Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / August 2005

Raf, your question is kind of strange, given the fact that many
educated Britons do not even pronounce the "r" in "world." However,
I've heard a lot of people ask the same question.

The biggest problem is that the /r/ sound is followed by /l/, and most
likely, make the shift between the two sounds is difficult, because
there's something not quite right in your /l/ sound. There is an
audible difference in the /l/ sound in British and American English
(perhaps the most significant consonant difference, barring the
"intervocalic 'r'" issue). Few native speakers not professionally
involved in teaching English to speakers of other language actually
care about any of all that.

The best advice I can give you and the Original Poster is to repeat
what Einde wrote (and I should point out that I'm an American), and to
caution you that I have only met three non-native professional language
teachers who could credibly imitate any native-speaker accent --
although I have met many who claim they can, thanks to the belief
fostered by spy novelists that deep-cover USSR spies trained by the KGB
could once pass as Americans. The majority of the books were, of
course, written by monolingual Americans like Tom Clancy. Ian Fleming,
the creator of James Bond and a former British intelligence officer,
never made such idiotic claims.

Another point you should remember: native speakers of English with an
ounce of sense typically do not discourage these beliefs when living or
traveling abroad! They will nod, smile and wholeheartedly agree with
you that your pronunciation is flawless, even if they privately believe
that you speak a vile patois with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

It would be a churlish English language teacher who would do likewise.

There are a few books on pronunciation out there incorporating systems
of teaching pronunciation by means of phonetics training and strenuous
practice. The French are famous for rigorously applying these systems
to their language and have had much more success with them than anyone
else.

There are elocution coaches for people who work in Hollywood, but
usually, they do much better with native speakers from Britian or
Australia who need to learn American accents and vice versa.

Daniel Jones, one of the founders of the International Phonetics
Association, did the most serious work on this once upon a time, and
his work has been adapted by other people, by still...you pay your
money and you take your chance. There's nothing out there that gets the
job done for everyone.

One last point that I learned in France: if you have someone to model
the sounds for you and respond to the way that you pronounce them, it
really helps to supplement the explanation and the cassettes or CDs
that come with such courses.

There's a rumor that there is some kind of tongue surgery available in
Korea for pronunciation problems. That's both ghastly and frightening.

So once again, don't get your hopes up, and remember, that it is the
rare American snob who will insist that you should have "perfect
pronunciation." Generally, getting the stress in individual words most
right and having some basic notions of intonation are good enough.
People will respect your right to mark your language with an accent of
origin, especially since few of them speak a second language with any
kind of real fluency.

So, the snobs are really not worth your time, and you should know that
other native speakers laugh at them.