FREE - Accent Softening Exercise: H

This sound happens in words like ‘haphazard’, ‘hideous’, ‘hopeful’, ‘Harry’, and ‘how high’.

How is the /H/ made?

This sound is a voiceless sound and is made with the vocal folds approximating in the larynx in the throat (so you can’t see it!). The jaw is relaxed and the teeth are apart. 

Who needs to work on this sound?

Some speakers drop this sound altogether, so ‘haphazard’ becomes ‘ap’azard’, ‘Harry’ becomes ‘arry’ and ‘how high’ becomes ‘ow eye’. If you do this then exercising this consonant sound is vital to your development of a Standard English pronunciation.

FREE - Accent Softening Exercise: TH

The TH is a tricky sound for both native and non-native speakers of English. It is a sound that can be voiced (sound vibrations) and voiceless (just air). If you rub the palms of your hands together, you will notice a friction-like quality that lasts for as long as you want it too. Both TH's are like this, having a friction-like quality that can last for as long as you supply air or sound vibrations. Speak the following words and listen to what you do:

Voiced - these, them, their, mother, father, brother, bathe.
Voiceless - think, thought, thanks, mathematics, bath.

Some of the typical difficulties with TH:

Some speakers will substitute the voiced /TH/ sound for a /V/ (‘This’ becomes ‘Vis’) and the voiceless /TH/ for a /F/ (‘Thing’ becomes ‘Fing’).

Some speakers will substitute the voiced /TH/ sound for a /D/ (‘This’ becomes ‘Dis’) and the voiceless /TH/ for a /T/ (‘Thing’ becomes ‘Ting’). Some accents use a variation of this, with the tongue tip further forward, maybe touching the back of the upper teeth or lower teeth. They make the sound quite quickly and there is hardly any friction-like-quality about the sound.

Some speakers will say the voiced and voiceless /TH/ sound but will prefer to make most voiced /TH/ sounds voiceless when they shouldn’t be! Speak the groups of words above to see if you do this.

How to make the TH sound:

Both voiced and voiceless /TH/ are made in the same place with the same articulators: the tongue tip gently curves in a long, thin line and touches just behind the top teeth, but the sides of the tongue are not touching anything, so you can still breathe through your mouth. The jaw is relaxed and the teeth are apart. The sound is of medium length, don't cut it short!

Post your comments or ideas!

FREE - Accent Softening Exercise: R

The letter R:

This is the sound that you might make when you imitate a grizzly bear – GGRRR – and not the sound your doctor asks you to make when they want to examine your throat – AAHHH.

When does a Standard English speaker use the R sound?

Generally, accents can be grouped into what is called RHOTIC or NON-RHOTIC. A RHOTIC accent will say every /R/ that is written. Speak aloud the following sentence and if you hear and feel yourself saying every /R/ sound, you are a RHOTIC speaker. Start slowly but then repeat it several times at a more conversational speed:

• Rebecca ran quickly through the flowers and around the river to catch Rover, her overactive dog.

If you said MOST of the /R/'s but missed out the /R/’s in ‘flowers’ and at the end of ‘river’ and ‘Rover’, (and possibly even the one at the end of ‘her’) you are a NON-RHOTIC speaker. This is because NON-RHOTIC speakers only say the /R/ sound if it is followed by a vowel sound. Please remember this! So, if you say the words ‘river’ and ‘Rover’ in isolation, you can see that the final /R/’s are followed by nothing, so a NON-RHOTIC speaker wouldn’t say them. Instead, they would use the sound that you hear at the end of the word ‘comma’ or ‘America’. If you look at ‘river’ and ‘Rover’ in the above sentence, then they are both followed by the consonant sounds of their neighbouring words: ‘river to’, ‘Rover her’, so again the /R/’s would not be spoken. Similarly, the /R/ in ‘flowers’ is followed by a consonant sound /S/ not a vowel sound, so a NON-RHOTIC speaker would not say it. Again, they would use the ‘comma’/‘America’ sound between the /W/ and the /S/ 'flowers'. If you spoke the sentence too slowly or were being very careful, you might not have said the /R/ at the end of ‘her’? If you take the word in isolation then you can see that the /R/ finishes the word and would normally not be said, however, in the context of the above sentence it is actually followed by a vowel sound: ‘her overactive’ and the /R/ would then be spoken. This unique situation is called a LINKING /R/ where the /R/ links one word to the next.

So, is a Standard English speaker RHOTIC or NON-RHOTIC?

A Standard English speaker is NON-RHOTIC, so they only say an /R/ if it is followed by a vowel sound. This might not always be a typical written vowel: a, e, i, o, u. If you say the word ‘Harry’ you will notice that the final /Y/ sound is the same as the vowel in the word ‘tea’, so the /Y/ looks like a consonant but sounds like a vowel, so a NON-RHOTIC speaker would say the /R/ in ‘Harry’.

Want some exercises?


          Visit http://www.accentsofteningandelocution.com/sample-exercises.php