Thread: Mastering general American pronunciation step by step

Hi iCake!
Although, as I understood, you approve of answers from native speakers better I'll venture to say one or two things about your work.

N
1. There's written "knock", but on the recording you say "not", don't you?
2. In the word "spine" you aspirate the "p", but p, t, k are not aspirated before "s".
3. And in "between" the other way round there's a kind of aspiration. Just listen to some recording, find there words with "tw" and note how it's pronounced
4. "Telephone", again not aspirated.

M
1."Come" not aspirated

Originally Posted by kib

Hi iCake!
Although, as I understood, you approve of answers from native speakers better I'll venture to say one or two things about your work.

N
1. There's written "knock", but on the recording you say "not", don't you?
2. In the word "spine" you aspirate the "p", but p, t, k are not aspirated before "s".
3. And in "between" the other way round there's a kind of aspiration. Just listen to some recording, find there words with "tw" and note how it's pronounced
4. "Telephone", again not aspirated.

M
1."Come" not aspirated

Thanks for the tips but as you can see the thread title is "Mastering American pronunciation step by step". I'm just not that advanced student to know what you were talking about. I just never even got to those p, k, t etc sounds yet. All I've done are almost all the major vowels and M, N consonants. Anyway, your post is extremely useful and I'll definitely look into it. Thanks.

About the "knock", I didn't try to say "not" I tried to say "knock". Native speakers seem to hear it the way I tried to pronounce that but maybe you're right.

Originally Posted by iCake

About the "knock", I didn't try to say "not" I tried to say "knock". Native speakers seem to hear it the way I tried to pronounce that but maybe you're right.

That's very strange, I'm 100% sure that there's a t on the recording. Of course it doesn't really matter to anybody, but I'm curius to know how's that! I don't think I hear SO differently from natavies as to mix up "t" and "k".

Originally Posted by kib

That's very strange, I'm 100% sure that there's a t on the recording. Of course it doesn't really matter to anybody, but I'm curius to know how's that! I don't think I hear SO differently from natavies as to mix up "t" and "k".

Through the latest posts I learned that native American English speakers tended to mistake my Russian K for the American T, so I had a quick look on how to pronounce the American K correctly, and I tried to do that with "knock". But whether I pulled it off or not is for Americans to decide