It’s back to school time and that means new school sup­plies, new teach­ers, and often new school rules. It can be frus­trat­ing for us and our kids when dif­fer­ent teach­ers have dif­fer­ent rules. Some are easy to remem­ber and some can be more of a chal­lenge, but fol­low­ing the rules is a key to a pleas­ant school experience.

Lan­guages have their own set of rules, too, and fail­ing to fol­low those rules can make com­mu­ni­ca­tion frus­trat­ing and some­times unsuc­cess­ful. I find that my clients some­times know more gram­mar rules of Eng­lish than I do, but they have not been taught the Amer­i­can pro­nun­ci­a­tion rules that they need.

You can’t fol­low a rule that you don’t know about, right? So, today I decided to share with you three of the most com­mon Amer­i­can pro­nun­ci­a­tion rules that are hard for non-native speak­ers. I’ll show you the most com­mon mis­take or “rule-breaker” and then explain how to change it.

1. Say­ing an S sound instead of a Z sound

Many non-native speak­ers use an s sound for a z sound. S and Z use the exact same tongue and mouth shape; the dif­fer­ence is in the voic­ing. The S sound is pro­duced with­out the voice, but the Z sound requires the voice. To feel the dif­fer­ence, put your hand on your throat and try say­ing S-s-s-s. You should not feel any­thing. Now try say­ing Z-z-z-z. You should feel a vibra­tion in your throat. Prac­tice say­ing words like Sue and zoo, and buzz and bus.

2. Using Long E and Short I interchangably

These two vow­els are often sub­sti­tuted one for the other, but doing so can change the mean­ing of the word. The long E is made by pulling the lips back into a smile. This is the vowel in the sen­tence: Meet me on Green Street. The short I, on the other hand, is made by keep­ing your tongue flat on the bot­tom of your mouth. Open it just a lit­tle and say ” ih”, as in Give the tip to him on the ship.

3. Say­ing a W instead of a V sound

The W sound is made by round­ing the lips and say­ing “ooh-uh”. This is the sound that begins words like water, where, and watch but this is not the sound we want to make when say­ing words like vaca­tion or vio­lin. The V sound is made by lightly plac­ing the top teeth on the lower lip, turn­ing on the voice and blow­ing. Prac­tice each sound sep­a­rately, then try say­ing: Victor’s watch, win­ter vaca­tion, and wash the veg­eta­bles.

Were those tips help­ful? I’ll be giv­ing away Amer­i­can pro­nun­ci­a­tion tips like that and many more on my free webi­nar com­ing up in two weeks. Have you reserved your spot yet? Seats are going quickly, so reserve your space now.

• 9/8/2011 1:05 PM Pedro Alvarez wrote:
  1. Even if you train your stu­dents to pro­duce both /s/ and /z/, they will have prob­lems wrt when to pro­duce /s/ and /z/.There are some heuris­tics:
  1. plu­rals, pos­ses­sives and cor­re­spond­ing assim­i­la­tion. Excep­tions in this cat­e­gory, if any.
  2. There is a heuris­tic that many ESL speak­ers have learned: /s/ in noun, but /z/ in verb (cf. use, advice, etc). How­ever, this heuris­tic fails in words: crease, increase, decrease, lease, release, cease, decease (cf. dis­ease), fleece, etc.