The Voice Cafe Blog

Learning English Intonation as a Non-Native Speaker

Speaking from the perspective of a Czech native speaker, learning English intonation is one of the most difficult aspects of an English accent to get right. Unlike learning a consonant, for example, where the requirements on producing the sound are somewhat clearly laid out, easily understandable and more tangible, learning intonation is harder to grasp and takes time to perfect, as it is so much more subtle.

English Intonation – It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it.

Intonation is the music of the voice. It tells us much more about the feelings and intentions of the speaker than the words they choose. Intonation can make a boring story sound interesting and an interesting story sound boring.

Not All Old Habits Die Hard: My Experience of Learning the Modern British RP Accent as a Czech Native Speaker

Learning the modern RP accent has been quite a journey; one that I'd go on again any time. To introduce myself as a learner, I initially spent around 3 years learning Standard BE on my own, during my university studies for teaching English. While I used textbooks explaining general pronunciation rules of, mainly, individual sounds, the recordings I followed were of more traditional RP speakers, whereas my goal was to learn modern RP.