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This website was created to help people improve their American English pronunciation. At the core is a series of videos explaining in detail how each sound is created, as well as a blog.
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Though I highly recommend learning via video :), sometimes a book is a nice resource to have. I especially like this one:
The 'ur' as in 'her' Sound
How to make this sound:
Video Text:
The ur sound. It's a vowel, but it's a lot like the "r" consonant. To make this vowel sound, the tongue fattens up and comes up a little bit in the back. Ur. So, the back of my tongue is touching the back of my throat. Ur, ur. Because it has fattened itself up in the back, so it can touch back there, what that means is that the front of the tongue is not touching anything. It's just, ur, hanging out in the middle of my mouth. As you can see, the lips, ur, they do a lot like they do on the vowel uh {pull} they come in a little bit and the lips go out a little bit. Ur: learn, brrr it's cold! (It's not really.) Ur. Brrr, earn, person. Sample words: brrr, person. Sample sentence: It's her turn to learn a word.
International Phonetic Alphabet symbol: [
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This sound is tough! It functions as a vowel but its sound is more like a consonant. According to Wikipedia's page on this sound, it occurs only in English and one other language that has only 5000 speakers! It's always followed by the consonant 'r.'
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Hey Guys, I'm REALLY EXCITED about a way to get you more feedback on your accents. The videos are great, but they're also passive, and to speak better English you have to speak!!
I really hope some of you will take advantage of a new kind of exercise I'm trying out where you actually GET FEEDBACK FROM ME! Check out the details, record yourself, and send it in!
If you cannot view the videos, click here.
Check out this site ...
... I think it is a GREAT resource for studying pronunciation. You can slow down videos without the pitch changing, you can loop sections, you can look up words. It's an amazing resource, and I've enjoyed playing around with it.
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