New Links to Help You with Accent Reduction

I'm always excited when I find a special new tool to help people reduce their accents. Here are two exciting places you can go on the internet to help you practice:

I give these two sites five stars!  

1.  Phonetics: The Sounds of Spoken Languages

About the Phonetics Flash Animation Project: This site contains animated libraries of the phonetic sounds of English, German, and Spanish. Available for each consonant and vowel is an animated articulatory diagram, a step-by-step description, and video=audio of the sound spoken I context. It is intended for the student of phonetics, linguistics, and foreign languages. There is also an interactive diagram of the articulatory anatomy.

This project was a collaborative effort of the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese, German, Speech Pathology and Audiology, and Academic Technologies at the University of Iowa.

• This library is intended to be used by adult students and instructors of articulatory phonetics, linguistics or foreign language.
• Instructors can use this for in-class projection.
• Students can use the library to review phonetic sounds or supplement their class or textbooks.
• Students studying English or Spanish as a foreign language can see and hear native speakers pronounce each sound.

2.  The Speech Accent Archive

An amazing collection of recordings of accents from around the world, all participating in the same sample collection task. Created by George Mason University.  This is a great resource if you want to hear what different accents sound like.  Great for actors!