AccentHelp Blog

Italian Accent Intonation Tutorial

How to Learn an Italian Accent When you're working on any intonation, which is the musicality of it, I always encourage you to start with a really ...

Aussie & London Accent Training for Actors

Cultivated Australian and RP Accents Tutorial

I had an inquiry from someone on my YouTube channel who was asking for a clarification about Cultivated Australian accents, and specifically this p...

Learn Cockney Accent Intonation

I want to talk about Cockney intonation, specifically physicalizing it. Cockney Dialect Tutorial - Introduction So Cockney is that working-class Lo...

Glottals in Accents

I had somebody who was asking a question about glottals. So it's commonly called a glottal stop. So your glottis is basically your vocal folds or t...

Intrusive R

It's not uncommon for non-rhotic (R-dropping) speakers to add an R to the end of a word when it links into another word. Here's an introduction to ...

The Cockney Accent & London’s Ever‑Changing Voice

The Cockney Accent & London’s Ever‑Changing Voice When you hear the term “Cockney Accent”, you might think of scrappy flower girl Eliza Dool...

Boston vs New York City Accents

There are a number of distinctions between vowel sounds between a Boston accent and a New York City accent. One of them really stands out: This is ...

Strut Vowel in American and British Accents

This UH sound often causes some confusion between American and British speakers, and can be a challenge for ESL English speakers to sound clear to ...

Hell's Corner IPA: [ɑ] [ɒ] [ɔ] Vowels

Jim leads you through a REALLY important vowel distinction that is helpful to know more about for almost ALL accents! These are the Palm/Father, Lo...

Nurse Vowel for American and British Accents

Jim Johnson takes you through the challenge of how the "NURSE" vowel + R sound happens for many Americans, and how to shift your thought when dropp...

British Isles Accent Map

British Isles Accent Map When people talk about a ‘British accent’, they tend to be thinking of the upper class Received Pronunciation accent. But ...

Linking R

Most non-rhotic speakers - which is a term for people who "drop the R sound" after a vowel - bring that R sound back if that word goes into a vowel...

"I Need to Learn a British Accent"

I get enough inquiries from people who ask about learning a British accent, that it seems to be important to clarify that this is too broad of a st...

Trap & Bath [æ] Vowel Changes for Various ESL Accents

The [æ] vowel sound, as in trap doesn't exist for many ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers, so they will tend to shift to a more familiar v...

Two Vowel Shifts in Almost All ESL Accents

In addition to sharing useful information about shifts to the /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ sounds, I use an example word that fills me with regret and joy. I love t...

Russian Accent Intonation

Accent Help coach Jim Johnson leads you through some techniques for learning the intonation for a Russian accent when speaking English. It's alwa...

Aspiration on Plosive Consonants

Jim gets into how plosive consonants can have varying degrees of aspiration (explosion) and how to note those with the phonetic alphabet. You can n...

IPA Symbols for the R Sound

Jim gives an overview of the phonetic symbols that represent the various R sounds that occur in accents from around the world. Here's a transcript ...

Rhoticity and the Norm in English and American Dialects

Rhoticity is all about the after-vowel R sound. Jim Johnson explores the tendency towards rhoticity in the US and non-rhotic accents in England - t...

[ɪ] to [i] Before [ŋ] and [ɚ]

--- otherwise known as KIT to FLEECE before NG and R In many parts of the US, the [ɪ] sound, as in kit, shifts upwards in the mouth towards [i], as...

Accents Based in British or American English

When learning the accent of a speaker for whom English is a second language, you have to consider what kind of English they learned, which can infl...

Subtle Variation in Articulation

Sometimes it's about figuring out the big sound changes for accents, but some speech variations can be tiny! Here, Jim gets into the minuscule vari...

Merry Mary Marry Pronunciation Map Accents

Merry, Mary, and Marry

Most Americans will say merry, Mary, and marry the same, but in some parts of the US - especially the northeast - and in many other countries, they...

Rhotic vs Non-Rhotic Accents

One major subdivision of accents/dialects is whether they are rhotic or non-rhotic: do they drop their R's or not? When the R's drop after vowels (...

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