Week 10: Segmental feature_consonants

So far, I have trained myself to speak with the Received Pronunciation accent for more than 9 weeks, but I still feel that my accent is not close enough to this British accent. Thus, I decided to go back and repeat practicing again focusing on the segmental features, especially on the consonants for this blog post. I found the best website to practice with since it has a pronunciation part with videos covering both the consonants and also the vowels. However, for this time I will only focus my practice on consonants. I will practice more on the vowel afterward.

I decided to practice my consonants again after I listened again all my recordings from week one to week 9, and I realized that along the way as my focus shifted to the suprasegmental features, my control over the segmental features was loosened. BBC Learning English is the webpage that I used to practice my consonants again. I watched the video and repeat after it when prompted. I did it several times for each consonant to make sure that I produced similar sounds.

As I read through my notes on week three, I did some more practices on certain consonants that are the salient features of British accent. I worked on my non-rhotic /r/ for I tend to pronounce my /r/. I also worked on dental fricatives /ð/ and /θ/ especially the /θ/ in the word North which I do not know why I almost always pronounced it as a glottal stop. I also worked on the plosives in the voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/ tried to make sure that I always pronounce them correctly and clearly. Glottal stops were also one of main focuses during my practice since I sometimes forgot to produce these sounds instead of /t/ and /k/. I also practiced pronouncing the velarized /ɫ/ at the end of a syllable in the words sentimental, feel, and beautiful.

Here is my recording after practicing for several times:

When I listened to this video again, I can hear that I put to much effort in pronouncing some of the consonants because I wanted to pronounce them correctly, so that they do not feel so natural. For example, when I am pronouncing the word north, I can hear that it took me longer to pronounce the final syllable /θ/ because I wanted to make sure that I pronounced it correctly. Through more practice on these consonants, however, I am sure that they will come more naturally. For the next blog post, I will focus on the vowel.