미국 발음이란 있을까? 영단어 다르게 발음하는 미국사람 (Eng)

Hello, and welcome to the Splash English podcast, where you learn to speak better English.

Hi, everyone. It's Josh, your teacher from splashenglish.com in this episode, you're going to learn how the American accent changed over time and how Americans from different regions pronounce some words differently. This is part two of the interview with Jill, a professional voice coach. In part one, we discussed improving one's accent and pronunciation. If you haven't listened that one yet, I highly recommend you do now. Let the episode begin. Among your native speaking clients, Americans, do they also have this kind of a problem where they have one or two words that sound a little off? To give you an example, New Yorkers, instead of coffee, they say coffee.

Yes, that's a very good example. Thank you. Thank you for giving me the example coffee. And the other one is chocolate. They will say chocolate, coffee and chocolate in New York.

So I was going to say some of the clients want you to help them fix some of that, especially the.

People who travel for work and they get tired of going somewhere else. And as soon as they say a key word like that, I've had people who you wouldn't know where they're from. And then coffee, or those are two key words that somehow don't get changed. And then somebody says, oh, you're from New York, and they just get tired of it even being a conversation. But I had someone who had grown up in South Carolina, and he had a very heavy Southern accent, and he did sales and he traveled the country, and he just had some really difficult problems with small words like pin and pen. So if he would ask for a pen, it would sound like pin and just that tiny I. It made a big difference for him. And he had a really difficult time changing that little sound when he needed to say pin versus when he needed to say pen. So, yeah, and he was from South Carolina. He had a very heavy Southern American accent. I also had a young woman who. Well, in Philadelphia, a very kind of. We laugh about it, but the word water. The word water is said so differently in different parts of America. You can really pinpoint where someone is from. And in Philadelphia, a lot of people will say wooder. Like W o o d E r. What? Yes. I don't know how wooder. And this woman was a waitress, and she was so frustrated with trying to say water instead of water. She just started asking people if they wanted more H2O. She just gave up.

Just say H2O.

Right.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, the US is a huge country, so it's no Surprise that I guess some people will just develop a different accent.

Well, a lot of these come from where the immigrants came. Some of them will come from German or Irish. The way that it gets changed. I know they say that the Australian accent is very much a British accent, but the mouth is kept very closed. They don't open their mouth very wide because of all the dirt and dust in Australia. That. That's how that accent evolved due to the conditions of the country. But the American accents are like a blend. There's such a blend of so many different immigrants coming and the way that they speak English, and it changes what we think of as a standard American pronunciation. It changes over time. It's becoming more diverse, just like everything else.

Yeah. Hundreds of years ago, the founding fathers spoke with the British accent. Right. And. Yeah, I mean, and then just within a span of a few hundred years, the US Developed its own accent. And.

And so here's here. This is interesting. So in Boston, the R, they'll drop the R. I don't know if you're familiar with the school. Park the car in Harvard Yard. Okay. So they'll say, park, go to the park. Park the car. The R is very soft. That is British. You know, the British R is much. Is much softer, but the mid Atlantic R is stronger. And I'm. People could Google and tell me I'm wrong on this, but I think part of that is an influence of the. Of German immigrants. We had a lot of the Pennsylvania Dutch and Amish, you know, coming from Germany and Holland. So I think the R might be stronger from that or even Irish immigrants coming in. So that could be wrong. But the R is stronger in the mid Atlantic region. So what happened is there used to be a style of speaking where the R was much softer. Like if you listen to old movies and you listen to Katharine Hepburn, the R is softer in that sound. And that was considered a standard American sound. Then in World War II, when America became the big the heroes, that stronger R was. If people wanted to put on an American accent, it became the style that was considered better because it was the sound of the American hero. And then that Middle Atlantic sound became more standardized. Fun facts from Jill.

No, thank you for that. It's real interesting.

I do want to apologize to listeners because I often get asked for rules of pronunciation, and I don't have really any to give my students. You just have to know it and get familiar with it. Like, for example, the word cough and through. They both end in that ough and are pronounced completely differently on behalf of the development of the English language. I apologize to people who have to learn it as a second language because it's difficult.

So for someone who is listening to this, if you want to modify your accent and have a better pronunciation, the best way is to contact Jill. But. But for those people maybe like who are not ready to work with Jill or if they have some time constraints, perhaps, do you have any recommended methods or ways to practice you can do at home?

Well, I think the best thing to do would be to think of someone that you want to sound like, someone who you can watch in movies or in news broadcasts and start trying to imitate them. Or also if you can figure out for yourself or ask people who are nice enough to help you what, what words am I having trouble with? What do you really have difficulty hearing me say? And just focus on those words because small changes mean a lot.

Exactly. Small changes matter.

I also liked when you were talking about shadowing and just in order to improve your fluency, just playing with the sentences and speaking along with what you hear in the car. I think a lot of times people feel that that's silly. They feel like they're being silly, but it'll help get you there. So. But also have fun with it. Enjoy it. Try to get emotion, a movement in your body when you say the word. You know, move your hand in a way with some flair with, you know, in a fun way so that you're letting it come out of you with a positive emotion instead of don't overthink.

I love that. And what is the best way for people to find you online if they want to get coaching from you?

The best way is to go to my website, which is www.jilltarnoff.com.

You pronounce the W's perfectly.

Yeah. W. Jill tarnoff.com Wishful speaking. All your wishes will come true.

And on that note, we will close our interview today. Thank you so much for your time today, Jill.

You're welcome. It's been my pleas.

Thanks for listening everyone. I hope you enjoyed our conversation as much as I did. Jill's website, along with other details is provided in the description section below. And could you do me a quick favor, rate, review and subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. That would help me reach more English learners just like you. That's all for today and thanks for tuning in to splashenglish.com have a nice day.