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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:
The 't' and 'd' Sounds
How to make this sound:
Video Text:
T and D are paired together because they take the same mouth and tongue position. T, tt, is the unvoiced, meaning only air passes, and D, dd, is voiced with means you actually make sound with the vocal cords. The position: the teeth are together, and the tip of the tongue touches the roof of the mouth. It's about halfway between the very front, where the teeth are, and midway. So, it's about a quarter of the way back. And, it's just the tip of the tongue that touches. The sound is made when the tongue pulls away from the roof of the mouth and forces extra air through the teeth. Tt, tt, dd, dd. Word pairs: tad, dad ... till, dill ... tote, dote ... tan, Dan ... Ted, dead.
International Phonetic Alphabet symbols: [
], [
]
These two vowel sounds use the same mouth position. For more information on the [] sound and to see its occurrences in other languages, see Wikipedia's page. For the information on [], click here.
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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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