AccentHelp Blog

Light Accents

Often directors and/or actors ask for a "light accent" for a character or a production. Why Learn a Light Accent? This is often a necessity built i...

Learning Arabic Accent Intonation

Arabic accents commonly have an intonation element to them that is similar to a number of other accents, but with a slight variation. Learning an A...

Feather Plucking Intonation for South African Accents

Intonation for South African Accents for Actors

When I’m coaching actors on a South African accent, it's actually very complicated because you're not only dealing with South African English, but ...

Mastering the French Accent in English

(Without Sounding Like a Cartoon Villain) Bonjour! This week we’re diving into the French accent. Maybe you’ve just been cast as Hercule Poirot o...

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...

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