Do not Forget the Schwa Sound /ə/
If I had to pinpoint one sound that will massively help you develop an American accent, it would have to be the schwa sound. It is found in nearly every word!
When you listen to advanced learners who speak American English fluently but who do not exactly sound like native speakers, it is usually because they are not pronouncing the schwa sometimes.
The schwa sound is called a lazy sound because you pronounce it in a relaxed way: try saying “uh” while just keeping your mouth open a little. All the vowels in English can be read as a schwa instead of their normal sound, usually if they a’re in a syllable that is not stressed or emphasized.
Let us take a common word: “problem.” Just by reading it, you would expect the pronunciation to be “pro-blem” because that is how you pronounce e, right? The pronunciation is actually “pro-bluhm.” The e becomes a schwa sound!
Here are some other English words with the schwa sound:
away (pronounced like uh-way)
enemy (pronounced like e-nuh-my)
animal (pronounced like a-nuh-muhl)
doctor (pronounced like doc-tuhr)
lemon (pronounced like le-muhn)
Even in “America,” you have two schwa sounds: Uh-mer-i-kuh.
Since it is tricky to guess when to use the schwa just by looking at an English word, you can check the pronunciation guide in dictionaries and look out for /ə/.
Be Careful of the Sound /j/
The sound /j/ can also give you information about a person’s accent. This is the j, ge or dge sound that you can hear in American English words like “jump,” “gentle ” and “judge .” (You can hear it twice in “judge”!)
Many American speakers do not pronounce this sound after the letters d, n and t.
This is formally called yod-dropping, and it can easily be seen in everyday words such as:
tune
duty
student