Monthly Archives: March 2011

Are you tending your Speech Garden?

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Yes­ter­day, I spent a glo­ri­ous after­noon enjoy­ing the first day of spring by work­ing in the yard and plant­ing the first veg­eta­bles of the year in my back­yard gar­den. Unlike many peo­ple, I actu­ally enjoy pulling weeds. I think it’s the sat­is­fac­tion I get of see­ing how much bet­ter the gar­den looks after­wards! Also, I know that weed­ing gives the plants I’m try­ing to grow a much bet­ter chance of becom­ing strong and healthy.

What about you? Do you like to grow a veg­etable or flower gar­den? What about a speech garden?

Have you ever thought about your Amer­i­can accent as being like a gar­den? The bet­ter you tend it, feed­ing and water­ing it and pulling the weeds of unnec­es­sary speech pat­terns, the stronger and more beau­ti­ful your speech gar­den becomes!

So, here’s my spring chal­lenge to you.

Take some time to care for your speech gar­den this year.

What aspects of your speech need tended to so they can grow? You know that cer­tain areas of your Amer­i­can accent are good — maybe gram­mar and vocab­u­lary. But you also know that with a lit­tle prac­tice, or a lit­tle feed­ing and water­ing, those areas could be even better.

Do you have some unhealthy “weeds” in your speech pat­terns? Maybe these are sounds that make your speech dif­fi­cult for oth­ers to under­stand. If you could just “weed out”, or get rid of, a few of those pesky sounds, your speech would be much clearer.

How much bet­ter will your speech gar­den look in a few months if you take the time to plan for its growth right now?

What will you do to get rid of the weeds and ensure the healthy growth of your speech garden?

Some­times, weeds can look a lot like a healthy plant, espe­cially in the begin­ning. It can be dif­fi­cult to fig­ure out which ones to keep and which ones to pull and throw away. Often, the best way to fig­ure it out is to ask some­one who can iden­tify those weeds and show you which ones to get rid of .

If you are look­ing for some­one to iden­tify the “weeds” that need to be pulled from your speech to improve your Amer­i­can accent, I would love to show you. Together, we can grow a beau­ti­ful speech gar­den for you! We’ll iden­tify all the strong, healthy plants that need to stay as well as the unhelp­ful weeds that need to go.

Spring is the per­fect time to get your speech gar­den grow­ing well. I’ll help you elim­i­nate the weeds that need to go, and I’ll pro­vide you with prac­tice mate­ri­als that are the food to strengthen the sounds you want to keep in your Amer­i­can accent. We’ll walk through your speech gar­den every week to be sure that every­thing is grow­ing as planned.

By fall, you will be amazed at the won­der­ful, boun­teous gar­den of Amer­i­can speech that you have been able to grow!

I can’t wait to get started! Are you ready to join me?

Click here to get your free Accent Screen­ing and start grow­ing your speech gar­den today!

American Pronunciation: Go To, Got To, or Gotta?

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One of my read­ers, Peter, sent me a ques­tion after read­ing my recent post on the pro­nun­ci­a­tion of T in hot tea. He wanted to know the dif­fer­ence in the Amer­i­can pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the expres­sions go to and got to. I thought this was such as won­der­ful ques­tion that I wanted to address it in a blog post.

To help you hear the dif­fer­ences, I have recorded a video of me explain­ing the sounds and have also writ­ten out the expla­na­tion for you below.

[VIDEO]

First, let’s look at the pro­nun­ci­a­tion of each expres­sion individually.

To pro­nounce go to, we say the hard G fol­lowed by a long O, GO, and then say a crisp, or released T fol­lowed by the long U, or OO sound. GO TOO.

To pro­nounce got to, we will say the hard G fol­lowed by the short o or AH vowel, hold the T at the end of the word, then release the T as we say to, with a long u, or OO sound. GAH-TOO

Also, I think we need to men­tion the short­ened ver­sion of got to used in more casual con­ver­sa­tion: gotta.

To pro­nounce gotta,we start out exactly the same as with GOT TO, using the AH sound, then blend the two T’s in to a fast T , or D sound, and instead of end­ing with the pre­cise pro­nun­ci­a­tion of TO, we shorten and sim­plify the end­ing with a SCHWA sound. So, when we put it all together in rapid speech, it becomes GAH-DUH.

Now, let’s talk about when we would use these expres­sions. GO TO is a verb indi­cat­ing move­ment from one place to another. I want to go to the store.

GOT TO indi­cates either that you were able to do some­thing in the past, or that you need to do some­thing in the future. When talk­ing about the future, you must always use HAVE or HAS with it.

When talk­ing about the past, you might say:

I got to go see a movie yesterday.

OR

They got to ride in the new car.

But, when talk­ing about the future, you would say,

I have got to fin­ish my project.

OR

I’ve got to go get some groceries.

Often in casual con­ver­sa­tion, the GOT TO is reduced or sim­pli­fied to GOTTA, as in:

I’ve gotta go to the store.

So, remem­ber that go to, got to, and gotta each have their own dis­tinct pro­nun­ci­a­tion and usage. You will impress those around you with your knowl­edge of Amer­i­can pro­nun­ci­a­tion when you can use these words cor­rectly. Come on now, you’ve gotta give it a try! What have you got to lose?

Was this post help­ful to you? What ques­tions do you have about Amer­i­can pro­nun­ci­a­tion? Let me know in the com­ments below!