Nightingale

What is accent?

Here is the denotative meaning of accent according to Longman Dictionary: Accent is a way someone pronounces the words of a language, showing which country or which part of the country they come from(dialect).but there is more than this definition for accent.Accent has three parts:1-Pronunciation2-Intonation 3-Liaisons( definition of these terms will follow in their specific section)

As I want to talk  about American accent so I will explain the rules you need for learning only this accent.

Pronunciation: the way that a word is pronounced.This was obvious.It did not need any definition.But you have seen a lot of symbols between the two slashes in front of a word in dictionaries.You probably have no idea what they say.These are pronunciation signals.They help you read the words.From this part on,I teach you these signals one by one followed by examples and exercises to boost your learning.

There are two key words here:1-Vowels 2- Consonants

Vowels ne of the human speech sounds that you make by letting your breath flow out without closing any part of your mouth or throat.Letters a-e-i-o-u make vowel sounds in English.Do not make a mistake:These are letters.they make vowels.for example :Beat/bit/   letters e and a in Beat make the vowel sound /i/.So from now on letters are written outside of the slashes and sound inside the slashes.(/ /)

Consonants :a speech sound made by partly or completely stopping the flow of air through your mouth.So Sounds like:/b/ as in Beat/bit/ and /t/ as in tell/tel/ are consonants.

Giving definitions of these terms is useful but I want to make it more practical for you guys.So in the next lessons I will teach you Vowels.In each lesson I will try to teach one or two vowels following examples and drills.