DAY 2: INTRO TO ENGLISH SOUNDS

Before we talk about ENGLISH SOUNDS, let’s download the CHEAT SHEETS first for you to take notes. As usual, you can fill it right away after you download the PDF or you can print it if you want to have a copy.

ACCENT

“ACCENT” is your habits in your mother tongue when you pronounce sounds. ACCENT happens when you bring those habits to another language. We usually bring our Indonesian ACCENT when we talk in English, therefore we talk in English with Indonesian ACCENT. The way we pronounce sounds in English and Indonesian are very different because the language types are different.

• Bahasa Indonesia is a PHONETIC language. Artinya, kita biasanya membaca kata-kata sesuai dengan ejaannya.
• Sebaliknya, bahasa Inggris bukan PHONETIC language. Sering kali, cara membaca kata-kata dalam bahasa Inggris berbeda dengan ejaannya. Berikut adalah contoh pengucapan yang tidak sesuai dengan ejaan:

As a learner, having a foreign ACCENT is totally acceptable. However, it can make us less confident and hard to be understood by other people. Mastering the pronunciation of the language that we are learning is also a way to respect the language and ourselves. Now, what is the easy way to learn English pronunciation?

SPEECH ORGANS

First of all, let’s bring our awareness to our SPEECH ORGANS. We unconsciously use these SPEECH ORGANS to produce sounds when we speak:

ENGLISH VOWELS

• VOWELS are sounds without restrictions. The air flows from our throat to our mouth without using any other SPEECH ORGANS.
• In Bahasa Indonesia, we only have 5-6 VOWELS.
• In English, there are around 20 VOWELS; we are not familiar with a lot of them.
• VOWELS in English are determined more by the SHAPE (bentuk) of the mouth, not the LENGTH of the pronunciation (panjang/pendek pengucapannya).
• To make learning English VOWELS make sense, we use THE COLOR VOWEL CHART:

Kita akan mengasosiasikan BUNYI dengan WARNA yang terdapat pada chart tersebut. Dengan begitu, kita bisa dengan mudah mempelajari BUNYI dari sebuah kata karena memiliki kemiripan dengan BUNYI dari WARNA dalam chart.

Di level ini, kita akan mempelajari & berlatih untuk membedakan & mengucapkan bunyi-bunyi:

1. GREEN VS. SILVER

2. BLUE VS. WOODEN

3. RED VS. BLACK

4. ROSE & AUBURN

ENGLISH CONSONANTS

• CONSONANTS are sounds WITH restrictions. The air from our throat is either stopped or limited by our SPEECH ORGANS.
• In Bahasa Indonesia, we have 20 CONSONANTS.
• In English, there are around 24 VOWELS; we are familiar with them but with different pronunciation STYLES.

ASPIRATED CONSONANTS

Bunyi ini menghasilkan UDARA saat diucapkan. Contohnya:

VOICED & VOICELESS

VOICED SOUND adalah bunyi yang diucapkan dengan menggunakan GETARAN SUARA. Sebaliknya, VOICELESS adalah bunyi yang tidak menggunakan GETARAN SUARA.