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This website was created to help people improve their American English pronunciation. At the core is a series of videos explaining in detail how each sound is created, as well as a blog.
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Though I highly recommend learning via video :), sometimes a book is a nice resource to have. I especially like this one:
Long vs. Short vowel: ee vs. ih
Video Text:
The length of a vowel is very important. We have long vowels and short vowels in English. For example, ee is long and ih is short. If someone says the long ee vowel, but they say it short, as in ih, it acutally sounds like the wrong word. For example, the word 'deep.' Deep is with the long vowel. Dip, another word with the short vowel. If I say the long vowel, ee, but I say it short, deep, deep, deep, it actually sounds like the word 'dip' being mispronounced more than it sounds like the word deep. So the lengh of the vowel is very important. Some sample word pairs: feet, fit ... sleep, slip ... jeep, jip ... heat, hit ... neat, knit ... sheep, ship.
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Check out this site ...
... I think it is a GREAT resource for studying pronunciation. You can slow down videos without the pitch changing, you can loop sections, you can look up words. It's an amazing resource, and I've enjoyed playing around with it.
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