Two main pronunciation mistakes give away a Brazilian accent:
1. The way they pronounce the [t] sound followed by the [ʊ] and [u] as in “to” and “two”. Instead of the [t] sound, they produce the [tʃ] sound as in “church”.
2. Incorrect nasalisation of the lateral consonants [l] as in “link”, and plosive consonants [t] and [d] as in “tot” and “done”.
For all Brazilian/Portuguese speakers of English, I recommend a tailor-made plan:
Master pure long English vowels and diphthongs. Try to lean on long vowels and diphthongs. Don’t shorten them even when speaking rapidly. Producing pure long vowels will also improve the tune or music of your speech and help to achieve English sentence rhythm.
Get rid of Americanisms and do not pronounce /r/ where it is not needed.
I recommend that you practise lessons from the apps: Get Rid of your Accent, Elocution Lessons, Business English Speech
You need to work on English long vowels:
- /a:/ as in "car", lesson 1, do not pronounce /r/
- /ɔː/ as in “storm”, lesson 3, do not pronounce /r/
- /ɜ:/ as in "bird", lesson 5, do not pronounce /r/, practise /wɜ:/ combination as in "work"
Diphthongs:
- /ɪə/ as in “dear”, lesson 19, do not pronounce /r/
- /ʊə/ as in “poor”, lesson 21
- /eə/ as in “hair”, lesson 22
- /əʊ/ as in “boat”, lesson 16
You also need to work on the correct usage of the short vowels:
- / ʌ/ as in “bus”, lesson 9
- /ɪ/ as in “pit”, lesson 7
- /ə/ as in “the”, lesson 6
- /ɒ/ a in "box", lesson 10
- /æ/ as in "cat", lesson 15
You need to think of a higher tongue positioning for /t, d, l, n/ sounds, keeping the tip of the tongue on the alveolar ridge.
Consonants you need to work on are:
- /t, d/ as in “teach” and “did” lesson 27
- / ŋ/ as “king” lesson 31
- Lateral plosion, lesson 34
- Nasal plosion, lesson 32
- /l/ as in “London” lesson 33, particularly at the end of the word
I recommend the apps Fluent English Speech and 4Ps, power, pitch, pace, pause to master sentence stress, intonation, the use of pauses and voice modulation. This will make your speech easy and interesting to listen to. Practise the silent Letters chapter with the app Business English Speech.
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