA transcriptions didn’t match the code point of the regular g, so yesterday I did Timur (the website owner) the “favor” of alerting him of this. To my deep embarrasment, today I learned that the IPA g symbol actually has a different code point, to force it to always display in a certain way in any font. I quickly apologized to Timur and I’ve now included the official code point in my keyboard layout. I’ve now given up on my original goal of my IPA keyboard layout being able to type in English, Spanish and IPA. Now it’s going to be IPA-only. I already have the Spanish Input keyboard layout for everything else, and I can quickly switch between both. Here's today's build:

IPA keyboard.PNG

[Le Baron]

Just going back to the top I can't entirely see why a Spanish native would feel think hill/pill could be similar because almost exactly the same approach is taken to 'h' and 'p'. Perhaps less aspiration on 'p' in Spanish sometimes (though not always) where English is generally more plosive. Though knowing this ought to increase the difference recognition, not reduce it?

Personally, and because I'm incredibly biased, I think I'm right in saying the caught/cot 'problem' is more of a problem when people try to imitate a standard American accent and not so much when it's an RP-style British accent. The latter has a marked difference in vowel length: longer for caught and short/clipped for cot which completely eliminates any idea that those words sound alike.

He caught his coat in a cot and went to court. They used to make us repeat that nonsense at school.