标准美语发音的13个秘诀 CD 3 Track 24

Exercise 4-12: Finding American T Sounds CD 3 Track 24 

Once again, go over the following familiar paragraph. First, find all the T's that are pronounced D (there are nine to thirteen here).Second, find all the held Ts (thereare seven). The first one of each is marked for you. Pause the CD to do this and don't forget to check your answers with the Answer Key, beginning on page 193, when you finish.

Hello, my name is_______________. I'm taking American Accen(t) Training. There's a lo(t) to learn, but d I hope to make it as enjoyable as possible. I should pick up on the American intonation 1 pattern pretty easily, although the only way to get it is to practice all of the time. I use the up and down, or peaks and valleys, intonation more than I used to. I've been paying attention to pitch, too. It's like walking down a staircase. I've been talking to a lot of Americans lately, and they tell me that I'm easier to understand. Anyway, I could go on and on, but the important thing is to listen well and sound good/Well, what do you think? Do I?

Voiced Consonants 3 and Reduced Vowels 5

The strong intonation in AmericanEnglish creates certain tendencies in your spoken language. Here are four consistent conditions that are a result of intonation's tense peaks and relaxed

valleys:

1. Reduced vowels 

You were introduced to reduced vowels in Chapter 1. They appear in the valleys that are formed by the strong peaks of intonation. The more you reduce the words in the valleys, the smoother and more natural your speech willsound. A characteristic of reduced vowels is that your throat muscles should be very relaxed. This will allow the unstressed vowels to reduce toward the schwa. Neutral vowels take less energy and muscularity to produce than tense vowels. For example, the word unbelievable should only have one hard vowel 4: [ənbəlēvəbəl].

2. Voiced consonants 

The mouth muscles are relaxed tocreate a voiced sound like [z] or [d]. For unvoiced consonants, such as [s] or [t], they are sharp and tense. Relaxing your muscles willsimultaneously reduce your vowels and voice yourconsonants. Think of voiced consonants as reduced consonants. Both reduced consonants and reduced vowels are unconsciously preferred by a native speaker of American English. This explains why T sofrequently becomes D and S becomes Z: Get it is to ... [gedidizdə].

3. Like sound with like sound 

It's not easy to change horses midstream, so when you havea voiced consonant 2; let the consonant that follows it be voiced as well. In the verb used [yuzd], for example, the S is really a Z, so it is followed by D. The phrase used to [yus tu], on the other hand, has a real S, so it is followed by T. Vowels are, by definition, voiced. So when one is followed by a common, reducible word, it will change that word's first sound— like the preposition to, which will change to [də]. 

The only way to get it is to practice all of the time. 

[They only wei•də•geddidiz•də•practice all of the time.]

Again, this will take time. In the beginning, work on recognizing these patterns when you hear them. When you are confident that you understandthe structure beneath these sounds and you can intuit where they belong, you can start to try them out. It's not advisable to memorize one reduced word and stick it into an otherwise overpronounced sentence. It would sound strange.

4. R'lææææææææææx 

You've probably noticed that the preceding three conditions, as well as other areas that we've covered, such as liaisons 6 and the schwa, have one thing in common—the idea that it's physically 7 easier this way. This is one of the most remarkable 8 characteristics of American English. You need to relax your mouth and throat muscles (except for [æ], [ä],and other tense vowels), and let the sounds flow smoothly 9 out. Ifyou find yourself tensing up, pursing your lips, or tightening your throat, you are going to strangle and lose the sound you are pursuing. Relax, relax, relax.