Help with pronunciation
Hi everyone,
I can't pronounce the following words correctly with an american accent:
error
terror
mirror
or pretty much anything that has an 'r' followed by a vowel and another 'r'.
Any help would be appreciated,
thanks in advance,
- Borat
In my NAE dialect, those are
"error" : /"er@`/ -> ["e:.r\@`]
"terror" : /"ter@`/ -> ["t_he:.r\@`]
"mirror" : /"mIr/ -> ["mI:r\] (The -"or" has been lost in my dialect in this word)
One note though is that in most NAE dialects, one would find /Er/ -> [E:r\] rather than /er/ -> [e:r\] in words like "error" and "terror". For more formal conservative NAE pronunciations, they'd be more like:
"error" : /"Er@`/ -> ["E:.r\@`]
"terror" : /"tEr@`/ -> ["t_hE:.r\@`]
"mirror" : /"mIr@`/ -> ["mI:.r\@`]
Dictionary.com is always a good source to check if you want to know what the standard American English pronunciation of a word is.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=error
In this case, the /o /in error, mirror and terror is actually a short schwa sound often represented on an English keyboard as @. (I wish the schwa symbol was available.
hi all,
what does NAE mean AE=American English, but what does "N" mean?
thanks in advance
The NA is for North American. That allows you to lump US and Canadian accents together into one group, since they are closely related and Canadians get miffed at being left out.
Thanks for your help, Travis and Brennus.
The thing is, I have no trouble pronouncing the "american" r, but when I
pronounce a word that contains two rs, such as "error", it sounds kind of
slurred, like the second r was a little bit lighter than the first r. So basically what I'm asking is: How can I make it sound clearer? I think this is quite a common problem for people who try to improve their accent in order to sound more American.
Uriel thanks so much for your answer!
Oops, I forgot to sign my message. The above guest was me.
I should add that my problem is that I know how the words should be pronounced, but can't pronounce this /r@`/ thing properly.
What's the difference between [r\] and [`] ?
[r\] marks an alveolar approximate, [@`] marks a rhoticized schwa.
That should be "approximant".
Why can't [@r/] be used for a rhoticized schwa?
Why can't [@r\] be used for a rhoticized schwa?
Truth is, Borat, most Americans also have trouble pronouncing words like that. In the South, many dialects pronounce these words in a non-rhotic way (i.e. [ter\@] for "terror"), even if the dialect itself is rhotic, as it's just easier that way.
I actually don't think the standard American pronunciation is quite [ter\:] as Travis said, as much as it is quite literally a double r [ter\r\].