🇺🇸 English Pronunciation
Practice english pronunciation using Web Speech API. Record yourself, get instant feedback on accuracy, fluency, and confidence.
Your Grade
Transcript (what we heard)
Word-level comparison
💡 English Pronunciation Tips
🎤 Stress & Intonation
American English has distinctive stress and intonation.
🗣️ R and L Sounds
Master American "r" and "l" sounds.
📝 Daily Practice
Practice with native speakers for natural accent.
Why English pronunciation is difficult
English has about 44 sounds written with 26 letters, and its spelling was fixed before several major sound changes finished working through the language. The result is a writing system that records history rather than pronunciation: through, tough, though, thought and thorough share four letters and no vowel sound between them.
That is why learning English pronunciation from spelling does not work, and why phonetic transcription is worth the afternoon it takes to learn.
What to work on, in order
| Priority | Feature | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Word stress | Listeners retrieve words using the stressed syllable; a misplaced stress can block recognition entirely |
| 2 | Merged vowel contrasts | Creates real ambiguity between frequent words such as live and leave |
| 3 | Rhythm and reduction | Listeners use prominence to locate the content words in a sentence |
| 4 | Consonant clusters | Deleting sounds removes grammatical endings; inserting them confuses the stress pattern |
| 5 | Individual consonants | Usually recoverable from context |
Most self-study starts at level five, with th and r, because those are the errors learners are told about most often. Starting at level one produces faster improvement in how easily you are understood.
The vowel system is the main obstacle
General American uses around fourteen vowels and British English around twenty including diphthongs. Speakers of five-vowel languages — Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Greek — are not learning a few extra sounds but subdividing regions their first language treats as single categories. The contrasts that typically collapse are sheep and ship, bad and bed, cup and cop, and fool and full.
Reduction is what makes English sound like English
Roughly one vowel in nine in running English is a schwa, /ə/. Every unstressed syllable reduces towards
it, and about fifty common function words — to, of, for, and, can, was, are, at — have a weak
form used in almost all connected speech. Using full forms throughout is grammatically correct but destroys the
rhythm listeners rely on.
Connected speech
- Linking: a final consonant joins a following vowel. An apple is a-napple.
- Elision: sounds disappear. Next day becomes nexday.
- Assimilation: sounds change to match neighbours. Ten bikes becomes tem bikes.
- Intrusion: a sound appears between vowels. Go on becomes go-w-on.
These four processes are the main reason learners who read English comfortably still struggle with conversation. Recognising them matters more than producing them.