Pronunciation & Accent Glossary
Accent training comes with its own vocabulary. Here is what the key terms mean, in plain language, with audio where it helps.
Jump to a term
- Accent
- The particular way a person pronounces a language, shaped by their first language and where they grew up. Everyone has an accent — there is no accent-free speech.
- Connected speech
- The natural way words blend together in normal conversation. Sounds link, weaken, or disappear — so "want to" becomes "wanna" and "an apple" sounds like one word.
- Consonant cluster
- Two or more consonant sounds together with no vowel between them, such as the /spl/ in "splash" or the /-sks/ in "desks". Vietnamese has no clusters, so they need deliberate practice.
- Diphthong
- A single vowel sound that glides from one position to another within one syllable, like the vowel in "boy", "now" or "say".
- General American
- The accent of English widely heard in United States national media and used as the standard model for American pronunciation teaching. It is the accent Ledoly courses are built around. Also called GenAm or a "neutral" American accent.
- Intonation
- The rise and fall of pitch across a phrase or sentence. In English, intonation carries meaning and emotion — it can turn a statement into a question or signal that you are not finished speaking.
- Minimal pair
- Two words that differ by exactly one sound, such as "ship" and "sheep" or "rice" and "lice". Minimal pairs are used to train the ear to hear a sound contrast.
- Phoneme
- The smallest unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word. Swapping the first phoneme of "pat" gives "bat" — a different word. General American English has 39 phonemes.
- Phonological Glass Ceiling A Ledoly term
- Ledoly's term for the invisible career limit that unclear pronunciation places on otherwise fluent professionals. A speaker may have excellent grammar and vocabulary, yet still be misunderstood, interrupted, or passed over because their accent makes listeners work too hard. Unlike grammar — which keeps improving with exposure — pronunciation habits tend to freeze early, forming a "ceiling" that only deliberate sound-level training can break through.
- Schwa
- The short, weak, neutral vowel /ə/ found in unstressed syllables — the first sound of "about" and the last of "sofa". It is the most common vowel sound in English, and giving it a full, strong value is a frequent Vietnamese-speaker mistake.
- Stress (word stress)
- The syllable in a word that is said longer, louder and at a higher pitch. In "banana" the middle syllable is stressed: ba-NA-na. Putting stress on the wrong syllable can make a word hard to recognise.
- Stress-timed vs syllable-timed
- Two rhythms of speech. In a stress-timed language like English, stressed syllables fall at roughly regular intervals and unstressed ones are compressed. In a syllable-timed language like Vietnamese, every syllable takes about the same time. This difference is a major source of the Vietnamese accent in English.
- Voiced and voiceless
- A voiced sound is made with the vocal cords vibrating (/z/, /v/, /d/, /b/); a voiceless sound is made without that vibration (/s/, /f/, /t/, /p/). Put a hand on your throat: you feel a buzz on "zzz" but not on "sss".
- Vowel reduction
- The way vowels in unstressed syllables become shorter and weaker, usually turning into a schwa. It is what makes the second "o" in "photograph" almost disappear when the word becomes "photographer".
Hear it: want to, an apple, did you
Hear it: splash, desks, strength
Hear it: boy, now, say
Hear it: General American English
Hear it: Are you ready? I am ready.
Hear it: ship, sheep
Hear it: pat, bat
Hear it: Phonological Glass Ceiling
Hear it: about, sofa, banana
Hear it: banana, computer, photograph
Hear it: zzz, sss
Hear it: photograph, photographer
Ready to put the terms into practice?
Explore the interactive tools in the Learning Hub, or take the free Accent Audit to see where you stand.
