AccentMatch.US
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This is an AI-generated research project, still being refined. It may contain errors. Reader ratings and feedback are coming soon. How this is made

For Vietnamese speakers

Your English has a Vietnamese shape. Here is where.

At rest, Vietnamese speakers tend to keep the jaw fairly closed and the lips relaxed and neutral, without much rounding or spreading. The tongue sits slightly forward and high in the mouth.

The Vietnamese comparison is being researched. Daily tips are available.

Neutral face, lips gently closed, jaw relaxed, minimal muscular activity visible
Rest positionNeutral face, lips gently closed, jaw relaxed, minimal muscular activity visible
Subtle throat/larynx movement visible, indicating rising or falling pitch and a creaky-voice moment during a tone-bearing syllable
Tone productionSubtle throat/larynx movement visible, indicating rising or falling pitch and a creaky-voice moment during a tone-bearing syllable
Vietnamese speech keeps the face and jaw fairly relaxed while the larynx works continuously to produce six distinct pitch-and-voice-quality tones.

How Vietnamese moves

sourced

Vietnamese is syllable-timed: each syllable takes up roughly equal time and keeps its full vowel quality, since tone must be clearly heard everywhere. There's no vowel reduction like English's schwa, so unstressed syllables aren't squashed or shortened. This gives Vietnamese a steady, even beat quite different from the rising-and-falling stress rhythm of English.

Where Vietnamese rests

sourced

At rest, Vietnamese speakers tend to keep the jaw fairly closed and the lips relaxed and neutral, without much rounding or spreading. The tongue sits slightly forward and high in the mouth. What really sets Vietnamese apart is the throat: the larynx works constantly to shape six different tones, each with its own pitch pattern and sometimes a creaky or breathy voice quality. Because tone changes a word's meaning, speakers maintain tight control over pitch on every single syllable, even though the rest of the face stays fairly still. When moving to English, that careful pitch habit can carry over, and syllable-final consonants, which barely exist in Vietnamese, are often dropped or changed.

Standard (Northern/Hanoi) Vietnamese as reference; notes on Southern (Saigon) variety, which typically merges to five tones and has some different final consonant realizations