Happy New Year!  Does your list of resolutions include improvement in spoken English?  Start with The Sounds of American English, a new video series by Rachel’s English that teaches the sounds as they relate to stress.  Buy the whole set of videos here.

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Buy the whole set of videos here.

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Welcome to 2016, welcome to your new accent.

How long have you been studying English? How happy are you with your pronunciation? It’s a new year, and it’s a new opportunity to get fluency in spoken American English. The Sounds of American English, and how they relate to stress, are the building blocks of American English. So I’ve made a new set of 36 videos, totaling nearly 3 hours, that is truly special for the way integrates understanding stress into learning sounds.

Most of the materials you’ll find elsewhere just teach the sounds on their own, in isolation. It’s a mistake to learn this way — we learn sounds to speak words and sentences, not just sounds! For beginners, you can focus on the different sounds, and how they’re made.

More advanced learners can focus on the subtleties of how sounds are affected by stress to put the finishing touches on their American accent. Every vowel and diphthong video teaches the sounds in the context of stress, so you’re working on the overall character of American English, which is so important.

These videos have a mix of explanations, images, and slow motion speech study. I recommend watching all of the videos at once, several times. It’s a lot of information. Give your mind the time to take it all in and get the bigger picture. Then go back and study individual sounds. Imitate and practice the example words out loud.

Today’s the day. This set of videos is now available. You can buy the download for just $27. That’s less than a dollar per video. You can download the videos to your device or simply stream them. Go to RachelsEnglish.com/sounds to purchase, and you’ll get instant access to all of the videos. If a DVD is more your style, I’ve got you covered. The set is available as a DVD as well.

If you can’t afford to purchase, you’ll still get access to the videos. The videos in this collection will be released on YouTube twice a month, every first and third Thursday until May 2017. But why wait? Get the whole set now, study the sounds as a unit, and get fluency in your spoken English. Make 2016 YOUR year. Welcome to 2016, welcome to your new accent.

Here’s a sneak peak: the video on the AA as in BAT vowel.

In this American English pronunciation video, we’re going to learn how to pronounce the AA as in BAT vowel.

This is a sound that changes depending on the following sound. So, it can either be a pure vowel or a modified vowel. We’ll go over both in this video.

To make the pure AA vowel, the jaw drops quite a bit, AA.

The tip of the tongue stays forward; it’s touching the back of the bottom front teeth, AA. The back part of the tongue stretches up.

The tongue is wide, AA. Because the tongue is high in the back and low in the front, you can see a lot of it. This is different from the ‘ah’ as in ‘father’ vowel, for example, where the tongue presses down in the back and you see more dark space in the mouth. AA, AH.

You can also see the corners of the mouth pull back and up a little bit. AA.

Let’s take a look at the pure AA vowel up close and in slow motion.

The tongue tip is down and the back of the tongue lifts. Here’s the word ‘sat’. The tongue position is easy to see because of the jaw drop needed for this vowel.

When AA is in a stressed syllable, the vowel will go up and come down in pitch, AA. Sat, AA. In an unstressed syllable, the vowel is flatter and lower in pitch, quieter, aa. This vowel is unstressed in the second syllable of ‘backtrack’. Let’s look up close and in slow motion.

In the first, stressed syllable, the jaw drops, and we see the corners of the lips pull back and up for the stressed AA. In the unstressed syllable, the jaw drops less. Let’s compare them.

On top is the stressed AA. You can see the jaw drops more. For the unstressed AA, the corners of the lips are a little more relaxed than in the stressed version, where they pull slightly back and up.

Generally, the unstressed version of a vowel or diphthong is more relaxed and doesn’t take the full mouth position, in this case, a little less jaw drop, and relaxed lips. This is because unstressed syllables are shorter, so we don’t take the time to make the full position.

At the beginning of this video, I said the AA vowel is not always a pure AA. This vowel changes when it’s followed by a nasal consonant. When it’s followed by the M or N sounds, the tongue relaxes in the back, making an UH sound after AA. AA-UH. It’s not a pure AA sound. Unfortunately, this change is not represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It’s still written with the same AA symbol. So, you just have to know when it’s followed by [m] or [n], it’s different.

We don’t say ‘man’, aa, ‘man’, with a pure AA. We say ‘man’, aa-uh, aa-uh, relaxing the tongue and corners of the lips before the consonant. You can think of this UH relaxation as the ‘uh’ as in ‘butter’ sound or schwa sound. Let’s look up close and in slow motion at the word ‘exam’.

First we see the familiar shape of the mouth, when the AA is in a stressed syllable. Watch how the relaxation that happens: the corners of the lips relax in. The tongue will relax down in the back. And the lips close for the M consonant.

This relaxation of the corner of the lips and back of the tongue happens when the AA vowel is followed by the N consonant as well. For example, the word ‘hand’. Haa-uhnd. Hand.

So, when you see this symbol followed by this symbol or this symbol, it’s no longer a pure AA. Think of relaxing out of the vowel, AA-UH.

If the next sound is the NG consonant, it’s a little different. Rather than ‘aa-uh’, the vowel changes into AY. It’s really like the AY as in SAY diphthong. First, the middle part of the tongue lifts towards the roof of the mouth, then the front part of the tongue. Let’s watch ‘gang’ up close and in slow motion.

The position for the first sound looks a lot like AA, but the part of the tongue lifting up is more forward. Gaaaang. Then the front part of the tongue arches up towards the roof of the mouth, while the tongue tip remains down.

When you see this symbol followed by this symbol, it’s no longer a pure AA. It’s more like AY. Gang. Thanks.

Pure stressed AA: Sat, aa
Pure unstressed AA: backtrack, aa
AA, aa, AA, aa.

AA vowel modified by M: exam, aa-uh
AA vowel modified by N: man, aa-uh
AA vowel modified by NG: gang, ay

Example words. Repeat with me:
Chapter, can, act, last, bank, bypass.

I hope this video helps you understand this sound. That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.

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