What does English pronunciation involve?

What goes through your mind when you hear someone with a strong accent in the workplace?

We may feel frustrated that we can't decipher fully what's being said. At the same time we may feel that it's impolite to ask for clarification.

US lawyer and writer Amy Chua famously remarked, 'Do you know what a foreign accent is? It's a sign of bravery.'

Being able to use English as a second language in the workplace is no small achievement.

We are so conditioned to think of accents in terms of status, prejudice and other factors related to social signifiers (which sometimes provoke emotional reactions) that we can easily overlook the technical factors involved in speaking another language clearly.

The main skills involved in speaking a language include:

⚫ use of phonetics (making the sounds - many of which do not exist in our mother tongue)
⚫ use of rhythm (we will probably use the rhythmic patterns of our native language, which may make our speech difficult to follow)
⚫ use of pitch and intonation (English uses a wide pitch range compared to other languages such as Spanish or Turkish)
⚫ use of connected speech (native English speakers connect words in a certain way rather than articulating each word separately)

Then there are many irregularities to get one's head around, such as:
- words that look the same but are pronounced differently depending on whether they are used as a noun or a verb!

Instead of feeling insecure about our own use of English or feeling frustrated by an employee's unintelligible speech there is always the option of training to achieve clear English speech. And believe it or not, the journey is a fun one.